Tripwire

a new car yet?”
    She shook her head. “Just a rental. No time for shopping. Hertz brought me a Mercury. It’s got satellite navigation.”
    He stretched his arms above his head and flexed his shoulders. They felt OK. Surprisingly good. His ribs were fine. No pain.
    “I need clothes,” he said. “I guess those old ones got ruined.”
    She nodded. “Nurses sliced them off with scissors.”
    “You were here for that?”
    “I’ve been here all the time,” she said. “I’m living in a room down the hall.”
    “What about work?”
    “Leave of absence,” she said. “I told them, agree or I quit.”
    She ducked down to a laminate cupboard and came out with a stack of clothes. New jeans, new shirt, new jacket, new socks and shorts, all folded and piled together, his old shoes squared on top, Army-style.
    “They’re nothing special,” she said. “I didn’t want to take too much time out. I wanted to be with you when you woke up.”
    “You sat around here for three weeks?”
    “Felt like three years,” she said. “You were all scrunched up. Comatose. You looked awful. In a real bad way.”
    “This satellite thing,” he said. “Does it have Garrison on it?”
    “You going up there?”
    He shrugged.
    “I guess. I need to take it easy, right? Country air might do me good.”
    Then he looked away from her.
    “Maybe you could stay with me awhile, you know, help me recover.”
    He threw back the sheet and slid his feet to the floor. Stood up, slow and unsteady, and started to dress, while she held his elbow to keep him from falling.

Turn the page for a preview of
another Lee Child novel featuring Jack Reacher
    Running Blind
    In paperback from Jove

PEOPLE SAY THAT knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? All of them. Not guessed them, not dreamed them, but really knew them. What would you do? You would run to the store. You would mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win.
    Same for the stock market. Suppose you really knew what was going to go way up? You’re not talking about a hunch or a gut feeling. You’re not talking about a trend or a percentage game or a whisper or a tip. You’re talking about knowledge. Real, hard knowledge. Suppose you had it? What would you do? You would call your broker. You would buy. Then later you’d sell, and you’d be rich.
    Same for basketball, same for the horses, whatever. Football, hockey, next year’s World Series, any kind of sports at all. If you could predict the future, you’d be home and dry. No question. Same for the Oscars, same for the Nobel Prize, same for the first snowfall of winter.
    Same for killing people.
    Suppose you wanted to kill people. You would need to know ahead of time how to do it. That part is not too difficult. There are many ways. Some of them are better than others. Most of them have drawbacks. You use what knowledge you’ve got, and you invent a new way. You think, and you think, and you think, and you come up with the perfect method.
    You pay a lot of attention to the setup. Because the perfect method is not an easy method, and careful preparation is very important. But that stuff is meat and drink to you. You have no problem with careful preparation. No problem at all. How could you, with your intelligence? After all your training?
    You know the big problems will come afterward. How do you make sure you get away with it? You use your knowledge. You know more than most people about how the cops work. You’ve seen them on duty, many times, sometimes close-up. You know what they look for. So you don’t leave anything for them to find. You go through it all in your head, very precisely and very exactly and very carefully. Just as carefully as you would mark the play card you knew for sure was going to win you a fortune.
    People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Which makes you just about the most powerful person on earth. When it comes to killing people. And then getting away with it.
    LIFE IS FULL of decisions and judgments and guesses, and it gets to the point where you’re so accustomed to making them you keep right on making them even when you don’t need to. You get into a what if thing, and you start speculating about what you would do if some problem was yours instead of somebody else’s. It gets to be a habit. It was a habit Jack Reacher had in spades. Which was why he was sitting alone at a restaurant