Without Fail

we’re better than they are. Maybe they’re trying to bring us down.”
    “Think we should look in that direction?”
    “You’re Joe Reacher’s brother, aren’t you?”
    Reacher nodded.
    “I worked with him,” Swain said. “Way back.”
    “And?”
    “He used to encourage random observations.”
    “So do I,” Reacher said. “You got any?”
    “My job is strictly academic,” Swain said. “You understand? I’m purely a researcher. A scholar, really. I’m here to analyze.”
    “And?”
    “This situation feels different from anything else I’ve seen. The hatred is very visible. Assassinations fall into two groups, ideological or functional. A functional assassination is where you need to get rid of a guy for some specific political or economic reason. An ideological assassination is where you murder a guy because you hate him, basically. There have been plenty of attempts along those lines, over the years. I can’t tell you about any of them except to say that most don’t get very far. And that there’s certainly always plenty of hatred involved. But usually it’s well hidden, down at the conspirator level. They whisper among themselves. All we ever see is the result. But this time the hatred is right there in our face. They’ve gone to a lot of trouble and taken a lot of risks to make sure we know all about it.”
    “So what’s your conclusion?”
    “I just think the early phase was extraordinary. The messages? Think about the risks. Think about the energy required to minimize those risks. They put unbelievable resources into the early phase. So I have to assume they felt it was worthwhile.”
    “But it wasn’t,” Neagley said. “Armstrong has never even seen any of the messages. They were wasting their time.”
    “Simple ignorance,” Swain said. “Were you aware we absolutely won’t discuss threats with a protectee?”
    “No,” Neagley said. “I was surprised.”
    “Nobody’s aware,” Swain said. “Everybody’s surprised. These guys thought they were getting right to him. So I’m convinced it’s personal. Aimed at him, not us.”
    “So are we,” Reacher said. “You got a specific reason?”
    “You’ll think I’m naive,” Swain said. “But I don’t believe anybody who works or has worked for us would have killed the other two Armstrongs. Not just like that.”
    Reacher shrugged. “Maybe you’re naive. Maybe you aren’t. But it doesn’t matter. We’re convinced anyway.”
    “What’s your reason?”
    “The hyphen in the second message.”
    “The hyphen?” Swain said. Then he paused. “Yes, I see. Plausible, but a little circumstantial, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Whatever, we’re working with the assumption it was personal.”
    “OK, but why? Only possible answer is they absolutely hate him. They wanted to taunt him, scare him, make him suffer first. Just shooting him isn’t enough for them.”
    “So who are they? Who hates him that bad?”
    Swain made a gesture with his hand, like he was pushing that question aside.
    “Something else,” he said. “This is a little off the wall, but I think we’re miscounting. How many messages have there been?”
    “Six,” Reacher said.
    “No,” Swain said. “I think there have been seven.”
    “Where’s the seventh?”
    “Nendick,” Swain said. “I think Nendick delivered the second message, and was the third message. You see, you got here and forty-eight hours later you got to Nendick, which was pretty quick. But with respect, we’d have gotten there anyway, sooner or later. It was inevitable. If it wasn’t the cleaners, it had to be the tapes. So we’d have gotten there. And what was waiting for us? Nendick wasn’t just a delivery system. He was a message in himself . He showed what these people are capable of. Assuming Armstrong was in the loop, he’d have been getting pretty shaky by that point.”
    “Then there are nine messages,” Neagley said. “On that basis, we should add in the Minnesota and the Colorado situations.”
    “Absolutely,” Swain said. “You see what I mean? Everything has fear as its purpose. Every single thing. Suppose Armstrong was in the loop all along. He gets the first message, he’s worried. We get the second message, he’s more worried. We trace its source, and he starts to feel better, but no, it gets even worse, because we find Nendick paralyzed with fear. Then we get the demonstration threat, he’s worried some more. Then the demonstration happens, and