Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(78)

He said, “One minute, maybe.”

She said, “That’s pretty good.”

“If the tile comes off all in a sheet.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“We would have to bust off every piece separately. Just to get to the wall board in the first place. Then from that point onward it would be a minute. Except probably two, because by then we would be tired, from busting off the tile.”

“How long altogether?”

Shorty said, “Just hope it comes off all in a sheet.”

She said, “Are we really going to do this?”

“I vote yes.”

“When?”

“I say right now. We could run straight for a quad-bike. Might be better than a car. We could ride it through the trees. They wouldn’t be able to follow.”

“Except on another quad-bike. They have eight more.”

“We would have a head start.”

“Do you know how to drive a quad-bike?”

“How hard can it be?”

Patty was quiet another long moment.

“One step at a time,” she said. “First we’ll test the suitcase on the tile. We’ll see if it comes off all in a sheet. If it does, then we can go ahead and make a final decision. If it doesn’t, we can go ahead and forget it anyway.”

Shorty opened the bathroom door and glanced across the room at the suitcase. It was still where he had put it down, all those hours before. After he had watched Karel drive away in the tow truck.

He whispered, “They’ll see me get it. Because of the camera.”

“They don’t know what’s in it,” Patty whispered back. “We’re allowed to take our own stuff in the bathroom, surely. We might need it. We might choose to sleep in here, what with people looking in the window all the time. That would be perfectly natural.”

Shorty paused. He nodded. He went to get the suitcase. Cool as a cucumber. Perfectly natural. He strolled over, and hefted it up, and strolled back. He put it down, and closed the door. Then he breathed out and flapped his hand to ease the pain in his palm.

They picked their spot. To the left of the sink. A blank patch of wall. No outlets. Therefore no hidden cables inside to snarl things up. No pipes inside, either. The water came and went all in one place, on the other side of the room. Perfect. Plain sailing.

They pulled and shoved the suitcase until it was in position. They stood facing each other, with the case between them. They bent down over it, and they grabbed the rope with all four hands. They lifted the case, six inches off the floor, to clear the baseboard at the bottom of the wall. They moved away a step, and they set the suitcase swinging, gently, back and forth, back and forth. It was a big sturdy item. Very old. A plywood shell, covered in heavy leather, with reinforcements on the corners. They perfected their rhythm. They let the weight do the work. On each swing they made one arm short and one arm long, to keep the suitcase exactly level, like a piston, so its blunt end would hit the wall square on.

“Ready?” Shorty said.

“Yes.”

“On three.”

They swung once, and twice, gathering momentum, and on three they stepped in toward the wall and accelerated the weight as hard as they could.

The case smacked against the tile.

The result was not what Shorty expected.

His instinctive prediction had been that the wall board would flex inward a fraction, which would cause the skim coat to crack off. The tiles were cemented to the skim coat. If the skim coat flaked off, the tiles would come down with it. In sheets. Gravity would see to that.

Didn’t happen.

Instead half a dozen tiles shattered into pieces. Some of the broken bits rained down on the floor. Others stayed up on the wall. Like random coin-sized fragments, still solidly glued to separate coin-sized daubs of adhesive. A cheap job. The tiler had buttered three or four knobs of cement on the back of a tile, and then pressed it into place. One after another, over and over. All the unbuttered voids behind them had made them shatter on impact. But the wall board itself hadn’t flexed at all.

They put the suitcase down. Shorty pressed his thumbnail in the space between two surviving fragments. The skim coat was right there, dry and smooth and creamy. It was hard and rigid. He scraped at it. It powdered a little. He pressed harder, with the ball of his thumb, and then with his knuckles, and then harder still, with his fist. The wall board didn’t yield. Not even a tiny fraction. It felt solid.

“Weird,” he said.

“Should we try again?” Patty asked.

“I guess,” he said. “Real hard this time.”

They backed off as far as the width of the room would allow, and they swung the case once, through a big healthy arc about a yard long, and then again, and on three they staggered sideways and smashed the case into the wall as hard as they could.

Same result. A couple more orphan fragments fell off the wall. Nothing more. It was like hitting concrete. They felt the shock in their wrists.

They dragged the case out the way. Shorty tapped on the wall, experimentally, here and there, in different places, like knocking on a door. The sound it made was strange. Not exactly solid, not exactly hollow. Somewhere in between. He stepped back and kicked out hard. And again, harder. The whole wall seemed to bounce and tremble as a single unit.

“Weird,” he said again.