the spear.”
“I’m not looking to start a war,” Reacher said. “All I want is the Shevicks’ money. If I can get it some kind of easy way, I absolutely will, believe me. I don’t feel the need to meet any of them face to face on the field of battle. In fact I would be happier not to.”
“You won’t get the option. They must have Trulenko buttoned up pretty tight. Layers and layers. I’ve seen them do it, when a name comes to one of their clubs. They have a man on the corner, and a man on the door, and a man on the next door along, plus a couple of extra guys just roaming around.”
“What do you remember about Trulenko?”
“He was a nerd, like all those guys. I remember thinking it shouldn’t turn out that way. I was cool in high school. Now the nerds are billionaires and I’m scraping a living. I guess I should have learned software, not music.”
“If he was working, what would he be doing?”
“Is he working?”
“Someone used that word.”
“Then computers, I’m sure. That’s what he was good at. He was one of the top boys. His app was something to do with doctors, but basically all that stuff is computer software, isn’t it?”
Abby stuck her head in the door.
“We figured it out,” she said. “We’re ready to go with the Ukrainian. They mention Trulenko twice.”
Chapter 28
Vantresca reset the video so it would play from the beginning, but before he ran it he said, “Overall there’s some weird shit going down. Apart from anything else they’re in an uproar because they’re losing people. Two guys got in a wreck up at the Ford dealer. Then two bagmen got taken off a block in the gourmet quarter. Then two more guys got taken out of a massage parlor. Then two more guys went missing outside of Abby’s house. Total of eight so far.”
“It’s carnage out there,” Reacher said.
“What’s interesting is they blamed the Albanians for the first six. But the language changed for the last two. Now they’re blaming you. They think you’re on some secret New York or Chicago payroll, covertly employed to stir things up down here. There’s an all-points bulletin out on you. Under the name of Shevick. Which in the end could prove to be a bigger problem.”
Vantresca clicked Abby’s phone and started the video. At first he let it spool at the same speed she had recorded it. On the screen the shadow of her fingertip was visible on the right side of the image, scooting up, up, up. Then Vantresca paused and restarted and paused again, until he found the bubble he wanted. It contained a photograph above the text. Aaron and Maria Shevick, and Abigail Gibson, in the hallway of the Shevicks’ home, looking startled and a little uneasy. Reacher remembered the sound he heard from behind the kitchen door. The quiet, scratchy click. The cell phone, imitating a camera.
Vantresca said, “The text below the image says the people in the picture are Jack, Joanna, and Abigail Reacher.”
He played and paused, played and paused, through four more bubbles. He stopped on a fifth. He said, “Right here they’ve already figured out it’s Abby Gibson, not Abigail Reacher. Next message down, they’re sending a guy to her place of work, to get her home address.”
He moved the video on.
“And here they have her home address, and now they’re sending a car to her house, with orders to bring her in if they find her.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Reacher said.
“It gets worse,” Vantresca said. He moved the video on again, to a fat green bubble from later in the day, which had the same photograph in it again, above a dense block of Cyrillic writing. Vantresca read out loud, “It has been reported that the old woman named Joanna Reacher in the picture above was in our pawn shop where she signed her name Maria Shevick.”
“Shit,” Reacher said. “That was their shop?”
“She should have expected it. Most everything is theirs, on the west side. Problem is, she gave them her real name. Which makes it at least somewhat likely she gave them her real address and her real Social Security number, too. Which puts them one step away from finding out she’s Aaron Shevick’s legal wife. From that point on it’s not going to be rocket science to figure out who’s really who. Whereupon they can act as fast as they like. They’re already waiting outside the