Tripwire Part 20

'G.o.d, she can't breathe,' Marilyn gasped.

She went to rip the tape off again, but Hobie kicked her hand away.

'You broke her nose,' Marilyn said. 'She can't breathe.'

The gun was pointing down at her head. Held steady. Eighteen inches away.

'She's going to die,' Marilyn said.

'That's for d.a.m.n sure,' Hobie said back.

She stared up at him in horror. Blood was rasping and bubbling in Sheryl's fractured airways. Her eyes were staring in panic. Her chest was heaving. Hobie's eyes were on Marilyn's face.

'You want me to be nice?' he asked.

She nodded wildly.

'Are you going to be nice back?'

She stared at her friend. Her chest was convulsing, heaving for air that wasn't there. Her head was shaking from side to side. Hobie leaned down and turned the hook so the point was rasping across the tape on Sheryl's mouth as her head jerked back and forth. Then he jabbed hard and forced the point through the silver. Sheryl froze. Hobie moved his arm, left and right, up and down. Pulled the hook back out. There was a ragged hole left in the tape, with air whistling in and out. The tape sucked and blew against her lips as Sheryl gasped and panted.

'I was nice,' Hobie said. 'So now you owe me, OK?'

Sheryl's breathing was sucking hard through the hole in the tape. She was concentrating on it. Her eyes were squinting down, like she was confirming there was air in front of her to use. Marilyn was watching her, sitting back on her heels, cold with terror.

'Help her to the car,' Hobie said.

TEN

Chester Stone was alone in the bathroom on the eighty-eighth floor. Tony had forced him to go in there. Not physically. He had just stood there and pointed silently, and Stone had scuttled across the carpet in his unders.h.i.+rt and shorts, with his dark socks and polished shoes on his feet. Then Tony had lowered his arm and stopped pointing and told him to stay in there and closed the door on him. There had been m.u.f.fled sounds out in the office, and after a few minutes the two men must have left, because Stone heard doors shutting and the nearby whine of the elevator. Then it had gone dark and silent.

He sat on the bathroom floor with his back against the grey granite tiling, staring into the silence. The bathroom door was not locked. He knew that. There had been no fiddling or clicking when the door closed. He was cold. The floor was hard tile, and the chill was striking up through the thin cotton of his boxers. He started s.h.i.+vering. He was hungry, and thirsty.

He listened carefully. Nothing. He eased himself up off the floor and stepped to the sink. Turned the faucet and listened again over the trickle of water. Nothing. He bent his head and drank. His teeth touched the metal of the faucet and he tasted the chlorine taste of city water. He held a mouthful unswallowed and let it soak into his dry tongue. Then he gulped it down and turned the faucet off.

He waited an hour. A whole hour, sitting on the floor, staring at the unlocked door, listening to the silence. It was hurting where the guy had hit him. A hard ache, where the fist had glanced off his ribs. Bone against bone, solid, jarring. Then a soft, nauseated feeling in his gut where the blow had landed. He kept his eyes on the door, trying to tune out the pain. The building boomed and rumbled gently, like there were other people in the world, but they were far away. The elevators and the air-conditioning and the rush of water in the pipes and the play of the breeze on the windows added and cancelled to a low, comfortable whisper, just below the point of easy audibility. He thought he could hear elevator doors opening and closing, maybe eighty-eight floors down, faint ba.s.s thumps s.h.i.+vering upward through the shafts.

He was cold, and cramped, and hungry, and hurting, and scared. He stood up, bent with cramp and pain, and listened. Nothing. He slid his leather soles across the tile. Stood with his hand on the doork.n.o.b. Listened hard. Still nothing. He opened the door. The huge office was dim and silent. Empty. He padded straight across the carpet and stopped near the door out to the reception area. Now he was nearer the elevator banks. He could hear the cars whining up and down inside the shafts. He listened at the door. Nothing. He opened the door. The reception area was dim and deserted. The oak gleamed pale and there were random gleams coming off the bra.s.s accents. He could hear the motor running inside a refrigerator in the kitchen to his right. He could smell cold stale coffee.

The door out to the lobby was locked. It was a big, thick door, probably fire-resistant in line with severe city codes. It was faced in pale oak, and he could see the dull gleam of steel in the gap where it met the frame. He shook the handle, and it didn't move at all. He stood there for a long time, facing the door, peering out through the tiny wired gla.s.s window, thirty feet away from the elevator b.u.t.tons and freedom. Then he turned back to the counter.

It was chest high, viewed from the front. In back, there was a desktop level, and the chest-high barrier was made up of cubbyholes with office stationery and folders stacked neatly inside. There was a telephone on the desktop part, in front of Tony's chair. The telephone was a complicated console, with a handset on the left and b.u.t.tons on the right under a small oblong window. The window was a grey LCD readout that said off. He picked up the handset and heard nothing except the blood hissing in his ear. He pressed random b.u.t.tons. Nothing. He quartered the console, tracing his finger left-to-right across every b.u.t.ton, searching. He found a b.u.t.ton marked operate. He pressed it and the little screen changed to enter code. He pressed random numbers and the screen changed back to off.

There were cupboards under the desktop. Little oak doors. They were all locked. He shook each of them in turn and heard little metal tongues striking metal plates. He walked back into Hobie's office. Walked through the furniture to the desk. There was nothing on the sofas. His clothes were gone. Nothing on the desktop. The desk drawers were locked. It was a solid desk, expensive, ruined by the gouges from the hook, and the drawer locks felt tight. He squatted down, ridiculous in his underwear, and pulled at the handles. They moved a fraction, then stopped. He saw the trash can, under the desk. It was a bra.s.s cylinder, not tall. He tilted it over. His wallet was in there, empty and forlorn. The picture of Marilyn was next to it, face down. The paper was printed over and over on the back: kodak. He reached into the can and picked it up. Turned it over. She smiled out at him. It was a casual head-and-shoulders shot. She was wearing the silk dress. The s.e.xy one, the one she'd had custom-made. She didn't know he knew she'd had it made. He had been home alone when the store called. He'd told them to call back, and let her believe he thought it was off-the-peg. In the photo, she was wearing it for the first time. She was smiling shyly, her eyes animated with daring, telling him not to go too low with the lens, not down to where the thin silk clung to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He cradled the picture in his palm and stared at it, and then he placed it back in the can, because he had no pockets.

He stood up urgently and stepped around the leather chair to the wall of windows. Pushed the slats of the blind apart with both hands and looked out. He had to do something. But he was eighty-eight floors up. Nothing to see except the river and New Jersey. No neighbours opposite to gesture urgently at. Nothing at all opposite, until the Appalachians reached Pennsylvania. He let the blinds fall back and paced every inch of the office, every inch of the reception area, and back into the office to do it all over again. Hopeless. He was in a prison. He stood in the centre of the floor, s.h.i.+vering, focusing on nothing.

He was hungry. He had no idea what time it was. The office had no clock and he had no watch. The sun was getting low in the west. Late afternoon or early evening, and he hadn't eaten lunch. He crept to the office door. Listened again. Nothing except the comfortable hum of the building and the rattle of the refrigerator motor. He stepped out and crossed to the kitchen. He paused with his finger on the light switch, and then he dared to turn it on. A fluorescent tube kicked in. It flickered for a second and threw a flat glare across the room and added an angry buzz from its circuitry. The kitchen was small, with a token stainless-steel sink and an equal length of counter. Rinsed mugs upside down, and a filter machine tarred with old coffee. A tiny refrigerator under the counter. There was milk in there and a six-pack of beer, and a Zabar's bag, neatly folded shut. He pulled it out. There was something wrapped in newspaper. It was heavy, and solid. He stood up and unrolled the paper on the counter. There was a plastic bag inside. He gripped the bottom, and the severed hand thumped out on the counter. The fingers were white and curled, and there was spongy purple flesh and splintered white bone and empty blue tubes trailing at the wrist. Then the glare of the fluorescent light spun around and tilted past his gaze as he fainted to the floor.

Reacher put the pizza box on the elevator floor and took the gun out of his belt and zipped it into the sports bag with the spare sh.e.l.ls. Then he crouched and picked up the pizza again in time for the elevator door to slide back on the fourth floor. The apartment opened up as soon as he stepped within range of the fish-eye in the door. Jodie was standing just inside the hallway, waiting for him. She was still in the linen dress. It was slightly creased across the hips, from sitting all day. Her long brown legs were scissored, one foot in front of the other.

'I brought dinner,' he said.

She looked at the sports bag instead.

'Last chance, Reacher. We should talk with somebody about all of this.'

'No,' he said.

He put the bag on the floor and she stepped behind him to lock the door.

'OK,' she said. 'If this is the government doing something, maybe you're right. Maybe we should stay away from the cops.'

'Right,' he said.

'So I'm with you on this.'

'Let's eat,' he said.

He walked through to the kitchen with the pizza. She had set the table. There were two place settings, opposite each other. Plates, knives and forks, paper napkins, gla.s.ses of iced water. Like two people were resident in the apartment. He put the box on the counter and opened it up.

'You choose,' he said.

She was standing close behind him. He could feel her there. He could smell her perfume. He felt the flat of her hand touch his back. It burned. She left it there for a second, then she used it to move him out of the way.

'Let's split it,' she said.

She balanced the box on her arm and carried it back to the table. Pulled the slices off each other while the box canted and wobbled. Shared them between the plates. He sat and sipped the water and watched her. She was slender and energetic and could make any mundane activity look like a graceful ballet. She turned away and dumped the greasy box and turned back. The dress twisted and flowed with her. She sat down. He heard the whisper of linen on skin and her foot hit his knee under the table.

'Sorry,' she said.

She wiped her fingers on the napkin and tossed her hair behind her shoulders and held her head at an angle for the first bite. She ate left-handed, rolling the wedge into a point, attacking it hungrily.

'No lunch,' she said. 'You told me not to leave the building.'

She darted her tongue out and caught a thread of cheese. Smiled self-consciously as she hooked it back between her lips. They shone with the oil. She took a long drink of water. 'Anchovies, my favourite. How did you know? But they make you thirsty later, don't they? So salty.'

Her dress was sleeveless and he could see her arms, all the way down from the little k.n.o.b of bone at the top of the shoulder. They were slim and brown and narrow. Almost no muscle there at all, just tiny biceps like tendons. She was gorgeous and she took his breath away, but she was a puzzle, physically. She was tall, but she was so tiny he didn't see how there was room for all the essential organs inside her. She was as thin as a stick, but looked vibrant and firm and strong. A puzzle. He remembered the feel of her arm around his waist, fifteen years before. Like somebody was tightening a thick rope around his middle.

'I can't stay here tonight,' he said.

She looked across at him. 'Why not? You got some- thing to do, I'll come do it too. Like I said, I'm with you on this.'

'No, I just can't stay,' he said.

'Why not?' she asked again.

He took a deep breath and held it. Her hair was s.h.i.+mmering in the light.

'It's not appropriate that I should stay here,' he said.

'But why not?'

He shrugged, embarra.s.sed. 'Just because, Jodie. Because you're thinking of me like a brother or an uncle or something, because of Leon, but I'm not that, ami?'

She was staring at him.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

Her eyes were wide. 'What?'

'This is not right,' he said gently. 'You're not my sister or my niece. That's just an illusion because I was close to your dad. To me, you're a beautiful woman, and I can't be here alone with you.'

'Why not?' she asked again, breathless.

'Christ, Jodie, why not? Because it's not appropriate, that's why not. You don't need to hear all the details. You're not my sister or my niece, and I can't keep on pretending you are. It's driving me crazy, pretending.'

She was very still. Staring at him. Still breathless.

'How long have you felt this way?' she asked.

He shrugged, embarra.s.sed again. 'Always, I guess. Since I first met you. Give me a break, Jodie, you weren't a kid. I was nearer your age than Leon's.'

She was silent. He held his breath, waiting for the tears. The outrage. The trauma. She was just staring at him. He was already regretting having spoken. He should have just kept his d.a.m.n mouth shut. Bitten his d.a.m.n lip and gotten through it. He had been through worse, although he couldn't exactly remember where or when. '

'I'm sorry,' he said again.

Her face was blank. Wide blue eyes staring at him. Her elbows were on the table. The dress fabric was bunching at the front and cupping forward. He could see the strap of her bra, thin and white against the skin of her shoulder. He stared at her anguished face and closed his eyes and sighed in despair. Honesty was the best policy? Forget about it.

Then she did a curious thing. She stood up slowly, and turned and hauled her chair out of the way. Stepped forward and gripped the table edge, both hands, slim muscles standing out like cords. She dragged the table off to one side. Then she changed position and turned and b.u.t.ted it with her thighs until it was hard back against the counter. Reacher was left sitting on his chair, suddenly isolated in the middle of the room. She stepped back and stood in front of him. His breath froze in his chest.

'You're thinking of me like just a woman?' she asked, slowly.

He nodded.

'Not like a kid sister? Not like your niece?'

He shook his head. She paused.

's.e.xually?' she asked quietly.

He nodded, still embarra.s.sed, resigned. 'Of course s.e.xually. What do you think? Look at yourself. I could hardly sleep last night.'

She just stood there.

'I had to tell you,' he said. 'I'm really sorry, Jodie.'

She closed her eyes. Screwed them tight shut. Then he saw a smile. It spread across her whole face. Her hands clenched at her side. She exploded forward and hurled herself at him. She landed on his lap and her arms clamped tight behind his head and she kissed him like she would die if she stopped.

It was Sheryl's car, but he made Marilyn drive it. He sat in the back, behind Marilyn, with Sheryl next to him with her arms crushed behind her. The tape was still on her mouth, and she was breathing hard. He kept the hook resting on her lap, with the point dug in against the skin of her thigh. His left hand held the gun. He touched it to the back of Marilyn's neck often enough that she never forgot it was there.

Tony met them in the underground garage. Office hours were over and the place was quiet. Tony handled Sheryl and Hobie took Marilyn and the four of them rode up in the freight elevator. Hobie unlocked the door from the corridor and stepped into the reception area. The kitchen light was on. Stone was sprawled on the floor, in his underwear. Marilyn gasped and ran to him. Hobie watched the sway of her body under the thin dress and smiled. Turned back and locked the door. Pocketed the keys and the gun. Marilyn had stopped short and was staring into the kitchen, hands up at her mouth again, eyes wide, horror in her face. Hobie followed her gaze. The hand was lying on the counter, palm up, fingers curled like a beggar's. Then Marilyn was looking downward in terror.

'Don't worry,' Hobie said. 'It's not one of his. But it's a thought, isn't it? I could cut his hand off if he doesn't do what I want.'

Marilyn stared at him.

'Or I could cut yours off,' he said to her. 'I could make him watch. Maybe I could make him do it for me.'

'You're insane,' Marilyn said.

'He would, you know,' Hobie said. 'He'd do anything. He's pathetic. Look at him, in his underwear. You think he looks good in his underwear?'

She said nothing.

'What about you?' Hobie asked. 'Do you look good in your underwear? You want to take that dress off and show me?'

She stared at him in panic.

'No?' he said. 'OK, maybe later. But what about your real-estate agent? You think she'd look good in her underwear?'

He turned to Sheryl. She was backing away against the door, leaning hard on her taped arms. She stiffened.

'What about it?' he said to her. 'You look good in your underwear?'

She stared and shook her head wildly. Her breathing whistled through the hole in the tape. Hobie stepped nearer and pinned her against the door and forced the tip of his hook under the waistband of her skirt.

'Let's check it out.'

He wrenched with the hook and Sheryl staggered off-balance and the fabric tore open. b.u.t.tons scattered and she fell to her knees. He raised his foot and used the flat of his sole to push her all the way over. He nodded to Tony. Tony ducked down and pulled the torn skirt down off her thras.h.i.+ng legs.

'Panty hose,' Hobie said. 'G.o.d, I hate panty hose. So unromantic'

He stooped and used the tip of the hook to tear the nylon to shreds. Her shoes came off. Tony balled the skirt and the shoes and the torn nylon and carried it to the kitchen. Dropped it into the trash. Sheryl scrabbled her bare legs under her and sat there gasping through the tape. She was wearing tiny white panties and was trying to make the tails of her blouse fall down over them. Marilyn was watching her, open mouthed in horror.

'OK, now we're having fun,' Hobie said. 'Aren't we?'

'You bet,' Tony said. 'But not as much fun as we're going to have.'

Hobie laughed and Stone stirred. Marilyn ducked down and helped him to a sitting position on the kitchen floor. Hobie stepped over and picked up the severed hand from the countertop.