and his neck, and his chest. She put the tip of her pinkie in his bullet hole. It fit just right.
‘A .38,’ he said. ‘A weak load.’
‘Lucky,’ she said.
‘I’m always lucky. Look at me now.’
Her touch moved on, to his waist. To the old shrapnel scar.
‘Beirut,’ she said. ‘I read your file. A Silver Star and a Purple Heart. Not bad, but still, I bet overall you got more metal in your gut than on your chest.’
‘It was bone,’ Reacher said. ‘Fragments of somebody’s head, who was standing nearer.’
‘It said shrapnel in the file.’
‘How many times did you read that file?’
‘Over and over again.’
‘You know where the word shrapnel comes from?’
‘Where?’
‘An eighteenth-century British guy named Henry Shrapnel.’
‘Really?’
‘He was a captain in their artillery for eight years. Then he invented an exploding shell, and they promoted him major. The Duke of Wellington used the shell in the Peninsular Wars, and at the Battle of Waterloo.’
‘Terrific.’
‘But thanks for reading that file. It means a lot to me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because now I don’t have to spend a lot of time telling you a bunch of old stories. You know them already.’
‘Telling each other old stories has a nice ring to it.’
‘You haven’t told me any.’
‘But I will,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you as many as you want to hear.’
Romeo dialled Juliet and said, ‘She was calling a pre-paid cell phone almost certainly purchased at a Wal- Mart. If it was paid for in cash, it’s untraceable. And I bet it was.’
Juliet said, ‘It was worth a try.’
‘But you know, one big market for pre-paid cell phones is the military. Because some of them don’t make enough for a regular monthly contract. Which is shameful, frankly. And because some of them lead necessarily disorganized lives, and pre-paid suits them better.’
‘That’s a leap.’
‘The phone is showing up on three cell towers north and west of the Pentagon.’
‘I see.’
‘Rock Creek is north and west of the Pentagon.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I think she was calling the mothership. And someone aboard the mothership took her call.’
‘Our boys are on their way to Pittsburgh.’
‘Doesn’t matter. No one at Rock Creek can help her now.’
FORTY
TURNER TOOK A shower, but Reacher didn’t bother. He wrapped up in a robe and lounged in a chair, warm, deeply satisfied, as relaxed as he could ever remember being. Then Turner came out in the other robe and asked, ‘What time is it?’
‘Four minutes,’ Reacher said. ‘Until you’re due to call Leach again. Does she know I’m with you?’
Turner nodded. ‘I’m sure the whole world knows by now. And I told her, anyway.’
‘Was she OK with that?’
‘She’s a sergeant in the U.S. Army. I don’t think she’s a prude.’
‘That’s not the point. If you beat your thing, then no one can touch her for helping you. She’ll come out smelling of roses. But if I don’t beat my thing, then she’s still in trouble for helping me. Or vice versa. And so on and so forth. She’s doubling her risk and halving her chances.’
‘She didn’t object.’
‘You should hang on to her.’
‘I will,’ Turner said. ‘If I ever get back.’
And then she picked up the phone and dialled.
A little more than fourteen miles away, a phone rang inside the FBI Field Office on East Carson Street,
