Without Fail

backward. Absolutely nothing happened. The level of detail coming off the original tape was better than the copy, but there wasn’t much in it. It was gray and milky. OK for a surveillance situation, but it wouldn’t have won any technical awards.
    “You know what?” Reacher said. “I was a cop for thirteen years, and I never found anything significant on a surveillance tape. Not even once.”
    “Me neither,” Neagley said. “The hours I spent like this.”
    At six A . M . the tape jammed to a stop and Reacher ejected it and fast wound the second tape to the far end and started the patient backward search again. The timer sped through five o’clock and headed fast toward four. Nothing happened. The office just sat there, still and gray and empty.
    “Why are we doing this tonight?” Neagley asked.
    “Because I’m an impatient guy,” Reacher said.
    “You want to score one for the military, don’t you? You want to show these civilians how the real pros work.”
    “Nothing left to prove,” Reacher said. “We already scored three and a half.”
    He bent closer to the screen. Fought to keep his eyes focused. Four o’clock in the morning. Nothing was happening. Nobody was delivering any letters.
    “Or maybe there’s another reason we’re doing this tonight,” Neagley said. “Maybe you’re trying to outpoint your brother.”
    “Don’t need to. I know exactly how we compared. And it doesn’t matter to me what anybody else thinks about it.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “He died.”
    “I gathered that, belatedly. But how?”
    “He was killed. In the line of duty. Just after I left the Army. Down in Georgia, south of Atlanta. Clandestine rendezvous with an informer from a counterfeiting operation. They were ambushed. He was shot in the head, twice.”
    “They get the guys who did it?”
    “No.”
    “That’s awful.”
    “Not really. I got them instead.”
    “What did you do?”
    “What do you think?”
    “OK, how?”
    “It was a father-and-son team. I drowned the son in a swimming pool. I burned the father to death in a fire. After shooting him in the chest with a hollow-point .44.”
    “That ought to do it.”
    “Moral of the story, don’t mess with me or mine. I just wish they’d known that ahead of time.”
    “Any comeback?”
    “I exfiltrated fast. Stayed out of circulation. Had to miss the funeral.”
    “Bad business.”
    “The guy he was meeting with got it, too. Bled to death under a highway ramp. There was a woman, as well. From Joe’s office. His assistant, Molly Beth Gordon. They knifed her at the Atlanta airport.”
    “I saw her name. On the roll of honor.”
    Reacher was quiet a beat. The video sped backward. Three in the morning, then two-fifty-something. Then two-forty. Nothing happening.
    “The whole thing was a can of worms,” he said. “It was his own fault, really.”
    “That’s harsh.”
    “It was a stretch for him. I mean, would you get ambushed at a rendezvous?”
    “No.”
    “Me neither.”
    “I’d do all the usual stuff,” Neagley said. “You know, arrive three hours early, stake it out, surveil, block the approaches.”
    “But Joe didn’t do any of that. He was out of his depth. Thing about Joe, he looked tough. He was six-six, two-fifty, built like a brick outhouse. Hands like shovels, face like a catcher’s mitt. We were clones, physically, the two of us. But we had different brains. Deep down, he was a cerebral guy. Kind of pure . Naive, even. He never thought dirty. Everything was a game of chess with him. He gets a call, he sets up a meet, he drives down there. Like he’s moving his knight or his bishop around. He just didn’t expect somebody to come along and blow the whole chessboard away.”
    Neagley said nothing. The tape sped on backward. Nothing was happening on it. The square office area just sat there, dim and steady.
    “Afterward I was angry he was so careless,” Reacher said. “But then I figured I couldn’t blame him for that. To be careless, first of all you’ve got to know what you’re supposed to be careful about. And he just didn’t. He didn’t know. He didn’t see stuff like that. Didn’t think that way.”
    “So?”
    “So I guess I was angry I didn’t do it for him.”
    “Could you have?”
    He shook his head. “I hadn’t seen him for seven years. I had no idea where he was. He had no idea where I was. But somebody like me should have done it for him. He should have asked for help.”
    “Too