Running Blind

She stepped close and kissed his cheek. Stepped away and started walking.

“Good luck,” she called.

“To you too,” he called back.

HE WALKED TO the airport, twelve miles on the shoulders of roads built for automobiles. It took him three hours. He exchanged the FBI voucher for a plane ticket and waited another hour for the first flight out. Slept through four hours in the air and three hours of time zones and touched down at La Guardia at one o’clock in the afternoon.

He used the last of his cash on a bus to the subway and the subway into Manhattan. Got out at Canal Street and walked south to Wall Street. He was in the lobby of Jodie’s office building a few minutes after two o’clock, borne along by sixty floors of workers returning from lunch. Her firm’s reception area was deserted. Nobody at the counter. He stepped through an open door and wandered down a corridor lined with law-books on oak shelves. Left and right of him were empty offices. There were papers on desks and jackets over the backs of chairs, but no people anywhere.

He came to a set of double doors and heard the heavy buzz of conversation on the other side. The chink of glass on glass. Laughter. He pulled the right-hand door and the noise burst out at him and he saw a conference room jammed full of people. They were in dark suits and snowy white shirts and suspenders and quiet ties, and severe dark dresses and black nylon. There was a wall of blinding windows and a long table under a heavy white cloth loaded with ranks of sparkling glasses and a hundred bottles of champagne. Two bartenders were pouring the foamy golden wine as fast as they could. People were drinking it and toasting with it and looking at Jodie.

She was rippling through the crowd like a magnet. Wherever she walked, people stepped up and formed a crowd around her. There was a constantly changing sequence of small excited circles with her at every center. She turned left and right, smiling, clinking glasses, and then moved on randomly like a pinball into new acclaim. She saw him at the door at the same moment he saw himself reflected in the glass over a Renoir drawing on the wall. He was unshaven and dressed in a crumpled khaki shirt dried stiff with random green stains. She was in a thousand- dollar dress fresh from the closet. A hundred faces turned with hers and the room fell silent. She hesitated for a beat, like she was making a decision. Then she fought forward through the crowd and flung her arms around his neck, champagne glass and all.

“The partnership party,” he said. “You got it.”

“I sure did,” she said.

“Well, congratulations, babe,” he said. “And I’m sorry I’m late.”

She drew him into the crowd and people closed around them. He shook hands with a hundred lawyers the way he used to with generals from foreign armies. Don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you. The top boy was an old red-and-gray-faced man of about sixty-five, the son of one of the names on the brass plaque in reception. His suit must have cost more than all the clothes Reacher had ever worn in his life. But the mood of the party meant there was no edge in the old guy’s attitude. He looked like he would have been delighted to shake hands with Jodie’s elevator man.

“She’s a big, big star,” he said. “And I’m gratified she accepted our offer.”

“Smartest lawyer I ever met,” Reacher said over the noise.

“Will you go with her?”

“Go with her where?”

“To London,” the old guy said. “Didn’t she explain? First tour of duty for a new partner is running the European operation for a couple of years.”

Then she was back at his side, smiling, drawing him away. The crowd was settling into small groups, and conversation was turning to work matters and quiet gossip. She led him to a space by the window. There was a yard-wide view of the harbor, framed by sheer buildings on either side.

“I called the FBI uptown,” she said. “I was worried about you, and technically I’m still your lawyer. I spoke with Alan Deerfield’s office.”

“When?”

“Two hours ago. They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Nothing to tell. They’re straight with me, I’m straight with them.”

She nodded. “So you delivered, finally.”

Then she paused.

“Will you be called as a witness?” she asked. “Is there going to be a trial?”

He shook his head. “No trial.”

She nodded. “Just a funeral, right?”

He shrugged. 'There are no relatives left. That was the point.”

She paused again, like there was an important question coming up.

“How do you feel about it?” she asked. “One-word answer?”

“Calm,” he said.

“Would you do it again? Same circumstances?”

He paused in turn.

“Same circumstances?” he said. “In a heartbeat.”

“I have to go to work in London,” she said. “Two years.”

“I know,” he said. “The old guy told me. When do you go?”

“End of the month.”

“You don’t want me to come with you,” he said.

“It’ll be very busy. It’s a small staff with a big workload. ”

“And it’s a civilized city.”

She nodded. “Yes, it is. Would you want to come?”

“Two straight years?” he said. “No. But maybe I could visit, time to time.”

She smiled, vaguely. “That would be good.”

He said nothing.

“This is awful,” she said. “Fifteen years I couldn’t live without you, and now I find I can’t live with you.”

“I know,” he said. “Totally my fault.”

“Do you feel the same way?”

He looked at her.

“I guess I do,” he lied.

“We’ve got until the end of the month,” she said.

He nodded.

“More than most people get,” he said. “Can you take the afternoon off?”

“Sure I can. I’m a partner now. I can do what I want.”

“So let’s go.”

They left their empty glasses on the window ledge and threaded their way through the knots of people. Everybody watched them to the door, and then turned back to their quiet speculations.

About Lee Child

LEE CHILD is British but moved with his family from Cumbria to the United States to start a new career as an American thriller writer. His first novel, Killing Floor, won the Anthony Award, and his second, Die Trying, won W H Smith's Thumping Good Read Award.

He lives just outside New York City, with his American wife, Jane. They have a grown-up daughter, Ruth, and a small dog called Jenny. Lee fills his spare time with music, reading, and the New York Yankees. He likes to travel, for vacations, but especially on promotion tours so he can meet his readers, to whom he is eternally grateful.

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