Personal (Jack Reacher, #19)- Lee Child Page 0,117

bed. Their children were already in bed. Pretty soon we would be completely boxed in by sleeping people. Here and there I saw the blue flicker of some night owl’s television, a movie, perhaps, or soccer, or a documentary feature, which I hoped was illuminating in the educational sense, because it certainly wasn’t in the physical sense. We were hunting a giant in the dark.

And getting nowhere, until I did fourth what I should have done first, which was to put myself in his shoes, to think like him, to be him, just for a moment. What would I have done? No gun, bodyguards down, driver too far away to summon, a sideways skip down the alley too slow. Not that I needed to run, and not that I needed support. I could do fine by myself. I was Little Joey Green, and I had been all my life.

But I liked an audience.

Of which there was a shortage, at that particular moment. The lawn bowling World Series was not currently under way. All around us people were closing their drapes and closing their eyes. There was only one place Joey might find an audience. Possibly. An audience of one, admittedly, but committed. An ally, maybe even a friend already, and a fellow professional, Joey might like to think.

John Kott might be watching, through the night-vision binoculars.

Or through a night-vision scope.

I made a sign and Casey Nice killed the light, and we inched around to the far back corner of the hut, which put us level with the windows, which meant we were within a degree or two of the same view we had gotten before, through the binoculars, from where we had seen the whole fine square of lawn, which we saw again, but this time with Little Joey in the middle of it, the giant all alone under the yellow night-time sky, dancing, swinging his hips, shuffling his feet, waving his arms, and jerking his head from side to side.

I knew immediately what he was doing, and how, and why. Some kind of animal cunning. Some kind of rodent intelligence. It’s a DNA thing. Like rats. He had no gun in his hand. How could he take the guns out of our hands? Boxed in by sleeping people. Their children were already in bed. He was dancing to make us miss. Which we couldn’t afford to do. Not there. Not that we would have missed. Not ninety-nine times in a hundred. Or better. This is like one of those philosophy questions that people debate in the newspapers. What odds would a responsible person need? But even a good clean hit could be a through-and-through. The soft tissue of the neck, maybe. Which wouldn’t slow a bullet. Next stop, a bedroom painted blue or pink. Or the bullet might nick bone and skip away at an unpredictable angle, low and wide. It might hit a night owl, before the game had ended. Tied score, maybe, and into overtime. He would never know what happened.

Could I make the shot? Hell yes. Little Joey was big enough. Should I take the shot? With sleeping children behind him, to the left and the right, behind thin panes of glass?

We pulled back into the shadows, and we leaned on the wall of the hut. We could afford to let him dance a minute more, I thought. It might tire him out. Which might help. I hoped.

Nice and Bennett slipped around the edge of the green, to the far side, on what looked like a well-worn gravel track. Maybe referees ran up and down. Or umpires. I had no idea of the rules of the game. Bennett went further than Nice, until they were about twenty feet apart, triangulated, so they both had the hut dead in line behind Joey, so if they had to shoot, with no alternative, then at least their misses might get stopped by the sixty-year-old wood. Or worst case, delayed.

I had no front pockets, so I put my guns in my back pants pockets. Then I stepped on to the grass. I tracked to my left, to keep Joey’s bulk between me and his distant house, with its numerous firing positions behind its numerous oversize windows. Four hundred yards. Less than a second. Flash one thousa game over.

I walked on, slowly. Towards Joey. He saw me coming, looming up out of the yellow gloom, and I saw a flash of teeth as he smiled, and he backed away, towards the