Page 53 of Chain Reaction

“Hugo gets acupuncture?”

“No, she’s a neighbor. She watches the street. She saw a lawyer leave the Lazarus Lorenzo building immediately after we didn’t answer the phone in the taxi. I’m guessing that was Hugo, heading over to the Sequoia Suites to see for himself what the hell was going on.”

“What was the description?”

“A preppy frat boy twenty years later.”

“I thought they all worked here in D.C.”

“Not all of them, apparently.”

“Anything else?” she asked.

“I had a pretty nice burger. With a slice of tomato on it, so that’s OK. For the vegetable component, I mean.”

“A tomato is a fruit, technically.”

“Even better.”

“I’m going to take a long hot shower and then head straight to the office. I need to prepare for the meeting.”

“Why? Their side makes it up as they go along. Why shouldn’t you? Take your shower and stay home and get some sleep. You’ll thank me in the morning, when you run rings around them.”

“No wonder you were terminal at O4.”

“I count my blessings. Get some rest.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Can’t promise.”

“Goodnight,” he said.

“See you soon,” she said.

Chapter 22

Susan Turner’s house was a box-fresh four-bedroom Tudor in a new dormitory development off the road to Reston. It was one of a couple hundred units snaked together on narrow lots on winding new-built streets. Most were owned by private equity companies, who pitched the rents just right for second-tier diplomats from around the world, and Executive Schedule Level 5 drones from around the U.S. government. Attachés, second secretaries, directors of minor government agencies or missions. A reasonable commute for all of them, to their marble buildings in D.C. itself. The equivalent grade at the concrete Pentagon was O7 brigadier general. Turner’s housing allowance covered most of the cost. She was neither happy nor unhappy with the place. It was nothing to her. Purely a dormitory. A clue in the name. From the Latin verb to sleep. That was all she did there.

She dumped her road-worn clothes in the hamper and took her shower. Long and hot. Her last shower had been at the Four Seasons. Also long and hot. But crowded. The stall had been a very generous size, but so was Reacher. He had used two towels to dry himself. Fortunately there were six.

Should she go to the office? She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to go to the meeting. She wanted to be back in Palo Alto. With Reacher. She wondered where he had picked to stay the night. She should have asked. In retrospect she had always thought of her long-ago first time with him as forty-eight hours every girl should have once in her life. He was a mad, freewheeling wanderer, polite and courteous on the outside, worn down and feral on the inside, like a rogue animal, always restless, forever roaming, forever hair-trigger dangerous. Always magnetic, always funny, often contrary, sometimes infuriating. In bed he was one of a kind. A giant, but tender. He could have snapped her in half, but he was unfailingly gentle. He had slow hands. To get all that for a couple of breathless days was beyond intense. Beyond exhilarating. Like forty-eight hours inside a wild emotional riptide.

But forty-eight hours was all it could ever be. It couldn’t be her life. It couldn’t be anyone’s life, except his. Too worn down. Too feral. Too restless. No one else could live like that. Certainly not her. But even so she carried her forty-eight hours with her, like a tiny jewel in the back of her mind. Not painful. Not nostalgic. Not often thought of. Just an occasional reminder that she had been there and done that. She wasn’t only what the world saw.

Now she was getting the forty-eight hours twice in her life. An unexpected bonus. Except it had been cut short after twenty-four by her damn boss. She didn’t want to go to the meeting. But she had to. It would be dramatic to say her career depended on it, but of course it did. Her career depended on every meeting. It was a two-front war. First came doing her actual job, which was mostly fun. Then came talking about it, which was mostly not. Unfortunately each part was equally important. Poor performance on either end would get her retired.

She got out of the shower and wrapped up in a towel. She laid out her army green service uniform. To be worn in garrison and office environments. Recently introduced, but very retro. A heritage green service cap, coat and necktie, a heritage tan shirt, heritage taupe pants, a heritage walnut belt with an antique brass buckle, heritage walnut socks, heritage walnut lace-up Oxfords. She liked it. The brown shoe army. She felt like Dwight Eisenhower. She was only an inch shorter.

Should she go to the office? First she would make a cup of hot tea. Then she would decide.

—

Elwood drove the same roads he had driven that afternoon, but in the opposite direction. First the lonely two-lane, now meandering east. He took it easy. His rental was a Ford. A small SUV. It seemed to be a capable vehicle. He was satisfied with it. Its headlights gave a good view ahead. It followed the line he wanted through the frequent curves. The ride was adequate. It wasn’t noisy.

He drove on, twenty minutes, then thirty. A mile short of the highway cloverleaf he saw a vehicle coming toward him. At first just pinprick headlights in the pitch dark, far away in the distance. Then quickly getting closer. The headlights were bright. Getting closer still. But they were rock steady in their lane. No wandering. No deviation. Therefore no problem. Just a normal nighttime two-lane experience. Two alert drivers. Elwood held his line. The two vehicles flashed past one another at a closing speed of more than a hundred miles an hour.

Neither prey nor predators would ever know they had been just six feet apart, for that brief, brightly lit split second.

—