Free Nothing to Lose by Lee Child Page A

picture.”
    “He’s not my boyfriend.”
    “Isn’t he?”
    “He’s my husband.”
    “You’re young, to be married.”
    “We’re in love.”
    “You’re not wearing a ring.”
    Her left hand was on the table. She withdrew it quickly, into her lap. But there had been no ring on her finger, and no tan line.
    “It was kind of sudden,” she said. “Kind of hurried. We figured we’d get rings later.”
    “Isn’t it a part of the ceremony?”
    “No,” she said. “That’s a myth. I’m not pregnant either, just in case that’s what you’re thinking.”
    “Not for a minute.”
    “Good.”
    “Show me the picture.”
    She hauled the gray messenger bag into her lap and rooted around for a moment and came out with a fat leather wallet. There was a billfold part straining against a little strap, and a change-purse part. There was a plastic window on the outside with a California driver’s license behind it, with her picture on it. She unpopped the little strap and opened the billfold and riffled through a concertina of plastic photograph windows. Slid a slim fingertip into one of them and eased a snapshot out. She passed it across the table. It had been cut down out of a standard six-by-four one-hour print. The edges were not entirely straight. It showed the girl standing on a street with golden light and palm trees and a row of neat boutiques behind her. She was smiling widely, vibrant with love and joy and happiness, leaning forward a little as if her whole body was clenching with the onset of uncontrollable giggles. She was in the arms of a guy about her age. He was very tall and blond and heavy. An athlete. He had blue eyes and a buzz cut and a dark tan and a wide smile.
    “This is your husband?” Reacher asked.
    The girl said, “Yes.”

15
    Reacher squared the snapshot on the tabletop in front of him. Looked at the girl across from him and asked, “How old is this photo?”
    “Recent.”
    “May I see your driver’s license?”
    “Why?”
    “Something I need to check.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I already know your name isn’t Anne. I know you don’t go to school in Miami. My guess would be UCLA. This photograph looks like it was taken somewhere around there. It has that LA kind of feel.”
    The girl said nothing.
    Reacher said, “I’m not here to hurt you.”
    She paused and then slid her wallet across the table. He glanced at her license. Most of it was visible behind the milky plastic window. Her name was Lucy Anderson. No middle name. Anderson, hence Anne, perhaps.
    “Lucy,” he said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
    “I’m sorry about not telling you the truth.”
    “Don’t worry about it. Why should you?”
    “My friends call me Lucky. Like a mispronunciation. Like a nickname.”
    “I hope you always are.”
    “Me too. I have been so far.”
    Her license said she was coming up to twenty years old. It said her address was an apartment on a street he knew to be close to the main UCLA campus. He had been in LA not long before. Its geography was still familiar to him. Her sex was specified as female, which was clearly accurate, and her eyes were listed as blue, which was an understatement.
    She was five feet eight inches tall.
    Which made her husband at least six feet four. Maybe six feet five. He towered over her. He was huge. He looked to be well over two hundred pounds. Maybe Reacher’s own size. Maybe even bigger. His arms were as thick as the palm trunks behind him.
    Not the guy in the dark. Not even close. Way too big. The guy in the dark had been Lucy Anderson’s size.
    Reacher slid the wallet back across the table. Followed it with the photograph.
    Lucy Anderson asked, “Did you see him?”
    Reacher shook his head.
    “No,” he said. “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
    “He has to be there somewhere.”
    “What’s he running from?”
    She looked to the right. “Why would he be running from something?”
    “Just a wild guess,” Reacher said.
    “Who are