Finlay was out. Ninety seconds, beginning to end.

32

I SLOWED DOWN AT THE NORTH END OF MAIN STREET AND rolled gently south through the sleeping town. Nobody spoke. Hubble was lying on the rear bench, shaken up. Finlay was beside me in the front passenger seat. Just sitting there, rigid, staring out through the windshield. We were all breathing heavily. We were all in that quiet zone which follows an intense blast of danger.

The clock on the dash showed one in the morning. I wanted to hole up until four. I had a superstitious thing about four o’clock in the morning. We used to call it KGB time. Story was it was the time they chose to go knocking on doors. Four o’clock in the morning. Story was it had always worked well for them. Their victims were at a low ebb at that hour. Progress was easy. We had tried it ourselves, time to time. It had always worked well for me. So I wanted to wait until four, one last time.

I jinked the car left and right, down the service alleys behind the last block of stores. Switched the running lights off and pulled up in the dark behind the barbershop. Killed the motor. Finlay glanced around and shrugged. Going to the barber at one in the morning was no more crazy than driving a hundred-thousand-dollar Bentley into a building. No more crazy than getting locked in a cell for ten hours by a madman. After twenty years in Boston and six months in Margrave, there wasn’t a whole lot left that Finlay was ever going to raise an eyebrow at.

Hubble leaned forward from the backseat. He was pretty shaken up. He’d deliberately driven into three separate crashes. The three impacts had left him battered and jarred. And drained. It had taken a lot to keep his foot jammed down on the gas, heading for one solid object after another. But he’d done it. Not everybody would have. But he was suffering for it now. I slid out of the seat and stood in the alley. Gestured Hubble out of the car. He joined me in the dark. Stood there, a bit unsteady.

“You OK?” I asked him.

He shrugged.

“I guess,” he said. “I banged my knee and my neck hurts like hell.”

“Walk up and down,” I said. “Don’t stiffen up.”

I walked him up and down the dark alley. Ten paces up and back, a couple of times. He was pecking his stride on the left. Maybe the door had caved in and hit his left knee. He was rolling his head around, loosening the jarred muscles in his neck.

“OK?” I said.

He smiled. Changed it to a grimace as a tendon graunched.

“I’ll live,” he said.

Finlay got out and joined us in the alley. He was coming round. He was stretching like he was waking up. Getting excited. He smiled at me in the dark.

“Good job, Reacher,” he said. “I was wondering how the hell you were going to get me out. What happened to Picard?”

I made a gun with my fingers, like a child’s mime. He nodded a sort of partner’s nod to me. Too reserved to go any further. I shook his hand. Seemed like the right thing to do. Then I turned and rapped softly on the service door at the back of the barbershop. It opened up straightaway. The older guy was standing there like he’d been waiting for us to knock. He held the door like some kind of an old butler. Gestured us in. We trooped single file down a passage into a storeroom. Waited next to shelves piled high with barber stuff. The gnarled old man caught up to us.

“We need your help,” I said.

The old guy shrugged. Held up his mahogany palm in a wait gesture. Shuffled through to the front and came back with his partner. The younger old guy. They discussed my request in loud rasping whispers.

“Upstairs,” the younger guy said.

We filed up a narrow staircase. Came out in an apartment above the shop. The two old barbers showed us through to the living room. They pulled the blinds and switched on a couple of dim lamps. Waved us to sit. The room was small and threadbare, but clean. It had a cozy feel. I figured if I had a room, I’d want it to look like that. We sat down. The younger guy sat with us and the older guy shuffled out again. Closed the door. The four of us sat there looking at each other. Then the barber leaned forward.

“You boys ain’t the first to hide out with us,” he said.

Finlay glanced around. Appointed himself spokesman.

“We’re not?” he said.

“No sir, you’re not,” the barber said. “We’ve had lots of boys hiding out with us. And girls too, tell the truth.”

“Like who?” Finlay asked.

“You name it, we had it,” the old guy said. “We’ve had farmworkers’ union boys from the peanut farms. We’ve had farmworkers’ union boys from the peach growers. We’ve had civil rights girls from the voter registration. We’ve had boys who didn’t want their ass sent to Vietnam. You name it, we had it.”

Finlay nodded.

“And now you’ve got us,” he said.

“Local trouble?” the barber asked.

Finlay nodded again.

“Big trouble,” he said. “Big changes coming.”

“Been expecting it,” the old guy said. “Been expecting it for years.”

“You have?” Finlay said.

The barber nodded and stood up. Stepped over to a large closet. Opened the door and waved us over to take a look. It was a big closet, fitted with deep shelves. The shelves were stacked with money. Bricks and bricks of cash held together with rubber bands. It filled the closet from floor to ceiling. Must have been a couple of hundred thousand dollars in there.

“Kliner Foundation’s money,” the old guy said. “They just keep on throwing it at us. Something wrong with it. I’m seventy-four years old. Seventy years, people are pissing all over me. Now people are throwing money all over me. Something wrong with that, right?”

He closed the door on the cash.

“We don’t spend it,” he said. “We don’t spend a cent we don’t earn. We just put it in the closet. You boys going after the Kliner Foundation?”

“Tomorrow there won’t be any Kliner Foundation,” I said.

The old guy just nodded. Glanced at the closet door as he passed by and shook his head. Closed the door on us and left us alone in the small cozy room.

“NOT GOING TO BE EASY,” FINLAY SAID. “THREE OF US AND three of them. They hold four hostages. Two of the hostages are children. We’re not even certain where they’re holding them.”

“They’re at the warehouse,” I said. “That’s for sure. Where else would they be? No manpower available to hold them anyplace else. And you heard that tape. That boomy echo? That was the warehouse, for sure.”

“What tape?” Hubble asked.

Finlay looked at him.

“They had Roscoe make a tape for Reacher,” he said. “A message. To prove they were holding her.”

“Roscoe?” Hubble said. “What about Charlie?”

Finlay shook his head.

“Just Roscoe,” he lied. “Nothing from Charlie.”

Hubble nodded. Smart move, Harvard guy, I thought. The image of Charlie being held down at a microphone with a sharp knife at her throat would have tipped Hubble right over the edge. Right off the plateau, back down to where panic would make him useless.

“The warehouse is where they are,” I said again. “No doubt about it.”

Hubble knew the warehouse well. He’d been working up there most days for a year and a half. So we got him to go over and over it, describing the layout. We found paper and pencil and got him to draw plans. We went over and over the plans, putting in all the doors, the stairs, the distances, the details. We ended up with the sort of drawing an architect would have been proud of.

The warehouse stood in its own compound at the end of the row of four. It was very close in line with the third shed, which was a farmers’ operation. There was a fence running between the two with just a path’s width between it and the metal siding. The other three sides were ringed by the main fence running around the whole complex. That fence ran close to the warehouse across the back and down the far end, but there was plenty of space in front for trucks to turn.