Without Fail

before.”
    Neagley nodded and moved out toward the entrance drive. Long fast strides, halfway between walking and running.
    “You found access points?” Froelich asked.
    “Like a sieve.”
    Froelich raised her wrist. “Move now, move now. Bring him tight against the tower wall. Cover on all three sides. Stand by with the cars. Now, people.”
    She listened to the response. Nodded. Armstrong was coming close to the tower on the other side, maybe a hundred feet away from them, out of their line of sight.
    “You go,” Reacher said. “I’ll check the church.”
    She raised her wrist.
    “Now keep him there,” she said. “I’m coming by.”
    She headed straight back toward the field without another word. Reacher was left alone at the church gate. He stepped through and headed onward toward the building itself. Waited at the door. It was a huge thing, carved oak, maybe four inches thick. It had iron bands and hinges. Big black nail heads. Above it the tower rose seventy feet vertically into the sky. There was a flag and a lightning rod and a weather vane on the top. The weather vane was not moving. The flag was limp. The air was completely still. Cold, dense air, no breeze at all. The sort of air that takes a bullet and wraps around it and holds it lovingly, straight and true.
    A minute later there was the noise of shoes on the gravel and he looked back at the gate and saw the church warden approaching. He was a small man in a black surplice that reached his feet. He had a cashmere coat over it. A fur hat with earflaps tied under his chin. Thick eyeglasses in gold frames. A huge wire hoop in his hand with a huge iron key hanging off it. It was so big it looked like a prop for a comic movie about medieval jails. He held it out and Reacher took it from him.
    “That’s the original key,” the warden said. “From 1870.”
    “I’ll bring it back to you,” Reacher said. “Go wait for me on the field.”
    “I can wait right here,” the guy said.
    “On the field,” Reacher said again. “Better that way.”
    The guy’s eyes were wide and magnified behind his glasses. He turned around and walked back the way he had come. Reacher hefted the big old key in his hand. Stepped to the door and lined it up with the hole. Put it in the lock. Turned it hard. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He paused. Tried the handle.
    The door was not locked.
    It swung open six inches with a squeal from the old iron hinges. He remembered the noise. It had sounded much louder when he opened the door at five in the morning. Now it was lost in the low-level hubbub coming from three hundred people on the field.
    He pushed the door all the way open. Paused again and then stepped quietly through into the gloom inside. The building was a simple wooden structure with a vaulted roof. The walls were painted a faded parchment white. The pews were worn and polished to a shine. There was stained glass in the windows. At one end there was an altar and a high lectern with steps leading up to it. Some doors to small rooms beyond. Vestries, maybe. He wasn’t sure of the terminology.
    He closed the door and locked it from the inside. Hid the key inside a wooden chest full of hymnals. Crept the length of the center aisle and stood still and listened. He could hear nothing. The air smelled of old wood and dusty fabrics and candle wax and cold. He crept on and checked the small rooms behind the altar. There were three of them, all small, all with bare wooden floors. All of them empty except for piles of old books and church garments.
    He crept back. Through the door into the base of the tower. There was a square area with three bell ropes hanging down in the center. The ropes had yard-long faded embroidered sleeves sewn over the raw ends. The sides of the square area were defined by a steep narrow staircase that wound upward into the gloom. He stood at the bottom and listened hard. Heard nothing. Eased himself up. After three consecutive right-angle turns the stairs ended on a ledge. Then there was a wooden ladder bolted to the inside of the tower wall. It ran upward twenty feet to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The ceiling was boarded solid except for three precise nine-inch holes for the bell ropes. If anybody was up there, he could see and hear through the holes. Reacher knew that. He had heard the dogs pattering around below him, five days ago.
    He paused at the foot of the ladder. Stood as quiet as possible. Took the ceramic knife out of