The Hard Way

medals and recommendations.”
    “Is that what you got?”
    “All of the above. But I had a couple of promotion hiccups, because I’m not a very cooperative guy. Gregory asked me about that. The first one of them I spoke to. The first conversation we had. He asked if I’d had career problems. He seemed happy that I had.”
    “Puts you in the same boat.”
    Reacher nodded. “And it kind of explains why they’re sticking with Lane. Where else are they going to get twenty-five grand a month with their records?”
    “Is that what they get? That’s three hundred thousand a year.”
    “It was back when I learned math.”
    “Is that what Lane offered you? Three hundred grand?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “What is he hiring you for?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “What’s on your mind?”
    “We’re not done with the information yet.”
    “Anne Lane died, five years ago, in a vacant lot near the New Jersey Turnpike. That’s all the hard data we’ll ever have.”
    “Gut feeling?”
    “What’s yours?”
    Reacher shrugged. “Brewer said something to me. He said he just didn’t know, which was weird for him, he said, because whereas he was sometimes wrong, he always
knew.
And I’m exactly the same. I always know. Except this time I don’t know. So what’s on my mind right now is that I have nothing on my mind.”
    “I think it was a genuine kidnap,” Pauling said. “I think I blew it.”
    “Do you?”
    She paused a beat. Shook her head.
    “Not really,” she said. “Truthfully, I just don’t know. God knows I
want
Lane to have done it. Obviously. And maybe he did. But for the sake of my sanity I have to acknowledge that’s mostly wishful thinking, to excuse myself. And I have to file the whole thing somewhere, mentally. So I tend to come down on the side of avoiding self-indulgence and cheap consolation. And usually the simple option is the right option anyway. So it was a simple kidnap, not an elaborate charade. And I blew it.”
    “How did you blow it?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve lain awake a hundred nights going over it. I don’t see how I made a mistake.”
    “So maybe you didn’t blow it. Maybe it
was
an elaborate charade.”
    “What’s on your mind, Reacher?”
    He looked at her.
    “Whatever it was, it’s happening again,” he said.

CHAPTER 25
    LAUREN PAULING SAT forward in her chair and said, “Tell me.” So Reacher told her, everything, from the first night in the café, the first double espresso in its foam cup, the badly parked Mercedes Benz, the anonymous driver threading through the Sixth Avenue traffic on foot and then driving the Benz away. The second day, with Gregory scouting witnesses. The third day, with the unopened red door and the blue BMW. And then the nightmare electronic voice, guiding the black BMW back to the exact same fireplug.
    “If that’s a charade it’s unbelievably elaborate,” Pauling said.
    “My feeling exactly,” Reacher said.
    “And insanely expensive.”
    “Maybe not,” Reacher said.
    “You mean because the money comes around in a big circle?”
    “I haven’t actually seen any money. All I’ve seen are zippered bags.”
    “Cut up newspaper?”
    “Maybe,” Reacher said. “If it’s a charade.”
    “What if it isn’t?”
    “Exactly.”
    “It feels real.”
    “And if it isn’t real, I can’t imagine who’s doing it. He would need people he trusts, which means A-teamers, but there’s nobody AWOL.”
    “Were they getting along? Man and wife?”
    “Nobody says otherwise.”
    “So it’s real.”
    Reacher nodded. “There’s an internal consistency to it. The initial takedown must have depended on an inside tip, as to where Kate and Jade were going to be, and when. And we can prove that inside involvement two ways. First, these people know something about Lane’s operation. They know exactly what cars he’s got, for instance.”
    “And second?”
    “Something that was nagging at me. Something about cops. I asked Lane to repeat what was said during the first phone call. And he did, word for word. And the bad guys never said
no cops.
That’s kind of standard, isn’t it? Like,
Don’t go to the cops.
But that was never said. Which suggests these people knew the story from five years ago. They knew Lane wouldn’t go to the cops anyway. So it didn’t need saying.”
    “That would suggest that five years ago was for real.”
    “Not necessarily. It might only reflect what Lane put out there for public