Without Fail

Maybe he even wanted to talk, but he knew he couldn’t afford to. I wouldn’t want to speculate about the exact nature of the threat against his wife.”
    “Will he be OK?” Stuyvesant asked.
    “Depends on the condition of his heart. If he tends toward heart disease he could be in serious trouble. The cardiac stress is truly enormous.”
    “When can we talk to him?”
    “No time soon. Depends on him, basically. He needs to come around.”
    “It’s very important. He’s got critical information.”
    The doctor shook his head.
    “Could be days,” he said. “Could be never.”
    They waited a long fruitless hour during which nothing changed. Nendick just lay there inert, surrounded by beeping machines. He breathed in and out, but that was all. So they gave it up and left him there and drove back to the office in the dark and the silence. Regrouped in the windowless conference room and faced the next big decision.
    “Armstrong’s got to be told,” Neagley said. “They’ve staged their demonstration. No place to go now except stage the real thing.”
    Stuyvesant shook his head. “We never tell them. It’s a rigid policy. Has been for a hundred and one years. We’re not going to change it now.”
    “Then we should limit his exposure,” Froelich said.
    “No,” Stuyvesant said. “That’s an admission of defeat in itself, and it’s a slippery slope. We pull out once, we’ll be pulling out forever, every single threat we get. And that must not happen. What must happen is that we defend him to the best of our ability. So we start planning, now. What are we defending against? What do we know?”
    “That two men are already dead,” Froelich replied.
    “Two men and one woman,” Reacher said. “Look at the statistics. Kidnapped is the same thing as dead, ninety-nine times in a hundred.”
    “The photographs were proof of life,” Stuyvesant said.
    “Until the poor guy delivered. Which he did almost two weeks ago.”
    “He’s still delivering. He’s not talking. So I’m going to keep on hoping.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Know anything about her?” Neagley asked.
    Stuyvesant shook his head. “Never met her. Don’t even know her name. I hardly know Nendick, either. He’s just some technical guy I sometimes see around.”
    The room went quiet.
    “FBI has got to be told as well,” Neagley said. “This isn’t just about Armstrong now. There’s a kidnap victim dead or in serious danger. That’s the Bureau’s jurisdiction, no question. Plus the interstate homicide. That’s their bag too.”
    The room stayed very quiet. Stuyvesant sighed and looked around at each of the others, slowly and carefully, one at a time.
    “Yes,” he said. “I agree. It’s gone too far. They need to know. God knows I don’t want to, but I’ll tell them. I’ll let us take the hit. I’ll hand everything over to them.”
    There was silence. Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say. It was exactly the right thing to do, in the circumstances. Approval would have seemed sarcastic, and commiseration wasn’t appropriate. For the Nendick couple and two unrelated families called Armstrong, maybe, but not for Stuyvesant.
    “Meanwhile we’ll focus on Armstrong,” he said. “That’s all we can do.”
    “Tomorrow is North Dakota again,” Froelich said. “More open-air fun and games. Same place as before. Not very secure. We leave at ten.”
    “And Thursday?”
    “Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. He’s serving turkey dinners in a homeless shelter here in D.C. He’ll be very exposed.”
    There was a long moment of silence. Stuyvesant sighed again, heavily, and placed his hands palms down on the long wooden table.
    “OK,” he said. “Be back in here at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m sure the Bureau will be delighted to send over a liaison guy.”
    Then he levered himself upright and left the room to head back to his office, where he would make the calls that would put a permanent asterisk next to his career.

    “I feel helpless,” Froelich said. “I want to be more proactive.”
    “Don’t like playing defense?” he asked.
    They were in her bed, in her room. It was larger than the guest room. Prettier. And quieter, because it was at the back of the house. The ceiling was smoother. Although it would take angled sunlight to really test it. Which would happen at sunset instead of in the morning, because the window faced the other way. The bed was warm. The house was warm. It was like a cocoon of