Without Fail

on Thursday. Watched the crowd and latched onto Ms. Wright and told her I was a Secret Service agent and there was a big security snafu going on and she should come with me.”
    “How did you know she was headed to the rally?”
    “I didn’t. I just looked at all the women coming out of baggage claim and tried to judge by how they looked and what they were carrying. Wasn’t easy. Elizabeth Wright was the sixth woman I approached.”
    “And she believed you?”
    “I had impressive ID. I bought this radio earpiece from Radio Shack, two bucks. Little electrical cord disappearing down the back of my neck, see? I had a rented Town Car, black. I looked the part, believe me. She believed me. She was quite excited about the whole thing, really. I brought her back to this room and guarded her all evening while Neagley took over. I kept listening to my earpiece and talking into my watch.”
    Froelich switched her gaze across to Neagley.
    “We wanted New Jersey for a reason,” Neagley said. “Their driver’s licenses are the easiest to forge, you know that? I had a laptop and a color printer with me. I’d just gotten through making Reacher’s Secret Service ID for him. No idea if it was anything like the real thing, but it sure looked good. So I made up a Jersey license with my picture and her name and address on it, printed it out, laminated it with a thing we bought from Staples for sixty bucks, sandpapered the edges clean, scuffed it around a little bit, and shoved it in my bag. Then I dressed up some and took Ms. Wright’s party invitation with me and headed downstairs. I got into the ballroom OK. With the knife in my pocket.”
    “And?”
    “I hung around, then I got hold of your guy. Held on for a spell.”
    Froelich looked straight at her. “How would you have done it?”
    “I had hold of his right hand in my right. I pulled him close, he rotated slightly, I had a clear shot at the right side of his neck. Three-and-a-half-inch blade, I’d have stuck it through his carotid artery. Then jerked it around some. He’d have bled to death inside thirty seconds. I was one arm movement away from doing it. Your guys were ten feet away. They’d have plugged me afterward for sure, but they couldn’t have stopped me from getting it done.”
    Froelich was pale and silent. Neagley looked away.
    “Without the knife would have been harder,” she said. “But not impossible. Breaking his neck would have been tricky because he’s got some muscle up there. I’d have had to do a quick two-step to get his weight moving, and if your guys were fast enough they might have stopped me halfway. So I guess I’d have gone with a blow to his larynx, hard enough to crush it. A jab with my left elbow would have done the trick. I’d have been dead before him, probably, but he’d have suffocated right afterward, unless you’ve got people that could do an emergency tracheotomy on the ballroom floor within a minute or so, which I guess you don’t have.”
    “No,” Froelich said. “We don’t have.”
    Then she fell silent again.
    “Sorry to ruin your day,” Neagley said. “But hey, you wanted to know this stuff, right? No point doing a security audit and not telling you the outcome.”
    Froelich nodded. “What did you whisper to him?”
    “I said, I’ve got a knife. Just for the hell of it. But very quietly. If anybody had challenged me I was going to claim I’d said, where’s your wife? Like I was coming on to him. I imagine that happens, time to time.”
    Froelich nodded again.
    “It does,” she said. “Time to time. What else?”
    “Well, he’s safe in his house,” Neagley said.
    “You checked?”
    “Every day,” Reacher said. “We’ve been on the ground in Georgetown since Tuesday night.”
    “I didn’t see you.”
    “That was the plan.”
    “How did you know where he lives?”
    “We followed your limos.”
    Froelich said nothing.
    “Good limos,” Reacher said. “Slick tactics.”
    “Friday morning was especially good,” Neagley said.
    “But the rest of Friday was pretty bad,” Reacher said. “Lack of coordination produced a major communications error.”
    “Where?”
    “Your D.C. people had video of the ballroom but clearly your New York people never saw it, because as well as being the woman in the party dress Thursday night Neagley was also one of the photographers outside the Stock Exchange.”
    “Some North Dakota paper has a website,” Neagley said. “Like all of them, with a