The Hard Way

consumption.”
    “If it’s real this time, does that make it more likely it was real last time?”
    “Maybe, maybe not. But whatever, give yourself a break.”
    “This is like a hall of fun house mirrors.”
    Reacher nodded. “But there’s one thing I can’t make fit under any scenario. Which is the initial takedown itself. The only viable method would have been quick and dirty inside the car, as soon as it stopped. Everyone agrees on that. I asked a couple of Lane’s guys, theoretically, in case there was something I hadn’t thought of. But there wasn’t. And the problem is, Bloomingdale’s is a whole block long. How could anyone have predicted exactly what yard of Lexington Avenue Taylor’s Jaguar was going to stop on? And if they didn’t predict it exactly right, then the whole thing would have fallen apart immediately, there and then. Either Kate and Jade would have been out on the sidewalk already, or Taylor would have seen the takedown guy running up, in which case he would have reacted and taken off. Or at least hit the door locks.”
    “So what are you saying?”
    “I’m saying real or fake there’s something wrong with this whole thing. I’m saying I can’t get a handle on what happened. I can’t get traction. I’m saying for the first time in my life I just don’t know. Like Brewer said, I’ve been wrong plenty of times, but I’ve always known before.”
    “You should talk to Brewer, officially.”
    “No point. NYPD can’t do anything without a complaint from Lane. Or at least a missing person report from someone with an interest.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to have to do it the hard way,” Reacher said.
    “What way is that?”
    “It’s what we called it in the service when we didn’t catch a break. When we actually had to work for a living. You know, start over at square one, re-examine everything, sweat the details, work the clues.”
    “Kate and Jade are probably already dead.”
    “Then I’ll make someone pay.”
    “Can I help?”
    “I need to know about two guys called Hobart and Knight.”
    Pauling nodded. “Knight was the driver the day Anne was taken and Hobart was in Philadelphia. Now Patti Joseph talks about them. They died overseas.”
    “Maybe they didn’t die overseas. They were abandoned wounded but alive. I need to know where, when, how, and what’s likely to have happened to them.”
    “You think they’re alive? You think they’re back?”
    “I don’t know what to think. But at least one of Lane’s guys wasn’t sleeping too well last night.”
    “I met Hobart and Knight, you know. Five years ago. During the investigation.”
    “Did either of them look like the guy I saw?”
    “Medium-sized and ordinary-looking? Both of them, exactly.”
    “That helps.”
    “What are you going to do now?”
    “I’m going back to the Dakota. Maybe we’ll get a call and this whole thing will be over. But more likely we won’t, and it’s just beginning.”
    “Give me three hours,” Pauling said. “Then call my cell.”

CHAPTER 26
    BY THE TIME Reacher got back to the Dakota it was seven o’clock and dawn had given way to full morning. The sky was a pale hard blue. No cloud. Just a beautiful late-summer day in the capital of the world. But inside the fifth floor apartment the air was foul and hot and the drapes were still drawn. Reacher didn’t need to ask whether the phone had rung. Clearly it hadn’t. The tableau was the same as it had been nine hours earlier. Lane upright in his chair. Then Gregory, Groom, Burke, Perez, Addison, Kowalski, all silent, all morose, all arrayed here and there, eyes closed, eyes open, staring into space, breathing low.
    Medals not approved.
    General discharges.
    Bad guys.
    Lane turned his head slowly and looked straight at Reacher and asked, “Where the hell have you been?”
    “Breakfast,” Reacher said.
    “Long breakfast. What was it, five courses at the Four Seasons?”
    “A diner,” Reacher said. “Bad choice. Slow service.”
    “I pay you to work. I don’t pay you to be out stuffing your face.”
    “You don’t pay me at all,” Reacher said. “I haven’t seen dime one yet.”
    Lane kept his body facing forward and his head turned ninety degrees to the side. Like a querulous sea bird. His eyes were dark and wet and glittering.
    “Is
that
your problem?” he asked. “Money?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “That’s easily solved,” Lane said.
    He kept his eyes on Reacher’s