Tripwire

tender skin. Then they made love for the fifth time in fifteen years, in the four-poster bed at the top of the old mansion while the sun in the window fell away west toward Kansas.
    THE NYPD’S DOMESTIC Violence Unit borrowed squad-room space wherever it could find it, which was currently in a large upstairs room above the administrative offices at One Police Plaza. O’Hallinan and Sark got back there an hour before the end of their shift. That was the paperwork hour, and they went straight to their desks and opened their notebooks to the start of the day and began typing.
    They reached their visit to the St. Vincent’s ER with fifteen minutes to go. They wrote it up as a probable incident with a non-cooperative victim. O’Hallinan spooled the form out of her typewriter and noticed the Tahoe’s plate number scrawled at the bottom of her notebook page. She picked up the phone and called it in to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
    “Black Chevrolet Tahoe,” the clerk told her. “Registered to Cayman Corporate Trust with an address in the World Trade Center.”
    O’Hallinan shrugged to herself and wrote it all down in her notebook. She was debating whether to put the form back in the typewriter and add the information to it when the DMV clerk came back on the line.
    “I’ve got another tag here,” he said. “Same registered owner abandoned a black Chevrolet Suburban on lower Broadway yesterday. Three-vehicle moving traffic incident. Fifteenth Precinct towed the wreck.”
    “Who’s dealing with it? You got a name at Fifteenth?”
    “Sorry, no.”
    O’Hallinan hung up and called traffic in the Fifteenth Precinct, but it was shift change at the end of the day and she got no further with it. She scrawled a reminder to herself and dropped it in her in-tray. Then the clock ticked around to the top of the hour and Sark stood up opposite her.
    “And we’re out of here,” he said. “All work and no play makes us dull people, right?”
    “Right,” she said. “You want to get a beer?”
    “At least a beer,” Sark said. “Maybe two beers.”
    “Steady,” she said.
    THEY TOOK A long shower together in the honeymoon suite’s spacious bathroom. Then Reacher sprawled in his towel on a sofa and watched her get ready. She went into her bag and came out with a dress. It was the same line as the yellow linen shift she’d worn to the office, but it was midnight blue and silk. She slipped it over her head and wriggled it down into place. It had a simple scoop neck and came just above the knee. She wore it with the same blue loafers. She patted her hair dry with the towel and combed it back. Then she went into the bag again and came out with the necklace he’d bought her in Manila.
    “Help me with this?”
    She lifted her hair away from her neck and he bent to fasten the clasp. The necklace was a heavy gold rope. Probably not real gold, not at the price he’d paid, although anything was possible in the Philippines. His fingers were wide and his nails were scuffed and broken from the physical labor with the shovel. He held his breath and needed two attempts to close the catch. Then he kissed her neck and she let her hair fall back into place. It was heavy and damp and smelled like summer.
    “Well, I’m ready at least,” she said.
    She grinned and tossed him his clothes from the floor and he put them on, with the cotton dragging against his damp skin. He borrowed her comb and ran it through his hair. In the mirror he caught a glimpse of her behind him. She looked like a princess about to go out to dinner with her gardener.
    “They might not let me in,” he said.
    She stretched up and smoothed the back of his collar down over the new exaggerated bulk of his deltoid muscle.
    “How would they keep you out? Call the National Guard?”
    It was a four-block walk to the restaurant. A June evening in Missouri, near the river. The air was soft and damp. The stars were out above them, in an inky sky the color of her dress. The chestnut trees rustled in a slight, warm breeze. The streets got busier. There were the same trees, but cars were moving and parking under them. Some of the buildings were still hotels, but some of them were smaller and lower, with painted signs showing restaurant names in French. The signs were lit with aimed spotlights. No neon anywhere. The place she’d picked was called La Prefecture. He smiled and wondered if lovers in a minor city in France were eating in a place called “the