(JR16.5) Deep Down by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child [Child, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
ISBN: 9781448153879
Google: wUIxh7zEbeEC
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2012-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

Reacher hung up the phone. The women were still in the lobby, still talking, still not going anywhere. He set off towards them, just strolling, like a man with an hour to kill, like a stranger in town drawn towards the only faces he knew. Plan A was to keep the pretence going, maybe getting into the group via Briony Walker’s interest in gunshot wounds. Maybe she was a sniper groupie. He could offer some opinions. Head shot or chest shot? Well, ma’am, I favour the throat shot. If you hit it just right you can make their heads come off.

Plan B was to abandon the pretence and come clean as an MP captain undercover for MI, and see where that road led. Which might be all the way home. If he made out Richardson had been the prime suspect, then whoever worked hardest to reinforce that conclusion would be the guilty one. If no one worked hard, then Richardson had been the guilty one all along.

He strolled on.

Plan A or Plan B?

They made the decision for him.

They handed it to him on a plate.

They were civilized women, and reflexively polite in the way that military people always are. He was heading close to them. He wasn’t going to pass by on the other side. So he had to be acknowledged. Briony Walker looked straight at him, but Darwen DeWitt was the first to speak. She said, ‘We weren’t introduced. I guess it wasn’t that kind of an afternoon.’

‘No, ma’am,’ Reacher said. ‘I guess it wasn’t.’ He said his name. He saw each of the three file it away in her memory.

He said, ‘I was sorry to hear about Colonel Richardson.’

DeWitt nodded. ‘It was a shock.’

‘Did you know her well?’

‘We all came up together. We expected to carry on together.’

‘Brother officers,’ Reacher said. ‘Or sisters, I guess.’

‘We all felt that way.’

Reacher nodded. They could all afford to feel that way. No rivalry. Not yet. They faced no significant bottleneck until the leap from Brigadier General to Major General. From one star to two. Then a little rivalry might bite.

Briony Walker said, ‘It must have happened to you, sergeant. You must have lost people.’

‘Ma’am, one or two.’

‘And what do you do on days like that?’

‘Well, ma’am, typically we would go to a bar and toast their journey. Usually starts out quiet, and ends up happy. Which is important. For the good of the unit.’

Alice Vaz said, ‘What unit?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.’

‘What bar?’

‘Whatever is close at hand.’

DeWitt said, ‘The Hyatt is a block away.’

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