Marilyn's script. "I walked into a door," she said.
Her voice was low and nasal. Dull, like she was still in shock.
"Are you going to call the cops?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm not going to do that."
Hobie nodded. "What would happen if you did?"
"I don't know," she replied. Blank and dull.
"Your friend Marilyn would die, in terrible pain. You understand that?"
He raised the hook and let her focus on it from across the room. Then he came out from behind the desk. Walked around and stood directly behind Marilyn. Used his left hand to lift her hair aside. His hand brushed her skin. She stiffened. He touched her cheek with the curve of the hook. Sheryl nodded, vaguely.
"Yes, I understand that," she said.
I HAD TO be done quickly, because although Sheryl was now in her new skirt and shoes, Chester was still in his boxers and undershirt. Tony made them both wait in reception until the freight elevator arrived, and then he hustled them along the corridor and inside. He stepped out in the garage and scanned ahead. Hustled them over to the Tahoe and pushed Chester into the backseat and Sheryl into the front. He fired it up and locked the doors. Took off up the ramp and out to the street.
He could recall offhand maybe two dozen hospitals in Manhattan, and as far as he knew most of them had emergency rooms. His instinct was to drive all the way north, maybe up to Mount Sinai on 100th Street, because he felt it would be safer to put some distance between themselves and wherever Sheryl was going to be. But they were tight for time. To drive all the way uptown and back was going to take an hour, maybe more. An hour they couldn't spare. So he decided on St. Vincent's on Eleventh Street and Seventh Avenue. Bellevue, over on Twenty-seventh and First, was better geographically, but Bellevue was usually swarming with cops, for one reason or another. That was his experience. They practically lived there. So St. Vincent's it would be. And he knew St. Vincent's had a big, wide area facing the ER entrance, where Greenwich Avenue sliced across Seventh. He remembered the layout from when they had gone out to capture Costello's secretary. A big, wide area, almost like a plaza. They could watch her all the way inside, without having to stop too close.
The drive took eight minutes. He eased into the curb on the west side of Seventh and clicked the button to unlock the doors.
"Out," he said.
She opened the door and slid down to the sidewalk. Stood there, uncertain. Then she moved away to the crosswalk, without looking back. Tony leaned over and slammed the door behind her. Turned in his seat toward Stone.
"So watch her," he said.
Stone was already watching her. He saw the traffic stop and the walk light change. He saw her step forward with the crowd, dazed. She walked slower than the others, shuffling in her big shoes. Her hand was up at her face, masking it. She reached the opposite sidewalk well after the walk light changed back to DON'T. An impatient truck pulled right and eased around her. She walked on toward the hospital entrance. Across the wide sidewalk. Then she was in the ambulance circle. A pair of double doors ahead of her. Scarred, floppy plastic doors. A trio of nurses standing next to them, on their cigarette break, smoking. She walked past the nurses, straight to the doors, slowly. She pushed at them, tentatively, both hands. They opened. She stepped inside. The doors fell shut behind her.
"OK, you see that?"
Stone nodded. "Yes, I saw it. She's inside."
Tony checked his mirror and fought his way out into the traffic stream. By the time he was a hundred yards south, Sheryl was waiting in the triage line, going over and over in her head what Marilyn had told her to do.
IT WAS A short and cheap cab ride from the St. Louis Airport to the National Personnel Records Center building, and familiar territory for Reacher. Most of his Stateside tours of duty had involved at least one trip through the archives, searching backward in time for one thing or another. But this time, it was going to be different. He would be going in as a civilian. Not the same thing as going in dressed in a major's uniform. Not the same thing at all. He was clear on that.
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