Tripwire

thickset guy, who jabbed the shotgun forward and hit Sark in the kidney.
    “I asked you a question,” Hobie said to him.
    “You swing it,” he muttered. “Swing it, and sort of flick it.”
    He needed space, so he stood up. Swung the stick and flicked it like he was cracking a whip. The telescopic section snapped out and locked into place. He grinned with the unburned half of his face. Collapsed the mechanism and tried again. Grinned again. He took to pacing big circles around the desk, swinging the stick and cracking it open. He did it vertically, and then horizontally. He used more and more force. He spun tight circles, flashing the stick. He whipped it backhanded and the mechanism sprang open and he whirled around and smashed it into O’Hallinan’s face.
    “I like this thing,” he said.
    She was swaying backward, but Tony jabbed her upright with his pistol. Her knees gave way and she fell forward in a heap, pressed up against the front of the desk, arms cuffed tight behind her, bleeding from the mouth and nose.
    “What did Sheryl tell you?” Hobie asked.
    Sark was staring down at O’Hallinan.
    “She said she walked into a door,” he muttered.
    “So why the hell are you bothering me? Why are you here?”
    Sark moved his gaze upward. Looked Hobie full in the face.
    “Because we didn’t believe her. It was clear somebody beat on her. We followed up on the Tahoe plate, and it looks like it led us to the right place.”
    The office went silent. Nothing except the hiss and the squelch from the police radios on the end of the desk. Hobie nodded.
    “Exactly the right place,” he said. “There was no door involved.”
    Sark nodded back. He was a reasonably courageous man. The Domestic Violence Unit was no kind of safe refuge for cowards. By definition it involved dealing with men who had the capacity for brutal violence. And Sark was as good at dealing with them as anybody.
    “This is a big mistake,” he said quietly.
    “In what way?” Hobie asked, interested.
    “This is about what you did to Sheryl, is all. It doesn’t have to be about anything else. You really shouldn’t mix anything else in with it. It’s a big step up to violence against police officers. It might be possible to work something out about the Sheryl issue. Maybe there was provocation there, you know, some mitigating circumstance. But you keep on messing with us, then we can’t work anything out. Because you’re just digging yourself into bigger trouble.”
    He paused and watched carefully for the response. The approach often worked. Self-interest on the part of the perpetrator often made it work. But there was no response. from Hobie. He said nothing. The office was silent. Sark was shaping the next gambit on his lips when the radios crackled and some distant dispatcher came over the air and sentenced him to death.
    “Five one and five two, please confirm your current location. ”
    Sark was so conditioned to respond that his hand jerked toward where his belt had been. It was stopped short by the handcuff. The radio call died into silence. Hobie was staring into space.
    “Five one, five two, I need your current location, please. ”
    Sark was staring at the radios in horror. Hobie followed his gaze and smiled.
    “They don’t know where you are,” he said.
    Sark shook his head. Thinking fast. A courageous man.
    “They know where we are. They know we’re here. They want confirmation, is all. They check we’re where we’re supposed to be, all the time.”
    The radios crackled again. “Five one, five two, respond please. ”
    Hobie stared at Sark. O’Hallinan was struggling to her knees and staring toward the radios. Tony moved his pistol to cover her.
    “Five one, five two, do you copy?”
    The voice slid under the sea of static and then came back stronger.
    “Five one, five two, we have a violent domestic emergency at Houston and Avenue D. Are you anywhere near that vicinity?”
    Hobie smiled.
    “That’s two miles from here,” he said. “They have absolutely no idea where you are, do they?”
    Then he grinned. The left side of his face folded into unaccustomed lines, but on the right the scar tissue stayed tight, like a rigid mask.

14
    FOR THE FIRST time in his life, Reacher was truly comfortable in an airplane. He had been flying since birth, first as a soldier’s kid and then as a soldier himself, millions of miles in total, but all of them hunched in roaring spartan military transports or folded into hard