Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(27)

Reacher looked at her heels and her hair and her nylons and said, “You work in a cocktail bar.”

“In Manchester.”

“And this guy followed you home.”

She nodded.

“Two nights running?” Reacher said.

She nodded again.

The boy said, “She asked me to, man. So butt out and let nature take its course.”

“That’s not true,” the woman said. “I did not ask you.”

“You were all over me.”

“I was being polite. That’s what you do when you work in a cocktail bar.”

Reacher looked at the boy.

“Sounds like a classic misunderstanding,” he said. “But easily fixed. All you need to do is apologize most sincerely and then go away and never come back.”

“It’s her who won’t come back. Not to that bar, anyway. My father owns a big chunk of it. She’ll lose her job.”

Reacher looked at the woman, and said, “What happened last night?”

“I let him,” she said. “He agreed one time only. So I got it over with. But now he’s back for more.”

“I’ll discuss it with him, if you like,” Reacher said. “Meanwhile you go inside now, if you want. And think no more about it.”

“Don’t you dare go inside,” the boy said. “Not without me.”

The woman looked from him to Reacher, and back again. And again, as if choosing. As if down to her last twenty bucks at the racetrack. She made her decision. She took her keys from her bag, and unlocked her door, and stepped inside, and closed her door behind her.

The boy in the sweatshirt stared first at the door, and then at Reacher. Who jerked his head toward the mouth of the alley, and said, “Run along now, kid.”

The boy stared a minute longer, apparently thinking hard. And then he went. He walked out of the alley and turned out of sight. To the right. Which made him right-handed. He would want to set up his ambush so that Reacher would walk face first into a free-swinging right hook. Which pretty much defined the location. About three feet around the corner, Reacher thought. Level with the edge of the bag shop’s window. Because of the pivot point for the right hook. Basic geometry. Fixed in space.

But not fixed in time. Speed was under Reacher’s control. The kid would be expecting a normal kind of approach, plus or minus. Maybe a little tense and urgent. Maybe a little cautious and wary. But mostly average. He would trigger the hook at the first glimpse of Reacher coming around the corner. Any kind of normal walking pace would bring it home good and solid. The kid wasn’t dumb. Possibly an athlete. Probably had decent hand to eye coordination.

Therefore nothing would be done at normal or average speed.

Reacher stopped six paces short of the corner, and waited, and waited, and then he took another pace, a slow, sliding scrape across grit and dirt, and then he paused, and waited, and took another step, slow, sliding, ominous. And then another long wait, and another slow step. He pictured the kid around the corner, tensed up, his fist cocked, holding his position. And holding. Holding too long. Getting too tensed. Getting all cramped and shaky.

Reacher took another step, long and slow. Now he was six feet from the corner. He waited. And waited. Then he launched fast, at a run, his left hand up, palm open, fingers spread like a baseball glove. He burst around the corner and saw the kid sputtering to life, confused by the change of pace, locked into slow-motion waiting, so that his triumphant right hook was so far coming out like a herky-jerky feeble squib, which Reacher caught easily in his left palm, like a soft liner to second. The kid’s fist was big, but Reacher’s open hand was bigger, so he clamped down and squeezed, not hard enough to crush the bones, but hard enough to make the kid concentrate on keeping his mouth shut, so no whines or squeals came out, which obviously he couldn’t afford, being a hell of a guy.

Then Reacher squeezed harder. Mostly as an IQ test. Which the kid failed. He used his free hand to claw at Reacher’s wrist. The wrong move. Unproductive. Always better to go straight to the source of the problem, and use your free hand to hit the squeezer in the head. Or thumb out his eye, or otherwise get his attention. But the kid didn’t. A missed opportunity. Then Reacher added a twist to the squeeze. Like turning a door knob. The kid’s elbow locked up and he dropped a shoulder to compensate, but Reacher kept on twisting, until the kid got so lopsided he had to take his hand off Reacher’s wrist and hold his whole arm straight out for balance.

Reacher said, “Want me to hit you?”

No reply.

“It’s not a difficult question,” Reacher said. “A yes or no answer will do it.”

By that point the kid was shuffling in place, trying to find a bearable position, huffing and gasping. But not squealing yet. He said, “OK, sure, I got her signals wrong. I’m sorry, man. I’ll leave her alone now.”

“What about her job?”

“I was kidding, man.”

“What about the next new waitress, down on her luck, in need of secure employment?”

The kid didn’t answer.

Reacher clamped down harder, and said, “Want me to hit you?”

The kid said, “No.”

“No means no, right? I expect they teach you that now, at your fancy university. Kind of theoretical, I guess, from your point of view. Until now.”