'Mr Stone?' a deep voice said. 'This is the director.'

'h.e.l.lo,' Stone said. It was all he could think of to say.

'We're taking steps,' the voice said. 'I'm sure you understand our position.'

'OK,' Stone said. He was thinking what steps? Lawsuits? Prison?

'We should be out of the woods, start of business tomorrow,' the voice said.

'Out of the woods? How?'

'We're selling the debt, obviously.'

'Selling it?' Stone repeated. 'I don't understand.'

'We don't want it any more,' the voice said. 'I'm sure you can understand that. It's moved itself way outside of the parameters that we feel happy with. So we're selling it. That's what people do, right? They got something they don't want any more, they sell it, best price they can get.'

'Who are you selling it to?' Stone asked, dazed.

'A trust company in the Caymans. They made an offer.'

'So where does that leave us?'

'Us?' the voice repeated, puzzled. 'It leaves us nowhere. Your obligation to us is terminated. There is no us. Our relationship is over. My only advice is that you never try to resurrect it. We would tend to regard that as insult added to injury.'

'So who do I owe now?'

'The trust company in the Caymans,' the voice said patiently. 'I'm sure whoever's behind it will be contacting you very soon, with their repayment proposals.'

Jodie drove. Reacher got out and walked around the hood and got back in on the pa.s.senger side. She slid over the centre console and buzzed the seat forward. Cruised south through the sunny Croton reservoirs, down towards the city of White Plains. Reacher was twisting around, scanning behind them. No pursuers.

Nothing suspicious. Just a perfect lazy June afternoon in the suburbs. He had to touch the blister through his shirt to remind himself that anything had happened at all.

She headed for a big mall. It was a serious building the size of a stadium, crowding proudly against office towers its own height, standing inside a knot of busy roads. She drifted left and right across the traffic lanes and followed a curved ramp underground to the parking garage. It was dark down there, dusty oil-stained concrete, but there was a bra.s.s-and-gla.s.s doorway in the distance, leading directly into a store and blazing with white light like a promise. Jodie found a slot fifty yards from it. She eased in and went away to do something with a machine. Came back and laid a small ticket on the dash, where it could be read through the windshield.

'OK,' she said. 'Where to first?'

Reacher shrugged. This was not his area of expertise. He had bought plenty of clothes in the last two years, because he had developed a habit of buying new stuff instead of washing the old stuff. It was a defensive habit. It defended him against carrying any kind of a big valise, and it defended him against having to learn the exact techniques of laundering. He knew about laundromats and dry cleaners, but he was vaguely worried about being alone in a laundromat and finding himself unsure of the correct procedures. And giving stuff to a dry cleaner implied a commitment to be back in the same physical location at some future time, which was a commitment he was reluctant to make. The most straightforward practice was to buy new and junk the old. So he had bought clothes, but exactly where he had bought them was hard for him to pin down. Generally he just saw clothes in a store window, went in and bought them, and came out again without really being sure of the ident.i.ty of the establishment he had visited.

'There was a place I went in Chicago,' he said. 'I think it was a chain store, short little name. Hole? Gap? Something like that. They had the right sizes.'

Jodie laughed. Linked her arm through his.

'The Gap,' she said. 'There's one right in here.'

The bra.s.s-and-gla.s.s doorway led straight into a department store. The air was cold and stank of soap and perfume. They pa.s.sed through the cosmetics into an area with tables piled high with summer clothes in pastel cottons. Then out into the main thoroughfare of the mall. It was oval like a racetrack, ringed with small stores, the whole arrangement repeated on two more levels above them. The walks were carpeted and music was playing and people were swarming everywhere.

'I think the Gap's upstairs,' Jodie said.

Reacher smelled coffee. One of the units opposite was done out as a coffee bar, like a street place in Italy. The inside walls were painted like outside walls, and the ceiling was flat black, so it would disappear like the sky. An inside place looking like an outside place, in an inside mall that was trying to look like an outside shopping street, except it had carpets.

'You want to get coffee?' he asked.

Jodie smiled and shook her head. 'First we shop, then we get coffee.'

She led him towards an escalator. He smiled. He knew how she was feeling. He had felt the same, fifteen years before. She had come with him, nervous and tentative, on a routine visit to the gla.s.s house in Manila. Familiar territory to him, just routine, really nothing at all. But new and strange to her. He had felt busy and happy, and somehow educational. It had been fun being with her, showing her around. Now she was feeling the same thing. All this mall stuff was nothing to her. She had come home to America a long time ago and learned its details. Now he was the stranger in her territory.

'What about this place?' she called to him.

It wasn't the Gap. It was some one-off store, heavily designed with weathered shingles and timbers rescued from some old barn. The clothes were made from heavy cottons and dyed in subdued colours, and they were artfully displayed in the beds of old farm carts with iron-banded wheels.

He shrugged. 'Looks OK to me.'

She took his hand. Her palm felt cool and slim against his. She led him inside and put her hair behind her ears and bent and started looking through the displays. She did it the way he'd seen other women do it. She used little flicks of her wrist to put together a.s.semblages of different items. A pair of pants, still folded, laid over the bottom half of a shirt. A jacket laid sideways over both of them, with the shirt peeping out at the top, and the pants showing at the bottom. Half-closed eyes, pursed lips. A shake of the head. A different shirt. A nod. Real shopping.

'What do you think?' she asked.

She had put together a pair of pants, khaki, but a little darker than most chinos. A shirt in a quiet check, greens and browns. A thin jacket in dark brown which seemed to match the rest pretty well. He nodded.

'Looks OK to me,' he said again.

The prices were handwritten on small tickets attached to the garments with string. He flicked one over with his fingernail. 'Christ,' he said. 'Forget about it.' 'It's worth it,' she said. 'Quality's good.' 'I can't afford it, Jodie.'

The shirt on its own was twice what he had ever paid for a whole outfit. To dress in that stuff was going to cost him what he had earned in a day, digging pools. Ten hours, four tons of sand and rock and earth. 'I'll buy them for you.'

He stood there with the shirt in his hands, uncertain.

'Remember the necklace?' she asked.

He nodded. He remembered. She had developed a pa.s.sion for a particular necklace in a Manila jeweller's. It was a plain gold thing, like a rope, vaguely Egyptian. Not really expensive, but out of her league. Leon was into some self-discipline thing with her and wouldn't spring for it. So Reacher had bought it for her. Not for her birthday or anything, just because he liked her and she liked it.

'I was so happy,' she said. 'I thought I was going to burst. I've still got it, I still wear it. So let me pay you back, OK?'

He thought about it. Nodded. 'OK,' he said.

She could afford it. She was a lawyer. Probably made a fortune. And it was a fair trade, looking at it in proportion, cost-versus-income, fifteen years of inflation.

'OK,' he said again. 'Thanks, Jodie.' 'You need socks and things, right?' They picked out a pair of khaki socks and a pair of white boxers. She went to a till and used a gold card. He took the stuff into a changing cubicle and tore off the price tickets and put everything on. He transferred his cash from his pants pocket and left the old clothes in the trash can. The new stuff felt stiff, but it looked pretty good in the mirror, against his tan. He came back out.

'Nice,' Jodie said. 'Pharmacy next.'

'Then coffee,' he said.

He bought a razor and a can of foam and a toothbrush and toothpaste. And a small tube of burn ointment. Paid for it all himself and carried it in a brown paper bag. The walk to the pharmacy had taken them near a food court. He could see a rib place that smelled good.

'Let's have dinner,' he said. 'Not just coffee. My treat.'

'OK,' she said, and linked her arm through his again.

The dinner for two cost him the price of the new shirt, which he thought was not outrageous. They had dessert and coffee, and then some of the smaller stores were closing up for the day.

'OK, home,' he said. 'And we play it real cautious from here.'

They walked through the department store, through the displays in reverse, first the pastel summer cottons and then the fierce smell of the cosmetics. He stopped her inside the bra.s.s-and-gla.s.s doors and scanned ahead out in the garage, where the air was warm and damp. A million-to-one possibility, but worth taking into account. n.o.body there, just people hustling back to their cars with bulging bags. They walked together to the Bravada and she slid into the driver's seat. He got in beside her.

'Which way would you normally go?'

'From here? FDR Drive, I guess.'

'OK,' he said. 'Head out for LaGuardia, and we'll come in down through Brooklyn. Over the Brooklyn Bridge.'

She looked at him. 'You sure? You want to do the tourist thing, there are better places to go than the Bronx and Brooklyn.'

'First rule,' he said. 'Predictability is unsafe. If you've got a route you'd normally take, today we take a different one.'

'You serious?'

'You bet your a.s.s. I used to do VIP protection for a living.'

'I'm a VIP now?'

'You bet your a.s.s,' he said again.

An hour later it was dark, which is the best condition for using the Brooklyn Bridge. Reacher felt like a tourist as they swooped around the ramp and up over the hump of the span and Lower Manhattan was suddenly there in front of them with a billion bright lights everywhere. One of the world's great sights, he thought, and he had inspected most of the compet.i.tion.

'Go a few blocks north,' he said. 'We'll come in from a distance. They'll be expecting us to come straight home.'

She swung wide to the right and headed north on Lafayette. Hung a tight left and another and came back travelling south on Broadway. The light at Leonard was red. Reacher scanned ahead in the neon wash.

"Three blocks,' Jodie said.

'Where do you park?'

'Garage under the building.'

'OK, turn off a block short,' he said. 'I'll check it out. Come around again and pick me up. If I'm not waiting on the sidewalk, go to the cops.'

She made the right on Thomas. Stopped and let him out. He slapped lightly on the roof and she took off again. He walked around the corner and found her building. It was a big square place, renovated lobby with heavy gla.s.s doors, big lock, a vertical row of fifteen buzzers with names printed behind little plastic windows. Apartment twelve had JacoblGarber, like there were two people living there. There were people on the street, some of them loitering in knots, some of them walking, but none of them interesting. The parking garage entrance was farther on down the sidewalk. It was an abrupt slope into darkness. He walked down. It was quiet and badly lit. There were two rows of eight s.p.a.ces, fifteen altogether because the ramp up to the street was where the sixteenth would be. Eleven cars parked up. He checked the full length of the place. n.o.body hiding out. He came back up the ramp and ran back to Thomas. Dodged the traffic and crossed the street and waited. She was coming south through the light towards him. She saw him and pulled over and he got back in alongside her.

'All clear,' he said.

She made it back out into the traffic and then pulled right and b.u.mped down the ramp. Her headlights bounced and swung. She stopped in the centre aisle and backed into her s.p.a.ce. Killed the motor and the lights.

'How do we get upstairs?' he asked.

She pointed. 'Door to the lobby.'

There was a flight of metal steps up to a big industrial door, which had a steel sheet riveted over it. The door had a big lock, same as on the gla.s.s doors to the street. They got out and locked the car. He carried her garment bag. They walked to the steps and up to the door. She worked the lock and he swung it open. The lobby was empty. A single elevator opposite them.

'I'm on four,' she said.

He pressed five.

'We'll come down the stairs from above,' he said. 'Just in case.'

They used the fire stairs and came back down to four. He had her wait on the landing and peered out. A deserted hallway. Tall and narrow. Apartment ten to the left, eleven to the right, and twelve straight ahead.

'Let's go,' he said.

Her door was black and thick. Spy hole at eye level, two locks. She used the keys and they went inside. She locked up again and dropped an old hinged bar into place, right across the whole doorway. Reacher pressed it down in its brackets. It was iron, and as long as it was there, n.o.body else was going to get in. He put her garment bag against a wall. She flicked switches and the lights came on. She waited by the door while Reacher walked ahead. Hallway, living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, bathroom, closets. Big rooms, very high. n.o.body in them. He came back to the living room and shrugged off his new jacket and threw it on a chair and turned back to her and relaxed. But she wasn't relaxed. He could see that. She was looking directly away from him, more tense than she'd been all day. She was just standing there with her sweatshirt cuffs way down over her hands, in the doorway to her living room, fidgeting. He had no idea what was wrong with her.

'You OK?' he asked.

She ducked her head forward and back in a figure eight to drop her hair behind her shoulders.

'I guess I'll take a shower,' she said. 'You know, hit the sack.'

'h.e.l.l of day, right?'

'Unbelievable.'

She crabbed right around him on her way through the room, keeping her distance. She gave him a sort of shy wave, just her fingers peeping out from the sweatshirt sleeve.

'What time tomorrow?' he asked.

'Seven-thirty will do it,' she said.

'OK,' he said. 'Good night, Jodie.'

She nodded and disappeared down the inner hallway. He heard her bedroom door open and close. He stared after her for a long moment, surprised. Then he sat on the sofa and took off his shoes. Too restless to sleep right away. He padded around in his new socks, looking at the apartment.

It wasn't really a loft, as such. It was an old building with very high ceilings, was all. The sh.e.l.l was original. It had probably been industrial. The outside walls were sandblasted brick, and the inner walls were smooth clean plaster. The windows were huge. Probably put there to illuminate the sewing-machine operation or whatever was there a hundred years ago.

The parts of the walls that were brick were a warm natural brick colour, but everything else was white, except for the floor, which was pale maple strips. The decor was cool and neutral, like a gallery. There was no sign that more than one person had ever lived there.

No sign of two tastes competing. The whole place was very unified. White sofas, white chairs, bookshelves built in simple cubic sections, painted with the same white paint that had been used on the walls. Big steam pipes and ugly radiators, all painted white. The only definite colour in the living room was a life-size Mondrian copy on the wall above the largest sofa. It was a proper copy, done by hand in oil on canvas, with the proper colours. Not garish reds and blues and yellows, but the correct dulled tones, with authentic little cracks and crazings in the white, which was nearer a grey. He stood and looked at it for a long time, totally astonished. Piet Mondrian was his favourite painter of all time, and this exact picture was his favourite work of all time. The t.i.tle was Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue. Mondrian had painted the original in 1930 and Reacher had seen it in Zurich, Switzerland.

There was a tall cabinet opposite the smallest sofa, painted the same white as everything else. There was a small TV in it, a video, a cable box, a CD player with a pair of large headphones plugged into the jack. A small stack of CDs, mostly fifties jazz, stuff he liked without really being crazy about.

The windows gave out over Lower Broadway. There was a constant wash of traffic hum, neon blaze from up and down the street, an occasional siren wailing and booping and blasting loud as it came out through the gaps between blocks. He tilted the blind with a clear plastic wand and looked down at the sidewalk. There were still the same knots of people hanging around. Nothing to make him nervous. He tilted the blind back and closed it up tight.

The kitchen was huge and tall. All the cupboards were wood, painted white, and the appliances were industrial sizes in stainless steel, like pizza ovens. He had lived in places smaller than the refrigerator. He pulled it open and saw a dozen bottles of his favourite water, the same stuff he had grown to love in the Keys. He took the seal off one of them and carried it into the guest bedroom.

The bedroom was white, like everything else. The furniture was wood, which had started out with a different finish, but which was now white like the walls. He put the water on the night table and used the bathroom. White tiles, white sink, white tub, all old enamel and tiling. He closed the blinds and stripped and folded his new clothes on to the closet shelf. Threw back the cover and slid into bed and fell to thinking.

Illusion and reality. What was nine years, anyway? A lot, he guessed, when she was fifteen and he was twenty-four, but what was it now? He was thirty-eight, and she was either twenty-nine or thirty, he wasn't exactly sure which. Where was the problem with that? Why wasn't he doing something? Maybe it wasn't the age thing. Maybe it was Leon. She was his daughter, and always would be. It gave him the guilty illusion she was somewhere between his kid sister and his niece. That obviously gave him a very inhibiting feeling, but it was just an illusion, right? She was the relative of an old friend, was all. An old friend who was now dead. So why the h.e.l.l did he feel so bad about looking at her and seeing himself peeling off her sweatshirt and undoing the belt from around her waist? Why wasn't he just doing it? Why the h.e.l.l was he in the guest room instead of on the other side of the wall in bed with her? Like he'd ached to be through countless forgotten nights in the past, some of them shameful, some of them wistful?

Because presumably her realities were rooted in the same kind of illusions. For kid sister and niece, call it big brother and uncle. Favourite uncle, for sure, because he knew she liked him. There was a lot of affection there. But that just made it worse. Affection for favourite uncles was a specific type of affection. Favourite uncles were there for specific types of things. Family things, like shopping and spoiling, one way or the other. Favourite uncles were not there to put the moves on you. That would come out of the blue like some kind of a shattering betrayal. Horrifying, unwelcome, incestuous, psychologically damaging.