somewhere.
“How did you find out?” she asked quietly.
The woman shrugged.
“We have a lot of friends,” she said.
Holly kept on staring at her. She thought: the mole. They know we were in North Dakota. Takes a map and a ruler to figure out where we are now. She saw computer keyboards clicking and Jackson’s name scrolling up on a dozen screens.
“What’s going to happen to Reacher?” she asked.
“A life for a life,” the woman said. “That’s the rule here. Same for your friend Reacher as for anybody else.”
“But what’s going to happen to him?” Holly asked again.
The woman laughed.
“Doesn’t take much imagination,” she said. “Or maybe it does. I don’t expect it’s going to be anything real simple.”
Holly shook her head.
“It was self-defense,” she said. “The guy was trying to rape me.”
The woman looked at her, scornfully.
“So how is that self-defense?” she said. “Wasn’t trying to rape Reacher, was he? And you were probably asking for it, anyhow.”
“What?” Holly said.
“Shaking your tail at him?” the woman said. “We know all about smart little city bitches like you. Poor old Peter never stood a chance.”
Holly just stared at her. Then she glanced at the door.
“Where is Reacher now?” she asked.
“No idea,” the woman said. “Chained to a tree somewhere, I guess.”
Then she grinned.
“But I know where he’s going,” she said. “The parade ground. That’s where they usually do that sort of stuff. We’re all ordered up there to watch the fun.”
Holly stared at her. Then she swallowed. Then she nodded.
“Will you help me with this bed?” she asked. “Something wrong with it.”
The woman paused. Then she followed her over.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.
Holly pulled the blanket back and heaved the mattress onto the floor.
“The bolts seem a little loose,” she said.
“Where?” the woman said.
“Here,” Holly said.
She used both hands on the long tube. Whipped it upward and spun and smashed it like a blunt spear into the side of the woman’s head. The flange hit her like a metal fist. Skin tore and a neat rectangle of bone punched deep into her brain and she bounced off the mattress and was dead before she hit the floor. Holly stepped carefully over the tray of lunch and limped calmly toward the open door.
30
HARLAND WEBSTER GOT back to the Hoover Building from Colorado at three o’clock Thursday afternoon, East Coast time. He went straight to his office suite and checked his messages. Then he buzzed his secretary.
“Car,” he said.
He went down in his private elevator to the garage and met his driver. They walked over to the limousine and got in.
“White House,” Webster said.
“You seeing the President, sir?” the driver asked, surprised.
Webster scowled forward at the back of the guy’s head. He wasn’t seeing the President. He didn’t see the President very often. He didn’t need reminding of that, especially not by a damn driver sounding all surprised that there even was such a possibility.
“Attorney General,” he said. “White House is where she is right now.”
His driver nodded silently. Cursed himself for opening his big mouth. Drove on smoothly and unobtrusively. The distance between the Hoover Building and the White House was exactly sixteen hundred yards. Less than a mile. Not even far enough to click over the little number in the speedometer on the limousine’s dash. It would have been quicker to walk. And cheaper. Firing up the cold V-8 and hauling all that bulletproof plating sixteen hundred yards really ate up the gas. But the Director couldn’t walk anywhere. Theory was he’d get assassinated. Fact was, there were probably about eight people in the city who would recognize him. Just another D.C. guy in a gray suit and a quiet tie. Anonymous. Another reason old Webster was never in the best of tempers, his driver thought.
WEBSTER KNEW THE Attorney General pretty well. She was his boss, but his familiarity with her did not come from their face-to-face meetings. It came instead from the background checks the Bureau had run prior to her confirmation. Webster probably knew more about her than anybody else on earth did. Her parents and friends and ex-colleagues all knew their own separate perspectives. Webster had put all of those together and he knew the whole picture. Her Bureau file took up as much disk space as a short novel. Nothing at all in the file made him dislike her. She had been a lawyer, faintly radical at the start of her career, built up a decent practice, grabbed a judgeship, never annoyed the law enforcement community, without ever becoming a rabid foaming-at-the-mouth pain in the ass. An ideal appointment, sailed through her confirmation with no problem at all. Since then, she had proven to be a good boss and a great ally. Her name was Ruth Rosen and the only problem Webster had with her was that she was twelve years younger than him, very good-looking, and a whole lot more famous than he was.
His appointment was for four o’clock. He found Rosen alone in a small room, two floors and eight Secret Service agents away from the Oval Office. She greeted him with a strained smile and an urgent inclination of her elegant head.
“Holly?” she asked.
He nodded. He gave her the spread, top to bottom. She listened hard and ended up pale, with her lips clamped tight.
“We totally sure this is where she is?” she asked.
He nodded again.
“Sure as we can be,” he said.
“OK,” she said. “Wait there, will you?”
She left the small room. Webster waited. Ten minutes, then twenty, then a half hour. He paced. He gazed out of the window. He opened the door and glanced out into the corridor. A Secret Serviceman glanced back at him. Took a pace forward. Webster shook his head in answer to the question the guy hadn’t asked and closed the door again. Just sat down and waited.
Ruth Rosen was gone an hour. She came back in and closed the door. Then she just stood there, a yard inside the small room, pale, breathing hard, some kind of shock on her face. She said nothing. Just let it dawn on him that there was some kind of a big problem happening.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m out of the loop on this,” she said.
“What?” he asked again.
“They took me out of the loop,” she said. “My reactions were wrong. Dexter is handling it from here.”
“Dexter?” he repeated. Dexter was the President’s White House Chief of Staff. A political fixer from the old school. As hard as a nail, and half as sentimental. But he was the main reason the President was sitting there in the Oval Office with a big majority of the popular vote.
