other people’s rooms. Their restrooms and their offices and their storerooms, in places a mysterious yard narrower than they should have been. Reacher pictured Gregory with the detailed plans, stealing a foot here and a foot there, sketching out false walls, piecing it all together. A labyrinthine route, but crisp and clear and coherent all the same. Couldn’t trip, couldn’t stumble, couldn’t get lost. Reacher pictured a flashlight clipped to the wall at the entrance, Gregory grabbing it and hustling, crashing from corner to corner, bursting through the HVAC panel, running out through the vacant store.
They walked on, slowly. The twists and turns made it hard to keep track of overall distance. Reacher remembered the block as a whole as square and pretty large by old-town standards. Maybe four hundred feet on a side. The taxi office and the conference room and the offices behind it would account for maybe a hundred feet. Maybe a hundred and fifty, depending how spacious. Which gave them a net two hundred and fifty feet to travel. Which could have been a real-world five hundred or more, because of all the dog-leg turns. Should take about six minutes, Reacher thought, at their slow and cautious pace.
It took five and a half. They made one last turn and then up ahead in the glow of Abby’s phone they saw the end of the corridor. The whole end wall was a sheet of heavy steel. Side to side, and floor to ceiling. Cut into it was a hatch about the size of the HVAC panel at the other end of the route. A hunch down, step over proposition. Like a submarine. On the right side there were heavy hinges welded to the steel. The metal was discolored from the heat. On the left was a heavy bolt. Currently drawn back. Gregory would push the hatch, step inside, slam the hatch behind him, and shoot the bolt. No pursuers. No key required. Faster. There was a flashlight clipped to the wall, right next to the bolt.
They backed off two corners and spoke so low they could barely hear each other. Reacher whispered, “I guess the real question is whether the hinges squeal. If yes, we do it fast. If no, we do it slow. Ready?”
A tight nod from Hogan.
A determined nod from Abby.
They retraced their steps. Two turns. Back to the steel hatch. Abby held her phone close to a hinge. It looked like a quality item. Forged steel. A glassy surface. But no trace of grease or oil. Unpredictable. The hatch had no handle. Not as such. Just two thick hoops for the bolt to lock into. Reacher hooked his finger through one of them. In his mind he rehearsed what he would do next, either fast or slow. The hatch would be hidden on the inside by some kind of camouflage. Nothing too fancy. Nothing that would have involved visible workers. Nothing that would have changed the room’s appearance. Nothing that Danilo would have noticed on his return. Probably an existing piece of furniture. As tall as Abby. Probably a bookcase. He would have to open the hatch and move it aside. Either fast or slow.
It turned out fast. Reacher eased the hatch open, and inside the first inch of travel both hinges let out a piercing squeal. So he flung it open the rest of the way and the glow of Abby’s phone showed him the rough lumber back of a piece of heavy wooden furniture. He shoved it hard and it fell forward and toppled over and crashed down. Completely unstable. A bookcase for sure. He scrambled out over it, into the room.
* * *
—
Gregory had been sitting at his desk, in his green leather chair, running important things through his mind. Then he heard the hinges squeal behind him, and he spun his chair halfway around, just in time for the bookcase to fall on him. It was made of Baltic oak, all solid, no veneer. It was loaded with books and trophies and photos in frames. First the front edge of a shelf broke his shoulder, and then an imperceptible millisecond later the next shelf up cracked his skull, and then the full bulk of the thing crushed him down, tipping his chair, driving the side of his head against the edge of the desk top, but driving the rest of him onward to the floor, so that his neck bent grotesquely and snapped like a twig, killing him