“Circumstances?” she repeated.

He nodded. “Didn’t leave me a whole lot of choice.”

She nodded back. “Well, whatever, it’s kind of good to see you, I guess.”

“Good to see you, too.”

She was a tall woman. Shorter than Harper, but then most women were. She was muscular, not the compact way Alison Lamarr had been, but the lean, marathon-runner kind of way. She was dressed in clean jeans and a shapeless sweater. Substantial shoes on her feet. She had medium-length brown hair, worn in long bangs above bright brown eyes. She had heavy frown lines all around her mouth. It was nearly four years since he had last seen her, and she looked the whole four years older.

"This is Special Agent Lisa Harper,” he said.

Scimeca nodded once, warily. Reacher watched her eyes. A male agent, she’d have thrown him off the porch.

“Hi,” Harper said.

“Well, come on in, I guess,” Scimeca said.

She still had hold of the doorknob. She was standing on the threshold, leaning forward, unwilling to step out. Harper stepped in and Reacher filed after her. The door closed behind them. They were in the hallway of a decent little house, newly painted, nicely furnished. Very clean, obsessively tidy. It looked like a home. Warm and cozy. A personal space. There were wool rugs on the floor. Polished antique furniture in gleaming mahogany. Paintings on the walls. Vases of flowers everywhere.

“Chrysanthemums,” Scimeca said. “I grow them myself. You like them?”

Reacher nodded.

“I like them,” he said. “Although I couldn’t spell them.”

“Gardening’s my new hobby,” Scimeca said. “I’ve gotten into it in a big way.”

Then she pointed toward a front parlor.

“And music,” she said. “Come see.”

The room had quiet wallpaper and a polished wood floor. There was a grand piano in the back corner. Shiny black lacquer. A German name inlaid in brass. A big stool was placed in front of it, handsome buttoned leather in black. The lid of the piano was up, and there was music on the stand above the keyboard, a dense mass of black notes on heavy cream paper.

“Want to hear something?” she asked.

“Sure,” Reacher said.

She slid between the keyboard and the stool and sat down. Laid her hands on the keys and paused for a second and then a mournful minor-key chord filled the room. It was a warm sound, and low, and she modulated it into the start of a funeral march.

“Got anything more cheerful?” Reacher asked.

“I don’t feel cheerful,” she said.

But she changed it anyway, into the start of the Moonlight Sonata.

“Beethoven,” she said.

The silvery arpeggios filled the air. She had her foot on the damper and the sound was dulled and quiet. Reacher gazed out of the window at the plantings, gray in the moonlight. There was an ocean ninety miles to the west, vast and silent.

“That’s better,” he said.

She played it through to the end of the first movement, apparently from memory, because the music open on the stand was labeled Chopin. She kept her hands on the keys until the last chord died away to silence.

“Nice,” Reacher said. “So, you’re doing OK?”

She turned away from the keyboard and looked him in the eye. “You mean have I recovered from being gang-raped by three guys I was supposed to trust with my life?”

Reacher nodded. “Something like that, I guess.”

“I thought I’d recovered,” she said. “As well as I ever expected to. But now I hear some maniac is fixing to kill me for complaining about it. That’s taken the edge off it a little bit, you know?”

“We’ll get him,” Harper said, in the silence.

Scimeca just looked at her.

“So can we see the new washing machine in the basement?” Reacher asked.

“It’s not a washing machine, though, is it?” Scimeca asked. “Not that anybody tells me anything.”

“It’s probably paint,” Reacher said. “In cans. Camouflage green, Army issue.”

“What for?”

“The guy kills you, dumps you in your bathtub and pours it over you.”

“Why?”

Reacher shrugged. “Good question. There’s a whole bunch of pointy heads working on that right now.”

Scimeca nodded and turned to Harper. “You a pointy head?”

“No, ma’am, I’m just an agent,” Harper said.

“You ever been raped?”

Harper shook her head. “No, ma’am, I haven’t.”

Scimeca nodded again.

“Well, don’t be,” she said. “That’s my advice.”

There was silence.

“It changes your life,” Scimeca said. “It changed mine, that’s for damn sure. Gardening and music, that’s all I’ve got now.”

“Good hobbies,” Harper said.

“Stay-at-home hobbies,” Scimeca said back. “I’m either in this room or within sight of my front door. I don’t get out much and I don’t like meeting people. So take my advice, don’t let it happen to you.”

Harper nodded. “I’ll try not to.”

“Basement,” Scimeca said.

She led the way out of the parlor to a door tucked under the stairs. It was an old door, made up of pine planks painted many times. There was a narrow staircase behind it, leading down toward cold air smelling faintly of gasoline and tire rubber.

“We have to go through the garage,” Scimeca said.

There was a new car filling the space, a long low Chrysler sedan, painted gold. They walked single file along its flank and Scimeca opened a door in the garage wall. The musty smell of a basement bloomed out at them. Scimeca pulled a cord and a hot yellow light came on.

“There you are,” she said.

The basement was warm from a furnace. It was a large square space with wide storage racks built on every wall. Fiberglass insulation showed between the ceiling joists. There were heating pipes snaking up through the floorboards. There was a carton standing alone in the middle of the floor. It was at an angle to the walls, untidy against the neat shelving surrounding it. It was the same carton. Same size, same brown board, same black printing, same picture, same manufacturer’s name. It was taped shut with shiny brown tape and it looked brand-new.

“Got a knife?” Reacher asked.

Scimeca nodded toward a work area. There was pegboard screwed to the wall, and it was filled with tools hanging in neat rows. Reacher took a linoleum knife off a peg, carefully, because in his experience the peg usually came out with the tool. But not this one. He saw that each peg was secured to the board with a neat little plastic device.

He came back to the box and slit the tape. Reversed the knife and used the handle to ease the flaps upward. He saw five metal circles, glowing yellow. Five paint can lids, reflecting the overhead light. He poked the knife handle under one of the wire hoops and lifted one of the cans up to eye level. Rotated it in the light. It was a plain metal can, unadorned except for a small white label printed with a long number and the words Camo/Green.

“We’ve seen a few of those in our time,” Scimeca said. “Right, Reacher?”

He nodded. “A few.”

He lowered the can back into the box. Pushed the flaps down and walked over and hung the knife back where it had been. Glanced across at Scimeca.

“When did this come?” he asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Roughly?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe a couple months ago.”

“A couple of months?” Harper said.

Scimeca nodded. “I guess. I don’t really remember.”

“You didn’t order it, right?” Reacher said.

Scimeca shook her head. “I already have one. It’s over there.”

She pointed. There was a laundry area in the corner. Washer, dryer, sink. A vacuumed rug in the angle of the corner. White plastic baskets and detergent bottles lined up precisely on a countertop.

“Thing like this, you’d remember,” Reacher said. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I assumed it’s for my roommate, I guess,” she said.

“You have a roommate?”

“Had. She moved out, couple of weeks ago.”