Blue Moon

He heard the diamond scrape of a leather sole on the sidewalk. Maybe forty feet back. Some kind of hastily arranged surveillance. Some guy, suddenly ordered off his stool and out into the night. To follow. But for how long? That was the critical question. All the way home, or only as far as a hastily arranged up-ahead ambush?

Reacher waited. He heard the leather sole again. Or its opposite number, on the other foot, taking a cautious step, moving forward. He pressed deeper into the shadows. Into a doorway. He leaned up against ribs of carved stone. A fancy entrance. Some long-forgotten enterprise. No doubt rewarding while it lasted.

He heard the scrape of the shoe again. Now maybe twenty feet back. Making progress. He heard nothing from the other direction. Just city quiet, and old air, and the faint smell of soot and bricks.

He heard the shoe again. Now ten feet back. Still making progress. He waited. The guy was already within range. But another couple of steps would make the whole thing more comfortable. He sketched out the geometry in his head. He put his hand in his pocket and found the H&K he had used before. Because he knew for sure it worked. Always an advantage.

Another step. The guy was maybe seven feet away. Not small. The sound of his shoe was a faint, heavy, grinding, spreading crunch. The sound of a big guy, creeping slow.

Now four feet away.

Show time.

Reacher stepped out and turned to face the guy. The H&K gleamed in the dark. He aimed it at the guy’s face. The guy went cross-eyed, trying to stare at it in the poor illumination.

Reacher said, “Don’t make a sound.”

The guy didn’t. Reacher listened beyond his shoulder. Did the guy have back-up behind him? Apparently not. Nothing to hear. Same as up ahead. City quiet, and old air.

Reacher said, “Do we have a problem?”

The guy was six feet and maybe two-twenty, maybe forty years old, lean and hard, all bone and muscle and dark suspicious eyes. His lips were clamped tight and pulled back in a rictus grin that could have been worried, or quizzical, or contemptuous.

“Do we have a problem?” Reacher asked again.

“You’re a dead man,” the guy said.

“Not so far,” Reacher said. “In fact right now you’re closer to that unhappy state than I am. Don’t you think?”

“Mess with me, and you’re messing with a lot of people.”

“Am I messing with you? Or are you messing with me?”

“We want to know who you are.”

“Why? What did I do to you?”

“Above my pay grade,” the guy said. “All I got to do is bring you in.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Reacher said.

“Easy to say, with a gun in my face.”

Reacher shook his head in the gloom.

“Easy to say anytime,” he said.

He stepped back a pace, and put the gun back in his pocket. He stood there, empty-handed, palms out, with his arms held away from his sides.

“There you go,” he said. “Now you can bring me in.”

The guy didn’t move. He was five inches down in height, maybe thirty pounds in weight, maybe a whole foot in reach. Evidently unarmed, because otherwise his weapon would have been out and in his hand already. Evidently unsettled, too, by Reacher’s gaze, which was steady, and calm, and slightly amused, but also undeniably predatory, and even a little unhinged.

Not a good situation for the guy to be in.

Reacher said, “Maybe we could get to the same place a different way.”

The guy said, “How?”

“Give me your phone. Tell your boss to call me. I’ll tell him who I am. The personal touch is always better.”

“I can’t give you my phone.”

“I’m going to take it anyway. Your choice when.”

The gaze. Steady, calm, amused, predatory, unhinged.

The guy said, “OK.”

Reacher said, “Take it out and set it down on the sidewalk.”

The guy did.

“Now turn around.”

The guy did.

“Now run away as far and as fast as you can.”

The guy did. He took off at a musclebound sprint and was immediately swallowed up by the urban darkness. His footsteps rang out long after he had disappeared from sight. This time he made no attempt at stealth. Reacher listened to the rapid slapping and crunching and sliding until the sound quieted down and faded away to nothing. Then he picked up the phone and walked on.

—

Three blocks from Barton’s house, Reacher took off his jacket, and folded it into a square, and rolled the square into a tube, and stuffed the tube inside a rusted mailbox outside a one-story office building with boarded-up windows and fire damage on the siding. He walked the rest of the way in his T-shirt only. The nighttime air was cool. It was still springtime. The full weight of summer was yet to come.

Hogan was waiting for him in Barton’s hallway. The drummer. Once a U.S. Marine. Now enjoying patterns he alone controlled.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Were you worried about me?” Reacher said.

“Professionally curious.”

“I wasn’t playing a gig with the Rolling Stones.”

“My previous profession.”

“Objective achieved,” Reacher said.

“Which was what exactly?”