Without Fail

searching every train,” he said. “We’ll get them.”
    “Was Armstrong OK?”
    “Completely unharmed. Froelich did her duty.”
    There was a long silence. Reacher looked up.
    “What happened on the roof?” he asked. “Where was Crosetti?”
    Stuyvesant looked away.
    “Crosetti was decoyed somehow,” he said. “He’s in the stairwell. He’s dead too. Shot in the head. With the same silenced rifle, probably.”
    Another long silence.
    “Where was Crosetti from?” Reacher asked.
    “New York, I think,” Stuyvesant said. “Maybe Jersey. Somewhere up there.”
    “That’s no good. Where was Froelich from?”
    “She was a Wyoming girl.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “That’ll do,” he said. “Where’s Armstrong now?”
    “Can’t tell you that,” Stuyvesant said. “Procedure.”
    Reacher raised his hand and looked at his palm. It was rimed with blood. All the lines and scars were outlined in red.
    “Tell me,” he said. “Or I’ll break your neck.”
    Stuyvesant said nothing.
    “Where is he?” Reacher repeated.
    “The White House,” Stuyvesant said. “In a secure room. It’s procedure.”
    “I need to go talk to him.”
    “Now?”
    “Right now.”
    “You can’t.”
    Reacher looked away, beyond the fallen tables. “I can.”
    “I can’t let you do that.”
    “So try to stop me.”
    Stuyvesant was quiet for a long moment.
    “Let me call him first,” he said.
    He stood up awkwardly and walked away.
    “You OK?” Neagley asked.
    “It’s like Joe all over again,” Reacher said. “Like Molly Beth Gordon.”
    “Nothing you could have done.”
    “Did you see it?”
    Neagley nodded.
    “She took a bullet for him,” Reacher said. “She told me that was just a figure of speech.”
    “Instinct,” Neagley said. “And she was unlucky. Must have missed her vest by half an inch. Subsonic bullet, it would have bounced right off.”
    “Did you see the shooter?”
    Neagley shook her head. “I was facing front. Did you?”
    “A glimpse,” Reacher said. “One man.”
    “Hell of a thing,” Neagley said.
    Reacher nodded and wiped his palms on his pants, front and back. Then he ran his hands through his hair. “If I wrote insurance I wouldn’t touch any of Joe’s old friends. I’d tell them to commit suicide and save the bad guys the trouble.”
    “So what now?”
    He shrugged. “You should go home to Chicago.”
    “You?”
    “I’m going to stick around.”
    “Why?”
    “You know why.”
    “The FBI will get them.”
    “Not if I get them first,” Reacher said.
    “You made up your mind?”
    “I held her while she bled to death. I’m not going to just walk away.”
    “Then I’ll stick around, too.”
    “I’ll be OK on my own.”
    “I know you will,” Neagley said. “But you’ll be better with me.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “What did she say to you?” Neagley asked.
    “She said nothing to me. She thought I was Joe.”
    He saw Stuyvesant picking his way back through the yard. Hauled himself upright with both hands against the wall.
    “Armstrong will see us,” Stuyvesant said. “You want to change first?”
    Reacher looked down at his clothes. They were soaked with Froelich’s blood in big irregular patches. It was cooling and drying and blackening.
    “No,” he said. “I don’t want to change first.”

    They used the Suburban that Stuyvesant had arrived in. It was still Thanksgiving Day and D.C. was still quiet. They saw almost no civilian activity. Almost everything out and moving was law enforcement. There was a double ring of hasty police roadblocks on every thoroughfare around the White House. Stuyvesant kept his strobes going and was waved through all of them. He showed his ID at the White House vehicle gate and parked outside the West Wing. A Marine sentry passed them to a Secret Service escort who led them inside. They went down two flights of stairs to a vaulted basement built from brick. There were plant rooms down there. Other rooms with steel doors. The escort stopped in front of one of them and knocked hard.
    The door was opened from the inside by one of Armstrong’s personal detail. He was still wearing his Kevlar vest. Still wearing his sunglasses, although the room had no windows. Just bright fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. Armstrong and his wife were sitting together on chairs at a table in the center of the room. The other two agents were leaning against the walls. The room was silent. Armstrong’s wife had been crying. That was clear.