Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(110)

Then she sensed a shape. Behind Mark’s back. A dark void. Like a tree was moving.

Crazy.

She looked away.

Mark asked, “Ready?”

“I’m glad your motel burned down,” she said. “I just wish you had been in it.”

“That’s not nice,” he said.

She looked back at him.

There was a man right behind him.

A giant. He had stepped into the headlight wash. In his left hand was a single arrow. On his head he was wearing a night vision device with the tube flipped up. He was six inches taller than Mark and about twice as wide.

He was huge.

He was silent.

He stepped up right behind Mark’s back, not more than a foot away, like two men in a crowded queue, to get in the hockey game, or get on a plane. He reached around with his right hand and closed it over Mark’s wrist. He eased Mark’s arm sideways, keeping it straight, keeping it level, effortlessly, like slowly and steadily opening a door, through a perfect ninety-degree arc, until the Glock was aimed sideways at nothing. He reached around with his left hand and clamped a bent elbow over Mark’s upper body and crushed him to his chest. He touched the point of his arrow to the hollow of Mark’s throat. Neither man moved. They looked like they were clasped together, ready to dance the tango. Except Mark was the wrong way around.

The big man said, “Drop the weapon.”

A deep voice, but quiet. Almost intimate. As if intended for Mark’s ear alone, which was only inches away. In tone it sounded more like a suggestion than a command. But with a bleak implication behind it.

Mark didn’t drop it.

Patty saw muscles bunching in the giant’s right forearm. Their contours were exaggerated by the harsh flat light. They looked like rocks in a bag. There was no expression on his face. She realized he was crushing Mark’s wrist. Slowly, steadily, inexorably. Relentlessly. Mark yelped and breathed fast. She heard bones click and creak and move. Mark jerked and thrashed.

The big man kept on squeezing.

Mark dropped the gun.

“Good choice,” the big man said.

But he didn’t let go. He didn’t change the tango-dancing stance.

He said, “What’s your name?”

Mark didn’t answer.

Patty said, “His name is Mark.”

“Mark what?”

“I don’t know. Who are you?”

“Long story,” the big man said.

His muscles bunched again.

Mark squirmed.

“What’s your last name?” the big man asked.

Bones clicked and creaked and moved.

“Reacher,” Mark gasped.





Chapter 42


A hundred yards back Reacher had seen the woman light up the hunter with the flashlight beam, and then run like hell. He had seen the hunter chase after her. He had chased after both of them. He caught up in time to see the Mercedes arrive. He crossed the track in the dark way behind it, and crept up on the far side. He heard most of the conversation. The tow truck key, and Shorty, and the burned motel. He had heard the guy say he thought he and the woman were the last two standing. Her name was Patty Sundstrom, according to the banker, just before he died. Shorty would be Shorty Fleck. Canadians. Stranded.

“I got money,” Mark said. “You can have it.”

“Don’t want it,” Reacher said. “Don’t need it.”

“Got to be some way we can work this out.”

Reacher said, “Patty, pick up his gun. Very carefully. Finger and thumb on the grip.”

She did. She came close and ducked down and grabbed the gun and scuttled back. Reacher bent Mark’s arm at the elbow, ninety degrees, like he was waving, then more, until his forearm was folded back tight on his upper arm, and his hand was touching his shoulder.

Then more. Reacher pulled Mark’s hand below the horizontal, scraping it down the back of his shoulder blade, two inches, four, six. Which put all kinds of stress on all kinds of joints. Mostly the elbow. But the shoulder too. And all the ligaments and tendons in between.

Reacher took his arrow away from Mark’s throat, and his elbow off his chest, and Mark dropped gratefully to his knees, to relieve the pressure on his arm. Reacher changed his grip. He let go of his wrist and bunched his fist in his collar, and twisted, to make a tight figure eight, to choke him against the button.

Then he looked at Patty and said, “Do you want to do it, or should I?”

“Do what?”

“Shoot him.”

She didn’t answer.

“You said you wished he had burned up in the fire.”

“Who are you?” she said again.

“Long story,” he said again. “I have an appointment in the morning, south of here. I needed a motel for the night. This was all I could find.”

“We should call the police.”

“Were you headed somewhere?”

“Florida,” she said. “We wanted a new life.”

“Doing what?”

“Windsurfer rentals. Maybe jet skis too. Shorty got the idea of T-shirts.”

“Living where?”

“A shack on the beach. Maybe over the store.”

“Sounds great.”

“We thought so.”