Free Hard Way by Lee Child Page A

are they using the Jaguar?"
    "It's a taunt," Reacher said. "It's to remind you."
    Lane nodded.
    "Office," he said. "Burke, and Reacher."
    In the office Lane took a small silver Samsung phone out of a charging cradle and handed it to Burke. Then he disappeared, to his bedroom, maybe.
    "Gone to get the money," Burke said.
    Reacher nodded. Gazed at the twin portraits on the desk. Two beautiful women, both equally stunning, roughly the same age, but with no real similarities. Anne Lane had been blonde and blue, somehow a child of the sixties even though she must have been born well after that decade was over. She had long straight hair parted in the middle, like a singer or a model or an actress. She had clear guileless eyes and an innocent smile. A flower child, even though house or hip hop or acid jazz would have been the thing when she got her first record player. Kate Lane was more a child of the eighties or nineties. More subtle, more worldly, more accomplished.
    "No kids with Anne, right?" Reacher asked.
    "No," Burke said. "Thank God."
    So maybe motherhood accounted for the difference. There was a weight to Kate, a gravity, a heft, not physical, but somewhere deep inside her. Choose one to spend the night with, you might well pick Anne. To spend the week with, you might want Kate.
    Lane came back awkwardly with a bulging leather bag. He dropped the bag on the floor and sat down at his desk.
    "How long?" he asked.
    "Forty minutes," Reacher said.
    Burke checked his watch.
    "Yes," he said. "Forty minutes."
    "Go wait in the other room," Lane said. "Leave me alone."
    Burke went for the bag but Reacher picked it up for him. It was heavy and wide, and easier for a big guy to manage. He carried it to the foyer and dropped it near the door where its predecessor had waited twelve hours before. It flopped and settled like the same dead animal.
    Reacher took a seat and started counting off the minutes. Burke paced. Carter Groom drummed his fingers on the arm of a chair, frustrated. The Re-con Marine, beached. I'm all business, he had said. I'm nothing, away from the action. Next to him Gregory sat quiet, all British reserve. Next to him was Perez, the Latino, tiny. Next to him was Addison, with the scarred face. A knife, probably, Reacher thought. Then Kowalski, taller than the others but still small next to Reacher himself. Special Forces guys were usually small. They were usually lean, fast, and whippy. Built for endurance and stamina and full of smarts and cunning. Like foxes, not like bears.
    Nobody talked. There was nothing to talk about, except the fact that the end of a kidnap was always the period of greatest risk. What was there that compelled kidnappers to keep their word? Honour? A sense of business ethics? Why risk a complex transfer when a shallow grave and a bullet in the victim's head were a whole lot safer and simpler? Humanity? Decency? Reacher glanced at Kate Lane's picture next to the phone and went a little cold. She was closer to dead now than at any point in the last three days, and he knew it. He guessed they all knew it.
    "Time," Burke said. "I'm going."
    "I'll carry the bag for you," Reacher said. "You know, down to the car."
    They rode down in the elevator. In the ground floor lobby a small dark woman in a long black coat swept past surrounded by tall men in suits, like staff or assistants or bodyguards.
    "Was that Yoko?" Reacher said.
    But Burke didn't answer. He just walked past the doorman and out to the curb. The black BMW was waiting there. Burke opened the rear door.
    "Stick the bag on the back seat," he said. "Easier for me that way, for a seat-to-seat transfer."
    "I'm coming with you," Reacher said.
    That's stupid, man."
    "I'll be on the floor in back. It'll be safe enough."
    "What's the point?"
    'We have to do something. You know as well as I do there's not going to be any cute little Checkpoint Charlie scene in this story. She's not going to come tottering toward us through the mist and the fog,