Tripwire

there. The sound of two deep voices, talking low. She could hear elevators in the distance. A very faint traffic rumble, with occasional sirens vanishing into stillness. Aircraft noise, like a big jet from JFK was wheeling away west across the harbor. She eased herself off the floor.
    Her shoes had come off during the night. She found them scuffed under her pile of towels. She slipped them on and walked quietly to the sink. Chester was staring straight through her. She checked herself in the mirror. Not too bad, she thought. The last time she had spent the night on a bathroom floor was after a sorority party more than twenty years before, and she looked no worse now than she had then. She combed her hair with her fingers and patted water on her eyes. Then she crept back to the door and listened again.
    Two men, but she was pretty sure Hobie wasn’t one of them. There was some equality in the tenor of the voices. It was back-and-forth conversation, not orders and obedience. She slid the pile of towels backward with her foot and took a deep breath and opened the door.
    Two men stopped talking and turned to stare at her. The one called Tony was sitting sideways on the sofa in front of the desk. Another she had not seen before was squatted next to him on the coffee table. He was a thickset man in a dark suit, not tall, but heavy. The desk was not occupied. No sign of Hobie. The window blinds were closed to a crack, but she could see bright sun outside. It was later than she thought. She glanced back to the sofa and saw Tony smiling at her.
    “Sleep well?” he asked.
    She made no reply. Just kept a neutral look fixed on her face until Tony’s smile died away. Score one, she thought.
    “I talked things over with my husband,” she lied.
    Tony looked at her, expectantly, waiting for her to speak again. She let him wait. Score two, she thought.
    “We agree to the transfer,” she said. “But it’s going to be complicated. It’s going to take some time. There are factors I don’t think you appreciate. We’ll do it, but we’re going to expect some minimum cooperation from you along the way.”
    Tony nodded. “Like what?”
    “I’ll discuss that with Hobie,” she said. “Not with you.”
    There was silence in the office. Just faint noises from the world outside. She concentrated on her breathing. In and out, in and out.
    “OK,” Tony said.
    Score three, she thought.
    “We want coffee,” she said. “Three cups, cream and sugar.”
    More silence. Then Tony nodded and the thickset man stood up. He looked away and walked out of the office toward the kitchen. Score four, she thought.
    THE RETURN ADDRESS on Rutter’s letter corresponded to a dingy storefront some blocks south of any hope of urban renewal. It was a clapboard building sandwiched between crumbling four-story brick structures that may have been factories or warehouses before they were abandoned decades ago. Rutter’s place had a filthy window on the left and an entrance in the center and a roll-up door standing open on the right revealing a narrow garage area. There was a brand-new Lincoln Navigator squeezed into the space. Reacher recognized the model from advertisements he’d seen. It was a giant four-wheel-drive Ford, with a thick gloss of luxury added in order to justify its elevation to the Lincoln division. This one was metallic black, and it was probably worth more than the real estate wrapped around it.
    Jodie drove right past the building, not fast, not slow, just plausible city-street speed over the potholed road. Reacher craned his head around, getting a feel for the place. Jodie made a left and came back around the block. Reacher glimpsed a service alley running behind the row, with rusted fire escapes hanging above piles of garbage.
    “So how do we do this?” Jodie asked him.
    “We walk right in,” he said. “First thing we do is we watch his reaction. If he knows who we are, we’ll play it one way. If he doesn’t, we’ll play it another.”
    She parked two spaces south of the storefront, in the shadow of a blackened brick warehouse. She locked the car and they walked north together. From the sidewalk they could make out what was behind the dirty window. There was a lame display of Army-surplus equipment, dusty old camouflage jackets and water canteens and boots. There were field radios and MRE rations and infantry helmets. Some of the stuff was already obsolete before Reacher graduated from West Point.
    The door was stiff