Tripwire

that V-6 started would be crucial.
    “Get in the back,” he whispered. “Down on the floor, OK?”
    She crawled in headfirst, and lay down across the transmission hump. He crossed the garage and found the key to the door out to the yard. Opened it up and peered out and listened. No movement, no sound. Then he came back to the car and slid the key in and switched on the ignition so he could rack the electric seat all the way back to the end of its runners.
    “I’ll be there in a minute,” he whispered.
    Garber’s tool area was as tidy as his desk had been. There was an eight-by-four pegboard with a full set of household tools neatly arranged on it. Reacher selected a heavy carpenter’s hammer and lifted it down. Stepped out of the door to the yard and threw the hammer overarm, diagonally right over the house, to send it crashing into the undergrowth he had seen at the front. He counted to five to give the guy time to hear it and react to it and run toward it from wherever he was currently hiding. Then he ducked back inside to the car. Stood alongside the open door and turned the key, arm’s length. Fired it up. The engine started instantly. He dodged backward and flung the roller door up. It crashed along its metal track. He threw himself into the driver’s seat and smashed the selector into reverse and stamped on the pedal. All four tires howled and then bit on the smooth concrete and the vehicle shot backward out of the garage. Reacher glimpsed the guy with the Beretta, way off to his left on the front lawn, spinning to look at them. He accelerated all the way up the driveway and lurched backward into the road. Braked fiercely and spun the wheel and found drive and took off in a haze of blue tire smoke.
    He accelerated hard for fifty yards and then lifted off the gas. Coasted to a gentle stop just beyond the neighbor’s driveway. Selected reverse again and idled backward into it and down into the plantings. Straightened up and killed the motor. Behind him, Jodie struggled up off the floor and stared.
    “Hell are we doing here?” she said.
    “Waiting.”
    “For what?”
    “For them to get out of there.”
    She gasped, halfway between outrage and astonishment.
    “We’re not waiting, Reacher, we’re going straight to the police with this.”
    He turned the key again to give him power to operate the window. Buzzed it all the way down, so he could listen to the sounds outside.
    “I can’t go to the police with this,” he said, not looking at her.
    “Why the hell can’t you?”
    “Because they’ll start looking at me for Costello.”
    “You didn’t kill Costello.”
    “You think they’ll be ready and willing to believe that?”
    “They’ll have to believe it, because it wasn’t you, simple as that.”
    “Could take them time to find somebody looks better for it.”
    She paused. “So what are you saying?”
    “I’m saying it’s all-around advantageous I stay away from the police.”
    She shook her head. He saw it in the mirror.
    “No, Reacher, we need the police for this.”
    He kept his eyes on hers, in the mirror.
    “Remember what Leon used to say? He used to say hell, I am the police.”
    “Well, he was, and you were. But that was a long time ago.”
    “Not so long ago, for either of us.”
    She went quiet. Sat forward. Leaned toward him. “You don’t want to go to the police, right? That’s it, isn’t it? Not that you can’t, you just damn well don’t want to.”
    He half turned in the driver’s seat so he could look straight at her. He saw her eyes drop to the burn on his shirt. There was a long teardrop shape there, a black sooty stain, gunpowder particles tattooed into the cotton. He undid the buttons and pulled the shirt open. Squinted down. The same teardrop shape was burned into his skin, the hairs frizzed and curled, a blister already puffing up, getting red and angry. He licked his thumb and pressed it on the blister and grimaced.
    “They mess with me, they answer to me.”
    She stared at him. “You’re totally unbelievable, you know that? You’re just as bad as my father was. We should go to the police, Reacher.”
    “Can’t do it,” he said. “They’ll throw me in jail.”
    “We should,” she said again.
    But she said it weakly. He shook his head and said nothing back. Watched her closely. She was a lawyer, but she was also Leon’s daughter, and she knew how things worked outside in the real world. She was quiet for a long spell, and then she