Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(43)

He said, “How fast can you move with it?”

“Don’t worry,” Shorty said. “I won’t screw up.”

Karel looked at him, and then at Patty, she with a small bag in each hand, he with the big bag in both, the two of them standing there side by side in the space between the bed and the AC. He said, “OK, wait there, and don’t come out until I get turned around. Then Patty comes out first. She throws the small bags up in the cab and climbs in after them. Then Shorty comes out and boosts the suitcase up and Patty leans down and hauls it in, and then Shorty climbs up. Does that make sense?”

“Sounds good,” Shorty said.

“OK,” Karel said. “Be ready.”

He leaned in the doorway and grabbed the knob and closed the door on them. Through the window they saw him hustle across the dirt and climb the ladder to the cab. They heard the engine roar and saw the truck jerk into gear and move slowly away, right to left, out of sight.

They waited.

It didn’t come back.

They waited.

Nothing.

No sound, no movement. Nothing out the window except the view as before. The Honda, the lot, the grass, the wall of trees.

Shorty said, “Maybe he got hung up for a minute. Maybe the assholes came out and started talking to him.”

“He’s been gone longer than a minute,” Patty said. She put her bags down and stepped closer to the window. She craned her neck and peered out.

“Can’t see anything,” she said.

Shorty put the suitcase down. He joined her at the window. He said, “I could go check from the corner.”

“They might see you. They’re probably all standing around talking. What else can they be doing? How long does it take to turn a truck around?”

“I’ll be careful,” Shorty said.

He stepped to the door. He turned the knob and pulled. But the door was stuck. It wouldn’t move at all. He checked it was properly unlocked from the inside, and he tried the knob both ways. Nothing happened. Patty stared at him. He pulled harder. He put one meaty palm flat on the wall and hauled.

Nothing.

“They locked us in,” Patty said.

“How?”

“They must have a button in the house. Like remote control. I think they’ve been messing with it all along.”

“That’s completely crazy.”

“What isn’t here?”

They stared out the window. The Honda, the lot, the grass, the wall of trees. Nothing else.

Then the window blind motored down in front of them and the room went dark.





Chapter 17


Karel stepped into the back parlor and the others crowded around and whooped and hooted and slapped him on the back. Steven ducked away and pattered at a keyboard and the video on the screens rewound at high speed, three jerky figures racing around, doing everything fast and backward. He put on a TV voice and said, “Folks, let’s go to the action replay, and let’s ask the man of the hour how it felt to hit that big grand slam.”

He changed to forward motion and normal speed, and on the screens Karel was seen smiling encouragingly and shooing Patty and Shorty toward their door. The audio caught him saying, “Go inside and pack your stuff. This is a two-minute job.”

“But it’s a swing and a miss,” the real Karel said, in a TV voice of his own, like a scratchy signal coming in all the way from the Balkans. “The first at-bat is a strikeout.”

On the screens Patty said, “We packed already.”

In the parlor Karel said, “And from that point onward I was just making it up as I went along. I figured something might happen sooner or later. I knew all I needed to do was maneuver them into the room and close the door. In the end I got lucky.”

The others hooted and hollered again, but Mark said, “There was no luck involved. That was a virtuoso performance. We should save this video forever. We should learn it by heart. It was like hearing a maestro play the violin. You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Karel?”

The parlor went quiet.

On the screens the video ran on, with the three figures huddled between the Honda and the boardwalk, talking low.

Mark said, “You distanced yourself from us, by pretending not to be our friend, which purely by default generated a closer bond with them. They fell right into it. They did this to themselves. They became almost intimate. Which you then built on by confirming their worst fears about certain inconsistencies they had noticed. Then you doubled down even more by slowly agreeing to help them escape. It was a masterpiece of emotional manipulation. It was a perfectly constructed rollercoaster. They were worried all morning, then suddenly filled with intense hope, which then increased to actual euphoria, as they stood there, bags in hand, waiting to go, and now they’re suddenly sick with utter defeat.”

Steven clicked to a live feed. Patty and Shorty were sitting on their bed, in the dark, not moving at all.

“It works better this way,” Karel said. “I promise. It’s better when they’re in touch with their feelings. It marinates their brains. It makes them more fun later, cross my heart.”

Then he said, “I’ll see you soon,” and walked out the door.

—

Reacher saw the left turn coming up. It was a hundred yards ahead. It met the main drag at an oblique angle and curved gently away, as if reluctant. Then it ran onward through apple orchards. He walked on toward it. Halfway there he had to step up on the grass shoulder to let a giant tow truck blow by. It was huge and bright red and spotlessly clean. It had gold pinstripes all over it. It shook the ground under his feet. He watched it go. Then he walked on again and took the turn.