Without Fail

and two on the ballroom door, and two on the street door. Plus cops in the kitchen, cops in the loading bay, cops on all seventeen floors, cops on the street.
    “How much is all this costing?” Reacher asked her.
    “You don’t want to know,” she said. “You really don’t.”
    Neagley came down off the staircase and joined them by the pillar.
    “Is he here yet?” she asked.
    Froelich shook her head. “We’re compressing his exposure time. He’s arriving late and leaving early.”
    Then she stiffened and listened to her earpiece. Put her finger on it to cut out the background noise. She raised her other wrist and spoke into the microphone.
    “Copy, out,” she said. She was pale.
    “What?” Reacher asked.
    She ignored him. Spun around and called to the last remaining agent free in the lobby. Told him he was acting on-site team leader for the rest of the night. Spoke into her microphone and repeated that information to all the agents on the local net. Told them to double their vigilance, halve their perimeters, and further compress exposure time wherever possible.
    “What?” Reacher asked again.
    “Back to base,” Froelich said. “Now. That was Stuyvesant. Seems like we’ve got a real big problem.”

9
    She used the red strobes behind the Suburban’s grille and barged through the evening traffic like it was life and death. She lit up the siren at every light. Pushed through and accelerated hard into gaps. Didn’t talk at all. Reacher sat completely still in the front passenger seat and Neagley leaned forward from the back with her eyes locked on the road ahead. The three-ton vehicle bucked and swayed. The tires fought for grip on the slick pavement. They made it back to the garage inside four minutes. They were in the elevator thirty seconds later. In Stuyvesant’s office less than one minute after that. He was sitting motionless behind his immaculate desk. Slumped in his chair like he had taken a punch to the stomach. He was holding a sheaf of papers. The light shone through them and showed the kind of random coded headings you get by printing from a database. There were two blocks of dense text under the headings. His secretary was standing next to him, handing him more paper, sheet by sheet. She was white in the face. She left the room without saying a single word. Closed the door, which intensified the silence.
    “What?” Reacher said.
    Stuyvesant glanced up at him. “Now I know.”
    “Know what?”
    “That this is an outside job. For sure. Without any possible doubt.”
    “How?”
    “You predicted theatrical,” Stuyvesant said. “Or spectacular. Those were your predictions. To which we might add dramatic, or incredible, or whatever.”
    “What was it?”
    “Do you know what the homicide rate is, nationally?”
    Reacher shrugged. “High, I guess.”
    “Almost twenty thousand every year.”
    “OK.”
    “That’s about fifty-four homicides every day.”
    Reacher did the math in his head.
    “Nearer fifty-five,” he said. “Except in leap years.”
    “Want to hear about two of today’s?” Stuyvesant asked.
    “Who?” Froelich asked.
    “Small sugar beet farm in Minnesota,” Stuyvesant said. “The farmer walks out his back gate this morning and gets shot in the head. For no apparent reason. Then this afternoon there’s a small strip mall outside of Boulder, Colorado. A CPA’s office in one of the upstairs rooms. The guy comes down and walks out of the rear entrance and gets killed with a machine gun in the service yard. Again, no apparent reason.”
    “So?”
    “The farmer’s name was Bruce Armstrong. The accountant’s was Brian Armstrong. Both of them were white men about Brook Armstrong’s age, about his height, about his weight, similar appearance, same color eyes and hair.”
    “Are they family? Are they related?”
    “No,” Stuyvesant said. “Not in any way. Not to each other, not to the VP. So therefore I’m asking myself, what are the odds? That two random men whose last name is Armstrong and whose first names both begin with BR are going to get senselessly killed the same day we’re facing a serious threat against our guy? And I’m thinking, the answer is about a trillion billion to one.”
    Silence in the office.
    “The demonstration,” Reacher said.
    “Yes,” Stuyvesant said. “That was the demonstration. Cold-blooded murder. Two innocent men. So I agree with you. These are not insiders having a joke.”

    Neagley and Froelich made it to