Duffy had gone quiet. She was thinking hard. I was pretty sure she was thinking of ways she could use me. And I didn't mind at all.

"Will you stay in Boston?" she asked. "Where we can find you?"

I said I would, and they left, and that was the end of day five.

I found a scalper in a sports bar and spent most of days six and seven at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox struggling through an early-season homestand. The Friday game went seventeen innings and ended very late. So I slept most of day eight and then went back to Symphony Hall at night to watch the crowd. Maybe Quinn had season tickets to a concert series. But he didn't show. I replayed in my mind the way he had glanced at me.

It might have been just that rueful crowded-sidewalk thing. But it might have been more.

Susan Duffy called me again on the morning of day nine, Sunday. She sounded different.

She sounded like a person who had done a lot more thinking. She sounded like a person with a plan.

"Hotel lobby at noon," she said.

She showed up in a car. Alone. The car was a Taurus built down to a very plain specification. It was grimy inside. A government vehicle. She was wearing faded denim jeans with good shoes and a battered leather jacket. Her hair was newly washed and combed back from her forehead. I got in on the pa.s.senger side and she crossed six lanes of traffic and drove straight into the mouth of a tunnel that led to the Ma.s.s Pike.

"Zachary Beck has a son," she said.

She took an underground curve fast and the tunnel ended and we came out into the weak midday April light, right behind Fenway.

"He's a college junior," she said. "Some small no-account liberal-arts place, not too far from here, as it happens. We talked to a cla.s.smate in exchange for burying a cannabis problem. The son is called Richard Beck. Not a popular person, a little strange. Seems very traumatized by something that happened about five years ago."

"What kind of something?"

"He was kidnapped."

I said nothing.

"You see?" Duffy said. "You know how often regular people get kidnapped these days?"

"No," I said.

"Doesn't happen," she said. "It's an extinct crime. So it must have been a turf war thing.

It's practically proof his dad's a racketeer."

"That's a stretch."

"OK, but it's very persuasive. And it was never reported. FBI has no record of it.

Whatever happened was handled privately. And not very well. The cla.s.smate says Richard Beck is missing an ear."

"So?"

She didn't answer. She just drove west. I stretched out on the pa.s.senger seat and watched her out of the corner of my eye. She looked good. She was long and lean and pretty, and she had life in her eyes. She was wearing no makeup. She was one of those women who absolutely didn't need to. I was very happy to let her drive me around. But she wasn't just driving me around. She was taking me somewhere. That was clear. She had come with a plan.

"I studied your whole service record," she said. "In great detail. You're an impressive guy."

"Not really," I said.

"And you've got big feet," she said. "That's good, too."

"Why?"

"You'll see," she said.

"Tell me," I said.

"We're very alike," she said. "You and me. We have something in common. I want to get close to Zachary Beck to get my agent back. You want to get close to him to find Quinn."

"Your agent is dead. Eight weeks now, it would be a miracle. You should face it."

She said nothing.

"And I don't care about Quinn."

She glanced right and shook her head.

"You do," she said. "You really do. I can see that from here. It's eating you up. He's unfinished business. And my guess is you're the sort of guy who hates unfinished business." Then she paused for a second. "And I'm proceeding on the a.s.sumption that my agent is still alive, unless and until you supply definitive proof to the contrary."

"Me?" I said.

"I can't use one of my people," she said. "You understand that, right? This whole thing is illegal as far as the Justice Department is concerned. So whatever I do next has to stay off the books. And my guess is you're the sort of guy who understands off-the-books operations. And is comfortable with them. Even prefers them, maybe."

"So?"

"I need to get somebody inside Beck's place. And I've decided it's going to be you.

You're going to be my very own long-rod penetrator."

"How?"

"Richard Beck is going to take you there."

She came off the pike about forty miles west of Boston and turned north into the Ma.s.sachusetts countryside. We pa.s.sed through picture-perfect New England villages.

Fire departments were out on the curbs polishing their trucks. Birds were singing. People were putting stuff on their lawns and pruning their bushes. There was the smell of woodsmoke in the air.

We stopped at a motel in the middle of nowhere. It was an immaculate place with quiet brick facings and blinding white trim. There were five cars in the lot. They were blocking access to the five end rooms. They were all government vehicles. Steven Eliot was waiting in the middle room with five men. They had hauled their desk chairs in from their own rooms. They were sitting in a neat semicircle. Duffy led me inside and nodded to Eliot. I figured it was a nod that meant: I told him, and he hasn't said no. Yet. She moved to the window and turned so that she faced the room. The daylight was bright behind her.

It made her hard to see. She cleared her throat. The room went quiet.

"OK, listen up, people," she said. "One more time, this is off the books, this is not officially sanctioned, and this will be done on our own time and at our own risk.

Anybody wants out, just leave now."

n.o.body moved. n.o.body left. It was a smart tactic. It showed me she and Eliot had at least five guys who would follow them to h.e.l.l and back.

"We have less than forty-eight hours," she said. "Day after tomorrow Richard Beck heads home for his mother's birthday. Our source says he does it every year. Cuts cla.s.ses and all. His father sends a car with two pro bodyguards because the kid is terrified of a repeat abduction. We're going to exploit that fear. We're going to take down the bodyguards and kidnap him."

She paused. n.o.body spoke.

"Our aim is to get into Zachary Beck's house," she said. "We can a.s.sume the supposed kidnappers themselves wouldn't exactly be welcome there. So what will happen is that Reacher will immediately rescue the kid from the supposed kidnappers. It will be a tight sequence, kidnap, rescue, like that. The kid comes over all grateful and Reacher is greeted like a hero around the family hearth."

People sat quiet at first. Then they stirred. The plan was so full of holes it made a Swiss cheese look solid. I stared straight at Duffy. Then I found myself staring out the window.

There were ways of plugging the holes. I felt my brain start to move. I wondered how many of the holes Duffy had already spotted. I wondered how many of the answers she had already gotten. I wondered how she knew I loved stuff like this.

"We have an audience of one," she said. "All that matters is what Richard Beck thinks.

The whole thing will be phony from beginning to end, but he's got to be absolutely convinced it's real."

Eliot looked at me. "Weaknesses?"

"Two," I said. "First, how do you take the bodyguards down without really hurting them?

I a.s.sume you're not that far off the books."

"Speed, shock, surprise," he said. "The kidnap team will have machine pistols with plenty of blank ammunition. Plus a stun grenade. Soon as the kid is out of the car, we toss a flashbang in. Lots of sound and fury. They'll be dazed, nothing more. But the kid will a.s.sume they're hamburger meat."

"OK," I said. "But second, this whole thing is like method acting, right? I'm some kind of a pa.s.serby, and coincidentally I'm the type of guy who can rescue him. Which makes me smart and capable. So why wouldn't I just haul his a.s.s around to the nearest cops? Or wait for the cops to come to us? Why wouldn't I stick around and give evidence and make all kinds of witness statements? Why would I want to immediately drive him all the way home?"

Eliot turned to Duffy.

"He'll be terrified," she said. "He'll want you to."

"But why would I agree? It doesn't matter what he wants. What matters is what is logical for me to do. Because we don't have an audience of one. We have an audience of two.

Richard Beck and Zachary Beck. Richard Beck there and then, and Zachary Beck later.

He'll be looking at it in retrospect. We've got to convince him just as much."

"The kid might ask you not to go to the cops. Like last time."

"But why would I listen to him? If I was Mr. Normal the cops would be the first thing on my mind. I'd want to do everything strictly by the book."

"He would argue with you."

"And I would ignore him. Why would a smart and capable adult listen to a crazy kid? It's a hole. It's too cooperative, too purposeful, too phony. Too direct. Zachary Beck would rumble it in a minute."

"Maybe you get him in a car and you're being chased."

"I'd drive straight to a police station."

"s.h.i.t," Duffy said.

"It's a plan," I said. "But we need to get real."

I looked out of the window again. It was bright out there. I saw a lot of green stuff. Trees, bushes, distant wooded hillsides dusted with new leaves. In the corner of my eye I saw Eliot and Duffy looking down at the floor of the room. Saw the five guys sitting still.

They looked like a capable bunch. Two of them were a little younger than me, tall and fair. Two were about my age, plain and ordinary. One was a lot older, stooped and gray. I thought long and hard. Kidnap, rescue, Beck's house. I need to be in Beck's house. I really do. Because I need to find Quinn. Think about the long game. I looked at the whole thing from the kid's point of view. Then I looked at it again, from his father's point of view.

"It's a plan," I said again. "But it needs perfecting. So I need to be the sort of person who wouldn't go to the cops." Then I paused. "No, better still, right in front of Richard Beck's eyes, I need to become the sort of person who can't go to the cops."

"How?" Duffy said.

I looked straight at her. "I'll have to hurt somebody. By accident, in the confusion.

Another pa.s.serby. Some innocent party. Some kind of ambiguous circ.u.mstance. Maybe I run somebody over. Some old lady walking her dog. Maybe I even kill her. I panic and I run."

"Too difficult to stage," she said. "And not really enough to make you run, anyway. I mean, accidents happen, in circ.u.mstances like these."

I nodded. The room stayed quiet. I closed my eyes and thought some more and saw the beginnings of a sketchy scene take shape right there in my mind.

"OK," I said. "How about this? I'll kill a cop. By accident."

n.o.body spoke. I opened my eyes.

"It's a grand slam," I said. "You see that? It's totally perfect. It puts Zachary Beck's mind at rest about why I didn't act normally and go to the cops. You don't go to the cops if you've just killed one of their own, even if it's an accident. He'll understand that. And it'll give me a reason to stay on at his house afterward. Which I'll need to do. He'll think I'm in hiding. He'll be grateful about the rescue and he's a criminal anyway so his conscience won't get in his way."

There were no objections. Just silence, and then a slow indefinable murmur of a.s.sessment, agreement, consent. I scoped it out, beginning to end. Think about the long game. I smiled.

"And it gets better," I said. "He might even hire me. In fact I think he'll be very tempted to hire me. Because we're creating the illusion that his family's suddenly under attack and he'll be down by two bodyguards and he'll know I'm better than they were anyway because they lost and I didn't. And he'll be happy to hire me because as long as he thinks I'm a cop-killer and he's sheltering me he'll think he owns me."

Duffy smiled, too.

"So let's go to work," she said. "We've got less than forty-eight hours."

The two younger guys were tagged as the kidnap team. We decided they would be driving a Toyota pickup from the DEA's stock of impounded vehicles. They would be using confiscated Uzis filled with nine-millimeter blanks. They would have a stun grenade filched from the DEA SWAT stores. Then we started to rehea.r.s.e my role as the rescuer. Like all good scam artists we decided I should stick as close to the truth as possible, so I would be an ex-military drifter, in the right place at the right time. I would be armed, which in the circ.u.mstances would be technically illegal in Ma.s.sachusetts, but which would be in character and plausible.

"I need a big old-fashioned revolver," I said. "I have to be carrying something appropriate for a citizen. And the whole thing has to be a big drama, beginning to end.

The Toyota comes at me, I need to disable it. I need to shoot it up. So I need three real bullets and three blanks, in strict sequence. The three real bullets for the truck, the three blanks for the people."

"We could load any gun like that," Eliot said.

"But I'll need to see the chambers," I said. "Right before I fire. I won't fire a mixed load without a visual check. I need to know I'm starting in the right place. So I need a revolver. A big one, not some small thing, so I can see clearly."

He saw my point. Made a note. Then we nominated the old guy as the local cop. Duffy proposed he should just blunder into my field of fire.

"No," I said. "It has to be the right kind of mistake. Not just a careless shot. Beck senior needs to be impressed with me in the right kind of way. I need to do it deliberately, but recklessly. Like I'm a madman, but a madman who can shoot."

Duffy agreed and Eliot thought through a mental list of available vehicles and offered me an old panel van. Said I could be a delivery guy. Said it would give me a legitimate reason to be hanging out on the street. We made lists, on paper and in our heads. The two guys my age were sitting there without an a.s.signed task, and they were unhappy about it.

"You're backup cops," I said. "Suppose the kid doesn't even see me shoot the first one?

He might have fainted or something. You need to chase us in a car, and I'll take you out when I'm certain he's watching."