Blue Moon

Reacher said, “Are you guys scared of me?”

No reply.

Reacher said, “Take out your phone and place it on the floor at your feet.”

The guy said, “No.”

“And your car keys.”

“No.”

“I’m going to take them anyway,” Reacher said. “Up to you when and how.”

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

At that point the guy had two basic choices. He could think of something clever to say back, or he could skip the whole talk-fest altogether, and move straight to the action. Reacher was genuinely uncertain which way he would jump. Downstairs he had seemed to like the sound of his own voice. That was for sure. Once upon a time a police detective. He liked holding court. He liked revealing how the crime was solved. On the other hand, banter alone wasn’t going to win the day. He knew that. Sooner or later something of substance would have to be thrown in the mix. Why not start at the end?

The guy launched off the head of the stairs, off powerful legs, shoulders up, head down, aiming to charge, aiming to plant a shoulder in Reacher’s chest, aiming to knock him backward off balance. But Reacher was at least fifty percent ready, and he twitched forward toward the guy and threw a vicious right uppercut, except not vertically, more out at a forty-five degree angle, so that the guy’s charging, ducking face met it exactly square on, his own onrushing two-twenty meeting Reacher’s opposite-direction two-fifty in a colossal rupture of kinetic energy, face against fist, enough to lift the guy up off his heels, and dump him down on his butt, except the floor wasn’t there, so the guy somersaulted backward down the stairs, one complete flailing rotation, wide and high, and then he crashed against the bottom wall in a spatter of limbs.

Like a train wreck.

From which he got up. More or less immediately. He blinked twice and staggered once and then stood up straight. Like in an afternoon movie. Like a monster taking an artillery shell to the chest, and swiping absentmindedly at a scorched patch of fur with a battered paw, all the while staring forward implacably.

Reacher started down the stairs. The hallway at the bottom was narrow. Barton and Hogan were backing away into the front parlor. Through the open door. The Albanian guy was standing still. Tall and proud and hard as a rock. Apparently resentful at his recent treatment. His nose was bleeding. Hard to tell if it was broken. Hard to tell if there was anything left to break. The guy was no spring chicken. He had lived a hard life. A police detective in Tirana.

The guy took a step forward.

Reacher matched it. They both knew. Sooner or later all you could do was slug it out. The guy feinted left and threw a snap right, low, aimed for Reacher’s center mass, the straightest path to the target, but Reacher saw it coming and twisted away and took it on a slab of muscle high on his side, which hurt, but not as much as it would have, where it was headed before. The twist away was a pure reflex action, a jammed-wide-open panic response from his automatic nervous system, a sudden breathtaking gasp of adrenaline, no finesse at all, no modulation, no precision, just maximum available torque, instantly applied, which was a lot, which meant there was a lot of stored energy just hanging there for a split second, like a giant spring tightly wound, ready to suddenly unwind in the opposite direction, with exactly the same violent speed and force, a perfect equal and opposite reaction, but this time controlled, and timed, and aimed, and crafted. This time with the returning elbow setting out on an arc of its own, like a guided missile, coming up, riding the background rotation of his center mass, adding extra relative velocity of its own, then chopping down hard against the side of the guy’s head, a fraction above and in front of his ear, a colossal blow, like getting hit with a baseball bat or an iron bar. It would have busted most skulls it met. It would have killed most guys. All it did to the Albanian was bounce him off the parlor doorframe and drop him to his knees.