"Like what?"

"No cops. That's going to be your first piece of advice, go to the cops. But I'll refuse to do it, and I need your word that you won't go behind my back."

Reacher shrugged.

"OK," he said. Say it.

"No cops."

"Say it again."

"No cops," Reacher said again.

"You got an ethical problem with that?"

"No," Reacher said.

"No FBI, no n.o.body," Lane said. "We handle this ourselves. Understand? You break your word, I'll put your eyes out. I'll have you blinded."

"You've got a funny way of making friends."

"I'm looking for help here, not friends."

"My word is good," Reacher said.

"Say you understand what I'll do if you break it."

Reacher looked around the room. Took it all in. A quiet desperate atmosphere and six Special Forces veterans, all full of subdued menace, all as hard as nails, all looking right back at him, all full of unit loyalty and hostile suspicion of the outsider.

"You'll have me blinded," Reacher said.

"You better believe it," Lane said.

"What was in the car?"

Lane moved his hand away from the phone. He picked up the framed photograph. He held it two-handed, flat against his chest, high up, so that Reacher felt he had two people staring back at him. Above, Lane's pale and worried features. Below, under gla.s.s, a woman of breathtaking cla.s.sical beauty. Dark hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a bud of a mouth, photographed with pa.s.sion and expertise and printed by a master.

"This is my wife," Lane said.

Reacher nodded. Said nothing.

"Her name is Kate," Lane said.

n.o.body spoke.

"Kate disappeared late yesterday morning," Lane said. "I got a call in the afternoon. From her kidnappers. They wanted money. That's what was in the car. You watched one of my wife's kidnappers collect their ransom."

n.o.body spoke.

"They promised to release her," Lane said. "And it's been twenty-four hours. And they haven't called back."

CHAPTER 3

EDWARD LANE HELD the framed photograph like an offering and Reacher stepped forward to take it. He tilted it to catch the light. Kate Lane was beautiful, no question about it. She was hypnotic. She was younger than her husband by maybe twenty years, which put her in her early thirties. Old enough to be all woman, young enough to be flawless. In the picture she was gazing at something just beyond the edge of the print. Her eyes blazed with love. Her mouth seemed ready to burst into a wide smile. The photographer had frozen the first tiny hint of it so that the pose seemed dynamic. It was a still picture, but it looked like it was about to move. The focus and the grain and the detail were immaculate. Reacher didn't know much about photography, but he knew he was holding a high-end product. The frame alone might have cost what he used to make in a month, back in the army.

"My Mona Lisa," Lane said. "That's how I think of that picture."

Reacher pa.s.sed it back. "Is it recent?"

Lane propped it upright again, next to the telephone.

"Less than a year old," he said.

"Why no cops?"

"There are reasons."

"This kind of a thing, they usually do a good job."

"No cops," Lane said.

n.o.body spoke.

"You were a cop," Lane said. "You can do what they do."

"I can't," Reacher said.

"You were a military cop. Therefore all things being equal you can do better than them."

"All things aren't equal. I don't have their resources."

"You can make a start."

The room went very quiet. Reacher glanced at the phone, and the photograph.

"How much money did they want?" he asked.

"One million dollars in cash," Lane answered.

"And that was in the car? A million bucks?"

"In the trunk. In a leather bag."

"OK," Reacher said. "Let's all sit down."

"I don't feel like sitting down."

"Relax," Reacher said. "They're going to call back. Probably very soon. I can pretty much guarantee that."

"How?"

"Sit down. Start at the beginning. Tell me about yesterday."

So Lane sat down, in the armchair next to the telephone table, and started to talk about the previous day. Reacher sat at one end of a sofa. Gregory sat next to him. The other five guys distributed themselves around the room, two sitting, two squatting on chair arms, one leaning against the wall.

"Kate went out at ten o'clock in the morning," Lane said. "She was heading for Bloomingdale's, I think."

"You think?"

"I allow her some freedom of action. She doesn't necessarily supply me with a detailed itinerary. Not every day."

"Was she alone?"

"Her daughter was with her."

"Her daughter?"

"She has an eight-year-old by her first marriage. Her name is Jade."

"She lives with you here?"

Lane nodded.

"So where is Jade now?"

"Missing, obviously," Lane said.

"So this is a double kidnapping?" Reacher said.

Lane nodded again. "Triple, in a way. Their driver didn't come back, either."

"You didn't think to mention this before?"

"Does it make a difference? One person or three?"

"Who was the driver?"

"A guy called Taylor. British, ex-SAS. A good man. One of us."

"What happened to the car?"

"It's missing."

"Does Kate go to Bloomingdale's often?"

Lane shook his head. "Only occasionally. And never on a predictable pattern. We do nothing regular or predictable. I vary her drivers, vary her routes, sometimes we stay out of the city altogether."

"Because? You got a lot of enemies?"

"My fair share. My line of work attracts enemies."

"You're going to have to explain your line of work to me. You're going to have to tell me who your enemies are."

"Why are you sure they're going to call?"

"I'll get to that," Reacher said. "Tell me about the first conversation. Word for word."

"They called at four o'clock in the afternoon. It went pretty much how you would expect. You know, we have your wife, we have your daughter."

"Voice?"

"Altered. One of those electronic squawk boxes. Very metallic, like a robot in a movie. Loud and deep, but that doesn't mean anything. They can alter the pitch and the volume."

"What did you say to them?"

"I asked them what they wanted. They said a million bucks. I asked them to put Kate on the line. They did, after a short pause." Lane closed his eyes. "She said, you know, help me, help me." He opened his eyes. "Then the guy with the squawk box came back on and I agreed to the money. No hesitation. The guy said he would call back in an hour with instructions."

"And did he?"

Lane nodded. "At five o'clock. I was told to wait six hours and put the money in the trunk of the Mercedes you saw and have it driven down to the Village and parked in that spot at eleven-forty exactly. The driver was to lock it up and walk away and put the keys through a mail slot in the front door of a certain building on the southwest corner of Spring Street and West Broadway. Then he was to walk away and keep on walking away, south on West Broadway. Someone would move in behind him and enter the building and collect the keys. If my driver stopped or turned around or even looked back, Kate would die. Likewise if there was a tracking device on the car."

"That was it, word for word?"

Lane nodded.

"Nothing else?"

Lane shook his head.

"Who drove the car down?" Reacher asked.

"Gregory," Lane said.

"I followed the instructions," Gregory said. "To the letter. I couldn't risk anything else."

"How far of a walk was it?" Reacher asked him.

"Six blocks."

"What was the building with the mail slot?"