Tripwire

shake of the head. A different shirt. A nod. Real shopping.
    “What do you think?” she asked.
    She had put together a pair of pants, khaki, but a little darker than most chinos. A shirt in a quiet check, greens and browns. A thin jacket in dark brown which seemed to match the rest pretty well. He nodded.
    “Looks OK to me,” he said again.
    The prices were handwritten on small tickets attached to the garments with string. He flicked one over with his fingernail.
    “Christ,” he said. “Forget about it.”
    “It’s worth it,” she said. “Quality’s good.”
    “I can’t afford it, Jodie.”
    The shirt on its own was twice what he had ever paid for a whole outfit. To dress in that stuff was going to cost him what he had earned in a day, digging pools. Ten hours, four tons of sand and rock and earth.
    “I’ll buy them for you.”
    He stood there with the shirt in his hands, uncertain.
    “Remember the necklace?” she asked.
    He nodded. He remembered. She had developed a passion for a particular necklace in a Manila jeweler’s. It was a plain gold thing, like a rope, vaguely Egyptian. Not really expensive, but out of her league. Leon was into some self-discipline thing with her and wouldn’t spring for it. So Reacher had bought it for her. Not for her birthday or anything, just because he liked her and she liked it.
    “I was so happy,” she said. “I thought I was going to burst. I’ve still got it, I still wear it. So let me pay you back, OK?”
    He thought about it. Nodded.
    “OK,” he said.
    She could afford it. She was a lawyer. Probably made a fortune. And it was a fair trade, looking at it in proportion, cost-versus-income, fifteen years of inflation.
    “OK,” he said again. “Thanks, Jodie.”
    “You need socks and things, right?”
    They picked out a pair of khaki socks and a pair of white boxers. She went to a till and used a gold card. He took the stuff into a changing cubicle and tore off the price tickets and put everything on. He transferred his cash from his pants pocket and left the old clothes in the trash can. The new stuff felt stiff, but it looked pretty good in the mirror, against his tan. He came back out.
    “Nice,” Jodie said. “Pharmacy next.”
    “Then coffee,” he said.
    He bought a razor and a can of foam and a toothbrush and toothpaste. And a small tube of burn ointment. Paid for it all himself and carried it in a brown paper bag. The walk to the pharmacy had taken them near a food court. He could see a rib place that smelled good.
    “Let’s have dinner,” he said. “Not just coffee. My treat.”
    “OK,” she said, and linked her arm through his again.
    The dinner for two cost him the price of the new shirt, which he thought was not outrageous. They had dessert and coffee, and then some of the smaller stores were closing up for the day.
    “OK, home,” he said. “And we play it real cautious from here.”
    They walked through the department store, through the displays in reverse, first the pastel summer cottons and then the fierce smell of the cosmetics. He stopped her inside the brass-and-glass doors and scanned ahead out in the garage, where the air was warm and damp. A million-to-one possibility, but worth taking into account. Nobody there, just people hustling back to their cars with bulging bags. They walked together to the Bravada and she slid into the driver’s seat. He got in beside her.
    “Which way would you normally go?”
    “From here? FDR Drive, I guess.”
    “OK,” he said. “Head out for LaGuardia, and we’ll come in down through Brooklyn. Over the Brooklyn Bridge.”
    She looked at him. “You sure? You want to do the tourist thing, there are better places to go than the Bronx and Brooklyn.”
    “First rule,” he said. “Predictability is unsafe. If you’ve got a route you’d normally take, today we take a different one.”
    “You serious?”
    “You bet your ass. I used to do VIP protection for a living.”
    “I’m a VIP now?”
    “You bet your ass,” he said again.
    AN HOUR LATER it was dark, which is the best condition for using the Brooklyn Bridge. Reacher felt like a tourist as they swooped around the ramp and up over the hump of the span and lower Manhattan was suddenly there in front of them with a billion bright lights everywhere. One of the world’s great sights, he thought, and he had inspected most of the competition.
    “Go a few blocks north,” he said. “We’ll come in from a distance. They’ll be