He was staring at the ceiling, but he was wandering through the house in his mind. Down the driveway, through the trees, the garage on his right, the breezeway, the low bulk of the place on his left. The den, the living room, the wide slow Hudson rolling by. The furniture. It had looked pretty comfortable. Maybe he could get a stereo. Some books. A house. His house. He tried the words in his head: my house. My-house. He barely knew how to say them. My house. He shivered.
“He wanted you to have it,” she said again. “It’s a bequest. You can’t argue against it. It’s happened. And it’s not any kind of a problem to me, I promise, OK?”
He nodded, slowly.
“OK,” he said. “OK, but weird. Really, truly weird.”
“You want coffee?” she asked.
He turned and focused on her face. He could get his own coffee machine. In his kitchen. In his house. Connected to the electricity. His electricity.
“Coffee?” she asked again.
“I guess,” he said.
She slid off the bed and found her shoes.
“Black, no sugar, right?”
She was standing there, naked except for her shoes. Patent, with heels. She saw him looking at her.
“Kitchen floor feels cold. I always wear shoes in there.”
“Forget the coffee, OK?”
THEY SLEPT IN her bed, all night, way past dawn. Reacher woke first and eased his arm out from under her and checked his watch. Almost seven. He had slept nine hours. The finest sleep of his life. The best bed. He had slept in a lot of beds. Hundreds, maybe even thousands. This was the best of all of them. Jodie was asleep beside him. She was on her front and had thrown the sheet off during the night. Her back was bare, all the way down to her waist. He could see the swell of her breast under her. Her hair spilled over her shoulders. One knee was pulled up, resting on his thigh. Her head was bent forward on the pillow, curving in, following the direction of her knee. It gave her a compact, athletic look. He kissed her neck. She stirred.
“Morning, Jodie,” he said.
She opened her eyes. Then she closed them, and opened them again. She smiled. A warm, morning smile.
“I was afraid I’d dreamed it,” she said. “I used to, once.”
He kissed her again. Tenderly, on the cheek. Then less tenderly, on the mouth. Her arms came around behind him and he rolled over with her. They made love again, the fourth time in fifteen years. Then they showered together, the first time ever. Then breakfast. They ate like they were starving.
“I need to go to the Bronx,” he said.
She nodded. “This Rutter guy? I’ll drive. I know roughly where it is.”
“What about work? I thought you had to go in.”
She looked at him, mystified.
“You told me you had hours to bill,” he said. “You sounded real busy.”
She smiled, shyly. “I made that up. I’m well ahead, really. They said I should take the whole week off. I just didn’t want to be hanging around with you, feeling what I was feeling. That’s why I just ran off to bed, the first night. I should have shown you the guest room, you know, like a proper little hostess. But I didn’t want to be alone in a bedroom with you. It would have driven me crazy. So near, but so far, you know what I mean?”
He nodded. “So what did you do in the office all day?”
She giggled. “Nothing. Just sat there all day, doing nothing.”
“You’re nuts,” he said. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I did tell you.”
“Eventually,” she said. “After fifteen years.”
He nodded. “I know, but I was worried about it. I thought you’d be hurt or something. I thought it would be the last thing you wanted to hear.”
“Same here,” she said. “I thought you’d hate me forever.”
They looked at each other and they smiled. Then they grinned. Then they laughed, and kept on laughing for five solid minutes.
“I’m going to get dressed,” she said, still laughing. He followed her through to the bedroom and found his clothes on the floor. She was halfway into her closet, selecting something clean. He watched her, and started wondering if Leon’s house had closets. No, if his house had them. Of course it did. All houses had closets, right? So did that mean he’d have to start assembling stuff to fill them all with?
She chose jeans and a shirt, dressed up with a leather belt and expensive shoes. He took his new jacket out to the hallway and loaded it with the Steyr from the sports bag. He poured twenty loose refills into the opposite pocket. All the metal made the jacket feel heavy. She came out to join him with the leather-bound folder. She was checking Rutter’s address.
“Ready?” she asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” he said.
He made her wait at every stage while he checked ahead. The exact same procedures he had used the day before. Her safety had felt important then. Now it felt vital. But everything was clean and quiet. Empty hallway, empty elevator, empty lobby, empty garage. They got in the Taurus together and she drove it around the block and headed back north and east.
“East River Drive to 1-95 OK with you?” she asked. “Going east, it’s the Cross Bronx Expressway.”
He shrugged and tried to recall the Hertz map. “Then take the Bronx River Parkway north. We need to go to the zoo.”
“The zoo? Rutter doesn’t live near the zoo.”
“Not the zoo, exactly. The Botanical Gardens. Something you need to see.”
She glanced sideways at him and then concentrated on driving. Traffic was heavy, just past the peak of rush hour, but it was moving. They followed the river north and then northwest to the George Washington Bridge and turned their backs on it and headed east into the Bronx. The expressway was slow, but the parkway north was faster, because it was leading out of town and New York was sucking people inward at that hour. Across the barrier, the southbound traffic was snarled.
“OK, where to?” she asked.
“Go past Fordham University. Past the conservatory, and park at the top.”
She nodded and made the lane changes. Fordham slid by on the left, and then the conservatory on the right. She used the museum entrance and found the lot just beyond it. It was mostly empty.
“Now what?”
He took the leather-bound folder with him.
“Just keep an open mind,” he said.
The conservatory was a hundred yards ahead of them. He had read all about it in a free leaflet, the day before. It was named for somebody called Enid Haupt and had cost a fortune to build in 1902, and ten times as much to renovate ninety-five years later, which was money well spent because the result was magnificent. It was huge and ornate, the absolute definition of urban philanthropy expressed in iron and milky white glass.
It was hot and damp inside. Reacher led Jodie around to the place he was looking for. The exotic plants were massed in huge beds bounded by little walls and railings. There were benches set on the edges of the walkways. The milky glass filtered the sunlight to a bright overcast. There was a strong smell of heavy damp earth and pungent blooms.
“What?” she asked. She was partly amused, partly impatient. He found the bench he was looking for and stepped away from it, close to the low wall. He stepped half a pace left, then another, until he was sure.
“Stand here,” he said.
He took her shoulders from behind and moved her into the same position he had just occupied. Ducked his head to her level and checked.
“Stand on tiptoes,” he told her. “Look straight ahead.”
She made herself taller and stared ahead. Her back was straight and her hair was spilled on her shoulders.
“OK,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
“Nothing,” she said. “Well, plants and things.”