Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,101
it in her hips. She wanted to dance.
So, absurdly, they did. In the dark, beyond the rim of the crowd, close to the wall, bopping away, maintaining some element of linear progress, in a two steps forward, one step back kind of a way, but basically just having fun. Some kind of release, Reacher figured, or relief, or diversion, or consolation. Or normality. What two people who just met should be doing.
All around them other people were doing it, too. More and more. So that when the third number started the place went wild, with people crushing in on the parquet floor, hopping around, plus a wide halo of more on the carpet, bumping tables, spilling drinks, going crazy. Make them dance. Make it loud. Every eye on you. Barton had delivered big time.
Reacher and Abby stopped dancing.
They ghosted the rest of the way along the back wall, behind the mass of dancers, toward the far left corner, where they arrived directly behind the man on the stool. They waited in the gloom six feet away, until a gaggle of latecomers started down the stairs. The man on the stool looked up at them. Reacher stepped behind him and clapped a hand down on his shoulder. Like a friendly greeting. Or a pretend surprise, just horsing around, like some guys do. Reacher figured that was all the latecomers saw. What they didn’t see was his fingers curling under the guy’s shirt collar, twisting it, tightening it. What they also didn’t see was his other hand, low down behind, jamming the muzzle of a gun hard against the base of the guy’s spine. Really hard. Hard enough to cause a puncture wound all by itself, even without pulling the trigger.
Reacher leaned forward and spoke in the guy’s ear.
He said, “Let’s go take a walk.”
He pulled with his left and pushed with his right and maneuvered the guy backward off the stool. He stood him upright and got him balanced. He twisted his collar harder. Abby stepped up and patted his pockets and took his phone and his gun. Another steel P7. The band fell straight into the second song in the medley. Faster and louder. Reacher leaned forward again.
He yelled, “Hear that backbeat? I could shoot you four to the bar and no one in here would notice a damn thing. So do exactly what I tell you.”
He pushed the guy along the left-hand wall, stiff, awkward, four-legged, like the shadow he had seen in the Shevicks’ hallway. Abby kept pace a yard away, like a wingman. She roved back and forth. She ducked in and out. The band went straight into the third part of the medley. Faster and louder still. Reacher hustled the guy harder. Ran him all the way to the mouth of the corridor. To the freight elevator. Up to the street. Out to the dock. Out to the daylight. He hauled him around to the rear of the Lincoln. He stood him up straight and made him watch.
Abby pressed the button on the key fob.
The trunk lid raised up.
Two dead guys. Same suits, same ties. Limp, bloody, stinking.
The guy looked away.
Reacher said to him, “That’s you, a minute from now. Unless you answer my questions.”
The guy said nothing. He couldn’t speak. His collar was twisted too tight.
Reacher asked, “Where does Maxim Trulenko work?”
He slackened his grip half an inch. The guy panted a couple of breaths. He glanced left, glanced right, glanced up to the sky, as if he was considering his options. As if he had options to consider. Then he looked down. At the dead guys in the trunk.
Then he stared.
He said, “That’s my cousin.”
“Which one?” Reacher asked. “The one I shot in the head, or the one I shot in the throat?”
“We came here together. From Odessa. We arrived in New Jersey.”
“You must be confusing me with someone who gives a shit. I asked you a question. Where does Maxim Trulenko work?”
The guy said the word they had seen in the text message. Biologically inexact. Either a hive or a nest or a burrow. For something that hummed or buzzed or thrashed around.
“Where is it?” Reacher said.
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “It’s a secret operation.”
“How big is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who else works there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do Danilo and Gregory work there?”
“No.”
“Where do they work?”
“In the office.”
“Is that separate?”
“From what?”
“The word you used. The hive.”
“Of course it is.”
“Where is the office?”
The guy named a street, and a cross street. He said,