“My job,” she said.
He thanked her and went back up the stair to the lobby. He stood for a moment. He was all done in town. He had nothing more to see. On a whim he crossed to the main staircase, which was inside a wide tower, just like it would be in a castle. He went up as far as the second-floor windows, for a last look around. It was a good vantage point. He saw the Subaru in the distance, small and dull, still parked, patiently waiting, about sixty yards away. He crossed the hall and in the opposite direction he saw the air conditioning truck. Still there, with its icy letters, and their snowy caps.
Plus three guys standing next to it. Sixty yards away. Tiny in the distance. Up close, maybe not so much. Every single passerby was smaller. They were wearing some kind of one-piece jump suits. Hard to make out. He needed binoculars. Like the guy in the committee meeting. The jump suits looked tight. Short in the arms. Did HVAC guys need to be big? Probably not. Probably better to be small, for attics and crawl spaces.
They looked impatient.
Reacher crossed to the left-hand window.
Trees, bushes, a quiet street beyond.
With a cop on the sidewalk, just shy of the four-way.
The cop was alone and on foot. He was crouching. In a particular way. He was in the unmistakable stance of an armed man holding himself back from a corner. Until ordered to advance. Which implied a degree of coordination. With who?
He crossed to the right-hand window.
A mirror image. Trees, flowers, a quiet street, and a cop holding ready to roll his shoulder around the corner and take aim.
He went back to the center window with the view of the truck. There were streets beyond it, left and right, radiating away. Plenty of parked cars. Some base models. Cheapskate buyers, or police unmarked. The three guys were probably surrounded. But not by an overwhelming force. Solo guys on the left and right flanks implied no more than two more anyplace. Four people, max. A very light force.
He crossed back to the left-hand window. The cop was inching toward the corner. No doubt his earpiece was counting him down. He crossed to the right-hand window. Same story. Still a mirror image. Synchronized. Seconds to go. It was a very bad plan. No way could Amos have been involved. Or Shaw either. He had looked smart enough. This was some uniform captain’s mistake.
On the right the cop rolled around the corner.
Reacher hustled across the hall.
Same thing on the left.
A very bad plan.
He crossed back to the center window just in time to see the air conditioning guys do the one and only thing they needed to do. They clambered through a flower bed and stepped into the library gardens. They turned the physical situation inside out. Like peeling off a T-shirt. Now everyone else was behind them. In front of them and all around them was a risk of collateral damage so great it was prohibitive. Like a smart move in chess. Mate in two.
They kept on walking. Slow. Always aware of the geometry around them. Not their first rodeo. Behind them the police response was halfway competent. The cops on foot sprinted back the way they had come, down the quiet side streets, to retake the flanks. Way back two more cops were running up. Then fanning out. Not entering the gardens. Staying on the street. Establishing a cordon. One cop per side of the square. Because common sense said the three guys would have to come out sometime.
But for the moment they kept on walking straight. By then they were about halfway to the library. Going slow. Just strolling. Which made sense. Because their next obvious move was to reverse direction at high speed and turn the situation inside out all over again. If they did it soon, they could make it back to their van more or less completely unopposed. The cops weren’t ready yet. Then they could get the hell out of Dodge. Could three squad cars stop them? Probably not.
But they didn’t reverse direction. They kept on coming. They kept on strolling. Now they were three-quarters of the way to the library. Reacher hustled from window to window. The cops were now in position, one per side, weapons drawn, each one near a gate. But each one also looking mindful of the fact that the three guys hadn’t needed a gate to get in. Any low-enough flower bed would do. They knew. They were keeping their eyes open. Not the worst Reacher had ever seen.
The three guys kept on strolling. Did they have alternative transportation up ahead? Three guys could have driven in with three different vehicles. They could have parked them in strategic locations. Or was the black Chrysler their back-up? It had three empty seats, after all. There was no sign of it. Not in the first window, or the second, or the third, or the fourth.
The three guys kept on strolling. Now they were very close to the library. Maybe they were interested in architecture. Or Romanesque coloration. Red New Hampshire granite, white Maine granite, in intricate striped patterns. Like something in Rome or Florence.
Reacher craned his neck and watched them come up the steps to the door, right below him. He backed away to the top of the stairs and watched them enter the lobby. They were obvious phonies. Their jump suits were way too tight. Borrowed, for the occasion. Along with the van. No doubt someone owed someone else a favor.
They were each about six-two, and broad, with big hands and big feet, and wide necks, and hard faces as clenched as fists. They might have been in their early forties. Not their first rodeo. Two had black hair and one was gray. They came in and kept on strolling. Maybe they planned to walk straight through and out the other side. Which made sense geometrically. It was the most direct line between the top end of the gardens and the bottom.
They didn’t walk through.
They stopped dead in the center of the lobby.
Maybe they wanted to borrow a book. Maybe they had seen a review. Or maybe not. Maybe finally the black Chrysler had been pulled over. For an infraction during a lapse in concentration. Or on an old Massachusetts warrant. While Reacher had been in the basement, reading about the rough-legged hawk. Possibly Chief Shaw had been burning up the phone lines again. He had already established a relationship.
Protocol dictated the decoy in the Chrysler would have gotten off a last-minute warning he was about to be shut down. In which case the three guys would assume he would rat them out. That would be the commonsense operational baseline. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Not just Reacher’s strategy. Now they would make their own arrangements. A crowded public building was a good first step. It would give them breathing space. Because the cops would be cautious.
But worst case, it was also a good second step. And third, and fourth. It could withstand a siege. It held a plentiful supply of hostages. Maybe they would choose the city employees first. For extra leverage. A long, tense standoff. TV cameras in the streets. Negotiators on the phone. Pizza sent in, and the oldest librarian sent out in return.
How likely was that?
Not very.
But, plan for the worst.
We don’t want trouble here.
Better to nip it in the bud.
Reacher came three steps down. Loud on the stone. A certain tempo. The three guys looked up. At first out of habit and instinct, and then surprise, and then wary recognition.
Reacher held up his right hand. Knuckles out. Which seemed to mean nothing to them. Maybe they hadn’t drawn the same conclusion as Amos and Shaw. Maybe they hadn’t gone as far in their reasoning. It seemed they preferred to rely on basic biometric data, including height and weight, and eyes and hair, and last seen wearing. Which in Reacher’s case was a combination unlikely to recur frequently in nature.
Hence the recognition. It was wary because they were out on a limb. Their mission had already failed. It could only get worse. But they were trained not to quit. That kind of guy. Some kind of ancient competitive instinct. Which is why Reacher stayed on the stairs. They had to look up. And he was bigger than them anyway. Let their ancient competitive instincts deal with that.