She crept closer.
Now Scorpio was off the phone. There was no discernible sound at all. Maybe a low hum. Maybe the noise of a fan. Certainly no gunshots or screams or cries for help.
She crept closer.
She put her eye to the gap.
No angle.
She put her fingertips on the door and pushed it open.
Sanderson pulled over in a strip mall lot. She put the lever in park, but she kept the engine running. The Durango was full of gas. It was ready for a long trip somewhere. A sales trip. Idaho, maybe, or Washington state.
She said, ‘Turns out there are a lot of nerves in the groin.’
‘Who knew?’ Reacher said.
‘Sy was in pain all the time. Also addicted, of course. At first he got treatment direct from the Marine Corps. Then they stopped prescribing. No reason was given. At first he thought it was medical caution. These were powerful opiates, after all. But he needed them. He argued about it, but it got him nowhere. So he started doctor shopping. He drove all over. Then he started buying. Which was easy enough. Back then there was plenty to go around. Which made him mad. Every other faucet was wide open. Why was the Corps being cautious? He got back to them. They let something slip. Turned out it wasn’t caution about prescribing. Their inventory was all screwed up. They were running out.’
‘Someone was stealing.’
‘Sy made it his life’s work to find out who. On behalf of himself and his brother Marines. He was made for the job. He was already buying, after all. He was already in the network. All he had to do was poke around a little. Eventually he figured it out and wrote it up and sent it to the Defense Intelligence Agency.’
‘Why them?’
‘He had a theory. DIA spanned all the services. Better than sending it direct to the Marine Corps. They might bury it.’
‘What happened?’
‘We waited. We figured five or six days. The mails are slow from here. But he was sure they would get back to us immediately. What actually happened was we heard nothing for six months. Then he got the arrest warrant.’
‘Someone was covering his ass.’
‘That’s what Sy thought. He gave it up, there and then. You win some, you lose some. You can’t fight city hall. We went up to the high woods, because it was the start of spring. The first tiny shoots were out. He was happy as can be. He was an east coast guy, really, quite reserved in his nature, but he was messing around that day and chewing on a stick and pretending to be a mountain man. We lay down on the ground. We had stuff in our pockets. A day like that, we both knew we were going to chase it. We were going to hit it hard. We were a couple who shared a hobby. We wanted to make it epic together.’
‘What happened?’
‘He died.’
Nakamura pushed the door. Six inches, eight, ten, twelve. She leaned in the room. Scorpio had his back to her. He was sitting alone at a long bench covered with humming computers. Tower units, screens, keyboards, mice. The room was hot. A fan was running. She took out her badge and her gun. She pushed the door all the way open.
Scorpio heard it. Or felt the air, or sensed her presence.
He turned around.
‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘Let me see your hands.’
He said, ‘You’re trespassing.’
‘You’re committing a crime.’
‘You’re harassing me.’
She took a step and raised her gun.
She said, ‘Face down on the floor.’
He said, ‘You’re making a fool of yourself. I’m doing my accounts after a long hard day. So I can pay my taxes to pay your wages. One of the many burdens a small businessman bears.’
‘You’re hacking pharmaceutical industry security. Which is supervised by the federal government. Are they going to find Russian software? In which case you’re in a lot of trouble.’
‘I run a laundromat.’
‘The laundromat of the future. It looks like IBM in here. But your system just crashed. Check your GPS. Your panel van is stuck in a snowplough shed. Reacher took the key. And everything else.’
Scorpio went quiet.
She put her badge away and took out her handcuffs.
Then it all fell apart.
Behind her a guy walked through the open door with two go-cups of coffee from the convenience store. Black coat, black sweater, black pants, black shoes. More than six feet tall. A bruise on his neck. She had seen him before.
Scorpio hit her in the back of her head, and she sprawled on the floor, and her gun went clattering away. She was dazed for a second, and felt herself being mauled and manhandled, and then she came to sitting on the floor, cuffed to a table leg. With her own handcuffs. Her skirt was up. She pulled it down, one-handed. Her bag was gone. With her phone.
Scorpio asked her, ‘What did you mean, everything else?’
She said, ‘All of it.’
The guy in black said, ‘Want me to go check it out?’
‘We’ll both go,’ Scorpio said.
He looked at the alley door, at the inner door, at Nakamura.
‘Bring the car to the front,’ he said. ‘I’ll go out that way. We’ll leave her right here.’
The guy in black hustled out. Scorpio locked the alley door. He sat down and stared at a screen.
Nakamura said, ‘You’re out of business.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll never be out of business. It’s about moving on, that’s all. One door closes, another door opens. Nothing lasts for ever. I’ll get what I need somewhere else. I always did before.’
He left her there, sitting on the floor, handcuffed to the table. He turned out the lights. He stepped through the inner door to the laundromat. He closed the door behind him. The office went pitch dark. She heard the door lock from the other side. Then immediately she heard the street door open. Not Scorpio going out. Too soon. He was still thirty feet away. It was someone else coming in. The guy in black, presumably. With the car.
But then she heard a muffled voice.
Familiar.
She thought it said, ‘What have you got in your pockets?’
Sanderson said, ‘Afterwards I realized he wasn’t chewing on a stick. Or just a stick. It was to hide himself chewing on something else too. He had started the party early. He was going for the big OD. One fatal dose on the walk up the hill, and another when we got there. He hated his life. The thing with the DIA kept him going. But that was over now. They had closed ranks against him. He gave up. He decided this time, when he knocked on the gates, if they opened for him, he would go in.’
Reacher said nothing.
‘And why not?’ she said. ‘It was the end of everything. He had no money. Which was different for him. Like me being unlucky. I watched him go. He started out good. He was happy as could be. I guess he knew what was coming. He was lying on his back, with the smell of pine all around. His breathing got slower and slower. Then it stopped. That’s how it was.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I was too. For myself. For him, I was happy. It was for the best. Like people say. I left him there. He loved those hillsides. He loved the animals there. I packed my stuff and drove home.’