The Hard Way

The guy who took your car, these folks can start a war against him, that’s for sure. But first you need to find him.”
    No reply.
    “What was in the car?” Reacher asked.
    “Tell me about your career,” Lane said.
    “It’s been over a long time. That’s its main feature.”
    “Final rank?”
    “Major.”
    “Army CID?”
    “Thirteen years.”
    “Investigator?”
    “Basically.”
    “A good one?”
    “Good enough.”
    “110th Special Unit?”
    “Some of the time. You?”
    “Rangers and Delta. Started in Vietnam, ended in the Gulf the first time around. Started a second lieutenant, finished a full colonel.”
    “What was in the car?”
    Lane looked away. Held still and quiet for a long, long time. Then he looked back, like a decision had been made.
    “You need to give me your word about something,” he said.
    “Like what?”
    “No cops. That’s going to be your first piece of advice, go to the cops. But I’ll refuse to do it, and I need your word that you won’t go behind my back.”
    Reacher shrugged.
    “OK,” he said.
    “Say it.”
    “No cops.”
    “Say it again.”
    “No cops,” Reacher said again.
    “You got an ethical problem with that?”
    “No,” Reacher said.
    “No FBI, no nobody,” Lane said. “We handle this ourselves. Understand? You break your word, I’ll put your eyes out. I’ll have you blinded.”
    “You’ve got a funny way of making friends.”
    “I’m looking for help here, not friends.”
    “My word is good,” Reacher said.
    “Say you understand what I’ll do if you break it.”
    Reacher looked around the room. Took it all in. A quiet desperate atmosphere and six Special Forces veterans, all full of subdued menace, all as hard as nails, all looking right back at him, all full of unit loyalty and hostile suspicion of the outsider.
    “You’ll have me blinded,” Reacher said.
    “You better believe it,” Lane said.
    “What was in the car?”
    Lane moved his hand away from the phone. He picked up the framed photograph. He held it two-handed, flat against his chest, high up, so that Reacher felt he had two people staring back at him. Above, Lane’s pale and worried features. Below, under glass, a woman of breathtaking classical beauty. Dark hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a bud of a mouth, photographed with passion and expertise and printed by a master.
    “This is my wife,” Lane said.
    Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
    “Her name is Kate,” Lane said.
    Nobody spoke.
    “Kate disappeared late yesterday morning,” Lane said. “I got a call in the afternoon. From her kidnappers. They wanted money. That’s what was in the car. You watched one of my wife’s kidnappers collect their ransom.”
    Nobody spoke.
    “They promised to release her,” Lane said. “And it’s been twenty-four hours. And they haven’t called back.”

CHAPTER 3
    EDWARD LANE HELD the framed photograph like an offering and Reacher stepped forward to take it. He tilted it to catch the light. Kate Lane was beautiful, no question about it. She was hypnotic. She was younger than her husband by maybe twenty years, which put her in her early thirties. Old enough to be all woman, young enough to be flawless. In the picture she was gazing at something just beyond the edge of the print. Her eyes blazed with love. Her mouth seemed ready to burst into a wide smile. The photographer had frozen the first tiny hint of it so that the pose seemed dynamic. It was a still picture, but it looked like it was about to move. The focus and the grain and the detail were immaculate. Reacher didn’t know much about photography, but he knew he was holding a high-end product. The frame alone might have cost what he used to make in a month, back in the army.
    “My Mona Lisa,” Lane said. “That’s how I think of that picture.”
    Reacher passed it back. “Is it recent?”
    Lane propped it upright again, next to the telephone.
    “Less than a year old,” he said.
    “Why no cops?”
    “There are reasons.”
    “This kind of a thing, they usually do a good job.”
    “No cops,” Lane said.
    Nobody spoke.
    “You were a cop,” Lane said. “You can do what they do.”
    “I can’t,” Reacher said.
    “You were a military cop. Therefore all things being equal you can do better than them.”
    “All things aren’t equal. I don’t have their resources.”
    “You can make a start.”
    The room went very quiet. Reacher glanced at the phone, and the photograph.
    “How much money did they