the harsh flat light. They looked like rocks in a bag. There was no expression on his face. She realized he was crushing Mark’s wrist. Slowly, steadily, inexorably. Relentlessly. Mark yelped and breathed fast. She heard bones click and creak and move. Mark jerked and thrashed.
The big man kept on squeezing.
Mark dropped the gun.
“Good choice,” the big man said.
But he didn’t let go. He didn’t change the tango-dancing stance.
He said, “What’s your name?”
Mark didn’t answer.
Patty said, “His name is Mark.”
“Mark what?”
“I don’t know. Who are you?”
“Long story,” the big man said.
His muscles bunched again.
Mark squirmed.
“What’s your last name?” the big man asked.
Bones clicked and creaked and moved.
“Reacher,” Mark gasped.
Chapter 42
A hundred yards back Reacher had seen the woman light up the hunter with the flashlight beam, and then run like hell. He had seen the hunter chase after her. He had chased after both of them. He caught up in time to see the Mercedes arrive. He crossed the track in the dark way behind it, and crept up on the far side. He heard most of the conversation. The tow truck key, and Shorty, and the burned motel. He had heard the guy say he thought he and the woman were the last two standing. Her name was Patty Sundstrom, according to the banker, just before he died. Shorty would be Shorty Fleck. Canadians. Stranded.
“I got money,” Mark said. “You can have it.”
“Don’t want it,” Reacher said. “Don’t need it.”
“Got to be some way we can work this out.”
Reacher said, “Patty, pick up his gun. Very carefully. Finger and thumb on the grip.”
She did. She came close and ducked down and grabbed the gun and scuttled back. Reacher bent Mark’s arm at the elbow, ninety degrees, like he was waving, then more, until his forearm was folded back tight on his upper arm, and his hand was touching his shoulder.
Then more. Reacher pulled Mark’s hand below the horizontal, scraping it down the back of his shoulder blade, two inches, four, six. Which put all kinds of stress on all kinds of joints. Mostly the elbow. But the shoulder, too. And all the ligaments and tendons in between.
Reacher took his arrow away from Mark’s throat, and his elbow off his chest, and Mark dropped gratefully to his knees, to relieve the pressure on his arm. Reacher changed his grip. He let go of his wrist and bunched his fist in his collar, and twisted, to make a tight figure eight, to choke him against the button.
Then he looked at Patty and said, “Do you want to do it, or should I?”
“Do what?”
“Shoot him.”
She didn’t answer.
“You said you wished he had burned up in the fire.”
“Who are you?” she said again.
“Long story,” he said again. “I have an appointment in the morning, south of here. I needed a motel for the night. This was all I could find.”
“We should call the police.”
“Were you headed somewhere?”
“Florida,” she said. “We wanted a new life.”
“Doing what?”
“Windsurfer rentals. Maybe jet skis, too. Shorty got the idea of T-shirts.”
“Living where?”
“A shack on the beach. Maybe over the store.”
“Sounds great.”
“We thought so.”
“Alternatively you could spend three years living in a chain hotel somewhere in New Hampshire, talking to really obnoxious people, half the time bored to death, and the other half scared to death. Want to do that instead?”
“No.”
“That’s what will happen if we call the police. You’ll be talking to detectives and prosecutors and lawyers and psychiatrists, over and over again, including some pretty tough questions along the way, because they’ll do the math the same way I have. I came in from the road, and the action was always ahead of me. So far I caught up to four of them. I’m guessing there were more to come, originally.”
“There were six originally.”
“What happened to the first two?”
She didn’t answer. Just breathed in, and breathed out.
“You would win in the end,” Reacher said. “Probably. Some kind of justifiable homicide, or self defense. But nothing is certain. Also you’re foreigners. Overall it would be a rollercoaster. You wouldn’t be allowed to leave the state. All they get here is the Red Sox. You need to think about this carefully.”
She said nothing.
Reacher said, “Most likely better if we don’t call the cops.”
Mark started to struggle.
Reacher said to Patty, “He wanted to leave Shorty to die.”
She paused a long moment.
She looked down at the gun in her hand.
“Come around,” Reacher said. “So you’re pointing it away from me.”