Without Fail

addressed to you, something that the Secret Service didn’t see as a threat. Something that meant nothing at all to them, but something that meant a lot to you .”
    Armstrong said nothing.
    “I think it came first,” Reacher said. “Right at the very beginning, maybe, before the Secret Service even caught on. I think it was like an announcement , that only you would understand. So I think you’ve known about all this all along. I think you know who’s doing it, and I think you know why .”
    “People have died,” Armstrong said. “That’s a hell of an accusation.”
    “Do you deny it?”
    Armstrong said nothing.
    Reacher leaned forward.
    “Some crucial words were never spoken,” he said. “Thing is, if I was standing there serving turkey and then somebody started shooting and somebody else was suddenly bleeding to death on top of me, sooner or later I’d be asking, who the hell were they? What the hell did they want? Why the hell were they doing that? Those are fairly basic questions. I’d be asking them loud and clear, believe me. But you didn’t ask them. We saw you twice, afterward. In the White House basement, and then later at the office. You said all kinds of things. You asked, had they been captured yet? That was your big concern. You never asked who they might be or what their possible motive was. And why didn’t you ask? Only one possible explanation. You already knew .”
    Armstrong said nothing.
    “I think your wife knows, too,” Reacher said. “You conveyed her anger at you for putting people at risk. I don’t think she was generalizing. I think she knows you know, and she thinks you should have told somebody.”
    Armstrong was silent.
    “So I think you’re feeling a little guilty now,” Reacher said. “I think that’s why you agreed to make the television statement for me and that’s why you suddenly want to go to the service itself. Some kind of a conscience thing. Because you knew , and you didn’t tell anybody.”
    “I’m a politician,” Armstrong said. “We have hundreds of enemies. There was no point in speculating.”
    “Bullshit,” Reacher said. “This isn’t political. This is personal. Your kind of political enemy is some North Dakota soybean grower you made ten cents a week poorer by altering a subsidy. Or some pompous old senator you declined to vote with. The soybean grower might make a halfhearted effort against you at election time and the senator might bide his time and screw you on some big floor issue but neither one of them is going to do what these guys are doing.”
    Armstrong said nothing.
    “I’m not a fool,” Reacher said. “I’m an angry man who watched a woman I was fond of bleed to death.”
    “I’m not a fool either,” Armstrong said.
    “I think you are. Something’s coming back at you from the past and you think you can just ignore it and hope for the best? Didn’t you realize it would happen? You people have no perspective. You thought you were world famous already just because you were in the House and the Senate? Well, you weren’t. Real people never heard of you until the campaign this summer. You thought all your little secrets were already out? Well, they weren’t, either.”
    Armstrong said nothing.
    “Who are they?” Reacher asked.
    Armstrong shrugged. “Your guess?”
    Reacher paused a beat.
    “I think you’ve got a temper problem,” he said. “Same as your dad. I think way back before you learned to control it you made people suffer, and some of them forgot about it, but some of them didn’t. I think it’s a part of some particular person’s life that somebody once did something bad to them. Maybe hurt them, or hurt their self-esteem, or screwed them up in some other kind of a big way. I think that particular person repressed it deep down inside until they turned on the TV one day and saw your face for the first time in thirty years.”
    Armstrong sat still for a long moment.
    “How far along is the FBI with this?” he asked.
    “They’re nowhere. They’re out beating the bushes for people that don’t exist. We’re way ahead of them.”
    “And what are your intentions?”
    “I’m going to help you,” Reacher said. “Not that you deserve it in any way at all. It’ll be a purely accidental by-product of me standing up for Nendick and his wife, and an old guy called Andretti, and two people called Armstrong, and Crosetti, and especially for Froelich, who was my brother’s friend.”
    There was