Gerrardsville, Colorado. One tragic event. Two witnesses. Two conflicting accounts. One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus – clearly suicide. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what really happened – a man in grey hoodie and jeans, swift and silent as a shadow, pushed the victim to her death, before grabbing her bag and sauntering away. The 27th book in the thrilling Jack Reacher series.
ONE
The meeting was held in a room with no windows.
The room was rectangular and it had no windows
because it had no external walls. It was contained
within a larger, square room. And the square room was contained
within an even larger octagonal room. Together this
nest of rooms formed the command hub of Unit S2 at the
Minerva Correctional Facility in Winson, Mississippi. Along
with its sister segregation unit, S1, it was the most secure
place in the complex. It was laid out with walls like the
concentric rings of a medieval castle. Designed to be impregnable.
From the outside, even if attacked by the most
determined rescuers. And from the inside, even during the
most extreme riot.
The safety aspect was welcome but the reason the hub had
been chosen for this meeting was its seclusion. The opportunity
it offered for complete secrecy. Because the rest of
Unit S2 was vacant. There were no guards. No admin staff.
And none of its hundred and twenty isolation cells were in
use. They weren’t needed. Not with the way the prison was
run under its current management. The progressive
approach was a cause of great pride. And great PR.
There were six men in the room, and this was the third covert
meeting they’d held there in the last week. The men were
spread out around a long, narrow table and there were two
spare chairs pushed back against a blank, white wall. The furniture
was made of bright blue polycarbonate. Each piece was
cast in a single mould, leaving no joins or seams. The shape
and material made the items hard to break. The colour made
it hard to conceal any parts that did somehow get smashed
off. It was practical. But not very comfortable. And all left over
from the previous administration.
Three of the men were wearing suits. Bruno Hix, Minerva’s
Chief Executive and joint founder, at the head of the
table. Damon Brockman, Chief Operating Officer and the
other joint founder, to Hix’s right. And Curtis Riverdale,
the prison’s warden, next to Brockman. The man next to
Riverdale, the last one on that side of the table, was wearing
a uniform. He was Rod Moseley, Chief of the Winson Police
Department. On the opposite side, to Hix’s left, were two
guys in their late twenties. Both were wearing black T-shirts
and jeans. One had a broken nose and two black eyes and a
forehead full of angry purple bruises. The other had his left
arm in a sling. Both were trying to avoid the other men’s
eyes.
‘So is there a problem or not?’ Brockman shrugged his
shoulders. ‘Can anyone say for sure that there is? No. Therefore
we should go ahead as planned. There’s too much at
stake to start running from shadows.’
‘No.’ Riverdale shook his head. ‘If there might be a
problem, that means there is a problem, the way I see things.
Safety first. We should—’
‘We should find out for sure,’ Moseley said. ‘Make an
informed decision. The key is, did the guy look in the envelope?
That’s what we need to know.’
No one spoke.
‘Well?’ Moseley stretched his leg out under the table and
kicked the guy with the sling. ‘Wake up. Answer the question.’
‘Give me a break.’ The guy stifled a yawn. ‘We had to drive
all night to get to Colorado. And all night again to get back
here.’
‘Cry me a river.’ Moseley prodded the guy with his foot.
‘Just tell us. Did he look?’
The guy stared at the wall. ‘We don’t know.’
‘Looking in the envelope isn’t definitive,’ Riverdale said. ‘If
he did look, we need to know if he understood what he saw.
And what he plans to do about it.’
‘Whether the guy looked is irrelevant,’ Brockman said. ‘So
what if he did? Nothing in there gives the slightest clue to
what’s going on.’
Riverdale shook his head. ‘It mentions ten a.m. on Friday.
Very clearly. The time, the date, the place.’
‘So what?’ Brockman raised his hands. ‘Friday’s an occasion
for joy and celebration. There’s nothing remotely
suspicious about it.’
‘But the photograph was in there.’ Riverdale jabbed the air
with his finger in time with each syllable. ‘Eight by ten.
Impossible to miss.’
‘And again, that means nothing.’ Brockman threw himself
back in his chair. ‘Not unless the guy actually comes here. If
he shows up on Friday. And even then we’d be OK. We chose
very carefully.’
‘We didn’t. How could we? We only had nine to pick from.’
A smile flashed across Moseley’s face. ‘Ironic, isn’t it? That
the one we picked really is innocent.’
‘I wouldn’t call it ironic.’ Riverdale scowled. ‘And there
weren’t nine. There were only five. The others had family.
That ruled them out.’
‘Nine?’ Brockman said. ‘Five? Whatever. The number
doesn’t matter. Only the outcome matters. And the outcome
is good enough. Even if the guy shows up, how close would
he get? He’d be a hundred feet away, at least.’
‘He doesn’t have to show up. He could see it on TV. Online.
Read about it in the newspapers.’
‘The warden has a point,’ Moseley said. ‘Maybe it would be
better not to draw so much attention this time. Maybe we
should cancel the media. We could float some BS about
respecting the inmates’ privacy, or something.’
‘No need.’ Brockman shook his head. ‘You think this guy
has a television? A computer? A subscription to the New York
Times ? He’s destitute, for goodness’ sake. Stop looking for
trouble. There isn’t any.’
“Hobo or millionaire, what kind of crazy person would travel halfway across the country because he read a few documents and saw an innocuous picture?”
Hix tapped his fingertips on the tabletop. ‘Media exposure
is good for the brand. We always publicize. We always have.
If we change now, we would only attract more attention.
Make people think something is wrong. But I do think we
need to know. Did he look?’ Hix turned to the guys in the T-shirts.
‘Best guess. No wrong answer. The chips fell where
they fell. We understand that. Just tell us what you believe.’
The guy with the broken nose took a deep breath through
his mouth. ‘I think he looked.’
‘You think?’ Hix said. ‘But you’re not sure.’
‘Not one hundred per cent.’
‘OK. Where was the envelope?’
‘In the bag.’
‘Where was the bag?’
‘On the ground.’
‘You put it down?’
‘I needed my hands free.’
‘Where was it when the car arrived?’ Hix said.
The guy with the sling said, ‘On the ground.’
‘In the same place?’
‘How could we know? I wasn’t there when Robert put it
down. Robert wasn’t conscious when I picked it up.’
Hix paused for a moment. ‘OK. How long was the guy
alone with the bag?’
‘We don’t know. Can’t have been long. A couple of minutes,
max.’
‘So it’s possible he looked,’ Hix said. ‘Glanced, anyway.’
‘Right,’ the guy with the broken nose said. ‘And the bag
was ripped, remember. How did that happen? And why? We
didn’t do it.’
Brockman leaned forward. ‘It was a crazy scene, from what
you told us. Wreckage everywhere. Total chaos. The bag
probably got ripped by accident. It doesn’t sound like some
major clue. And the other two haven’t reported that he
looked.’
The guy with the sling said, ‘They haven’t reported at all.
We don’t know where they are.’
Brockman said, ‘Must still be on their way back. Phone
problems, probably. But if there was anything to worry about
they would have found a way to let us know.’
‘And the guy didn’t mention anything about it to the police,’
Moseley said. ‘I’ve talked to the lieutenant over there a couple
times. That has to mean something.’
‘I still think he looked,’ the guy with the broken nose said.
‘We should pull the plug,’ Riverdale said.
‘That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,’ Brockman said.
‘We didn’t set the date. We didn’t pick the time. The judge did
when he signed the release order. You know that. We pull
some bullshit delaying tactic, we wind up ass-deep
in inspectors.
You know where that would land us. We might as well
shoot ourselves in the head, right here, right now.’
Riverdale scowled. ‘I’m not saying we delay. I’m saying we go
back to the original plan. The switch was always a mistake.’
‘That would solve Friday’s problem. If there is one. But
then we’d have no way out of the bigger jam we’re in. Carpenter’s
situation.’
‘I said from the start, the solution to that is simple. A bullet
in the back of his head. I’ll do it myself if you’re too
squeamish.’
‘You know what that would cost? How much business we
would lose?’
‘We’ll lose a lot more than money if this guy joins the dots.’
‘How could he do that?’
‘He could come down here. You said so yourself. He could
dig around. He was a military cop. It’s in his blood.’
‘It’s years since the guy was an MP,’ Moseley said. ‘That’s
what the lieutenant told me.’
Hix tapped the tabletop. ‘What else do we know?’
‘Not much. He has no driver’s licence. No employment history,
according to the IRS. Not since he left the army. No
social media presence. No recent photographs exist. He’s a
hobo now. It’s kind of sad, but that’s the bottom line. Doesn’t
sound like much to worry about.’
Brockman said, ‘Hobo or millionaire, what kind of crazy
person would travel halfway across the country because he
read a few documents and saw an innocuous picture?’
‘Speculate all you want, but this still worries me,’ Riverdale
said. ‘Each time we met, we thought we had the problem contained.
Each time, we were wrong. What if we’re wrong again
now?’
‘We weren’t wrong.’ Brockman slammed his palm into the
table. ‘We handled each situation as it came up. Ninety-nine
per cent.’
‘Ninety-nine. Not one hundred.’
‘Life isn’t perfect. Sometimes there’s broken glass to sweep
up. Which we’ve done. We found out there was a leak. We
plugged it, the way we all agreed to. We found out about the
missing envelope. We retrieved it, the way we all agreed to.’
‘And now this strange guy has looked in the envelope.’
‘He may have. We don’t know. But you have to admit, it’s
unlikely. He didn’t tell the cops. We know that. And he didn’t
tell the FBI or the Bureau of Prisons. We would know that. So
say he figured everything out from a couple of seconds alone
with the envelope. Why keep the knowledge to himself?
What’s he going to do with it? Blackmail us? And you think
he’s somehow going to schlep twelve hundred miles before
Friday? Come on.’
‘Gentlemen!’ Hix tapped the tabletop again. ‘Enough. All
right. Here’s my decision. We can’t know if the guy looked in
the envelope. It seems unlikely, so we shouldn’t panic. Particularly
given the consequences. But at the same time it
pays to be cautious. He’s easily recognizable, yes?’
The guy with the broken nose nodded. ‘For sure. You can’t
miss him. Six five. Two hundred and fifty pounds. Scruffy.’
‘He’s banged up pretty good, remember,’ the guy with the
sling said. ‘I took care of that.’
‘You should have killed him,’ Brockman said.
‘I thought I had.’
‘You should have made sure.’
‘How? Make it look like an accident. Those were our orders
for the other two. I figured they applied to this guy as well.
Hard to sell that story if I put a bullet in his brain.’
‘Enough!’ Hix waited for silence. ‘Here’s the plan. We’ll
mount surveillance. Round the clock. Starting now, through
Saturday. If he sets one toe in our town, we’ll be waiting. And
here, we don’t have to worry about how anything looks.’”
Extracted from No Plan B by Lee & Andrew Child, out now.
