Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(112)

Nothing.

Until the third time they did it.

They heard a tiny sound. Distant, quiet, metallic, slow. Tink, tink, tink . Due east, Reacher thought, maybe forty yards away.

He called out, “Shorty Fleck?”

Tink, tink, tink .

They changed direction. They hustled. Trees, vines, brambles, bushes. They called out his name every step of the way, first Patty, then Reacher, taking turns. They heard tink, tink, tink , getting louder with every step. They followed the sound.

They found him slumped against a tree. Exhausted with pain. He had night vision on. He had an arrow in his hand. He was tapping it against the optical tube. Tink, tink, tink . It was all he could do.

—

Reacher carried him back and laid him out across the rear seat of the Mercedes. His leg was busted bad. The wound was a mess. He had lost a lot of blood. He was pale but hot. He was damp with sweat.

Patty said, “Where should we take him?”

“Probably better to get out of the county,” Reacher said. “You should go to Manchester. It’s a bigger place.”

“Are you not coming with us?”

Reacher shook his head.

“Not all the way,” he said. “I have an appointment in the morning.”

“They’ll ask questions at the hospital.”

“Tell them it was a motorcycle accident. They’ll believe you. Hospitals believe anything about motorcycles. They won’t need to report it. It’s obviously not a gunshot wound. You could tell them he fell on a piece of metal.”

“OK.”

“Get him set, and then go park the car somewhere quiet. Leave the doors unlocked and the key in. You need it to disappear pretty quick. Then you’re home and dry.”

“OK,” she said again.

She got behind the wheel. Reacher got in the passenger seat, half turned around to keep an eye on Shorty. Patty turned a wide slow circle over the lumpy ground. Shorty bounced and jostled and gasped. Patty turned in at the mouth of the track.

Shorty slapped the seat beside him, once, twice, weak and feeble.

Reacher said, “What?”

Shorty opened his mouth. No words would come out. He tried again.

He whispered, “Suitcase.”

Patty drove on, slow and steady.

“We had a suitcase in the room,” she said. “I guess it burned up.”

Shorty slapped the seat again.

“I took it out,” he whispered.

Patty stopped the car.

“Where is it?” she said.

“In the grass,” he said. “Across the lot.”

She backed up, inexpertly, corkscrewing a little, and then she turned around in the mouth of the track and set out forward across the meadow. Past the abandoned bikes, and the bodies.

“Peter and Robert,” she said.

She drove on. She stopped in the lot. They could feel the heat through the windows. Reacher saw the metal cage, sticking up out of the carpet of coals. Steel bars and steel mesh. Scorched and distorted. Room ten. Shorty moved his forearm, back and forth, just once, weak and vague and limp, like an old priest pronouncing a benediction, or a wounded man miming a journey. From there to there . Reacher got out and walked up level with the metal cage. He turned and walked to the edge of the grass. A straight line. The shortest distance between two points. He dropped his night vision tube in place.

He saw the suitcase immediately. It was a huge old leather thing tied up with rope. It was lying flat in the grass. He stepped over and picked it up. It weighed a ton. Maybe two. He struggled back with it, lopsided. Patty got out and opened the trunk for him. He rested the case on the ground.

He said, “What the hell have you got in here?”

“Comics,” she said. “More than a thousand. All the great ones. Lots of early Superman. From our dads and granddads. We were going to sell them in New York, to pay for Florida.”

There were two bags already stashed in the trunk. Two soft leather duffels, zipped and bulging. Reacher took a look inside. They were both full of money. Both full of bricks and bricks of cash, all neatly stacked. Mostly hundred dollar bills, mostly banded into inch-thick wads. Ten thousand bucks at a time, according to the printed labels. There were about fifty bricks in each bag. Maybe a million dollars in total.

“You should keep the comics,” Reacher said. “You should use this instead. You could buy all the windsurfers you want.”

“We can’t,” Patty said. “It isn’t ours.”

“I think it is. You won the game. I’m guessing this is what they put in the pot. Who else should have it?”

“It’s a fortune.”

“You earned it,” Reacher said. “Don’t you think?”

She said nothing.

Then she asked, “Do you want some?”

“I have enough to get by,” Reacher said. “I don’t need more.”

He hefted the suitcase up and slid it in the trunk.

The Mercedes sagged on its springs.

“What’s your name?” Patty asked. “I would like to know.”

“Reacher.”

She paused.

She said, “That was Mark’s name.”

“Different branch of the family.”

They got back in the car, and she drove through the meadow, into the woods, almost two miles, all the way to the tow truck. Reacher took the key and climbed up and let himself in. Heavy pressure. He was a bad driver anyway, and the controls were unfamiliar. But after a minute he got the lights turned on. Then he got the engine started. He found the gear selector and shoved it in reverse. A screen on the dashboard lit up, with a rear view camera. A wide-angle lens. A color picture. It showed an ancient Subaru, parked right behind the truck, just waiting.