"WHAT ARE YOU going to do?" Jodie asked.

"I don't know," Reacher said.

"I can't believe they're acting like this."

They were in Jodie's kitchen, four floors above lower Broadway in Manhattan. Blake and Lamarr had left him in Garrison and twenty restless minutes later he had driven south to the city. Jodie came home at six in the morning looking for breakfast and a shower and found him waiting in her living room.

"Are they serious?"

"I don't know. Probably."

"Shit, I can't believe it."

"They're desperate," he said. "And they're arrogant. And they like to win. And they're an elite group. Put it all together, this is how they behave. I've seen it before. Some of our guys were exactly the same. They did what it takes."

"How long have you got?"

"I have to call them by eight. With a decision."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he said again.

Her coat was over the back of a kitchen chair. She was pacing nervously, back and forth in her peach dress. She had been awake and alert for twenty-three straight hours, but there was nothing to prove it except a faint blue tinge at the inside corners of her eyes.

"They can't get away with this, can they?" she said. "Maybe they're not serious."

"Maybe they're not," he said. "But it's a game, right? A gamble? One way or the other, we're going to worry about it. Forever."

She dropped into a chair and crossed her legs. Put her head back and shook her hair until it fell behind her shoulders. She was everything Julia Lamarr was not. A visitor from outer space would categorize them both as women, with the same parts in the same quantities, hair and eyes and mouths and arms and legs, but one was a dream and the other was a nightmare.

"It just went too far," he said. "My fault, absolutely. I was jerking them around, because I just didn't like her at all, from the start. So I figured I'd tease them a little, keep it going, and then eventually say yes. But they dropped this on me, before I could get around to it."

"So get them to take it back. Start over. Cooperate."

He shook his head. "No, threatening me is one thing. You, that's way over the line. They're prepared to even think a thing like that, then to hell with them."

"But were they really serious?" she said again.

"Safest strategy is assume they might be."

She nodded. "So I'm scared. And I guess I'd still be a little scared, even if they took it back."

"Exactly," he said. "What's done is done."

"But why? Why are they so desperate? Why the threats?"

"History," he said. "You know what it's like. Everybody hates everybody else. Blake said that to me. And it's true. MPs wouldn't piss on Quantico if it was on fire. Because of Vietnam. Your dad could have told you all about it. He's an example."

"What happened about Vietnam?"

"There was a rule of thumb, draft dodgers were the Bureau's business, and deserters were ours. Different categories, right? And we knew how to handle deserters. Some of them went to the slammer, but some of them got a little TLC. The jungle wasn't a lot of fun for the grunts, and the recruiting depots weren't exactly bulging at the seams, remember? So the MPs would calm the good ones down and send them back, but nine times out of ten the Bureau would arrest them again anyway, on the way to the airport. Drove the MPs crazy. Hoover was unbearable. It was a turf war like you never saw. Result was a perfectly reasonable guy like Leon would hardly even speak to the FBI ever again. Wouldn't take calls, didn't bust a gut answering the mail."

"And it's still the same?"

He nodded. "Institutions have long memories. That stuff is like yesterday. Never forgive, never forget."

"Even though women are in danger?"

He shrugged. "Nobody ever said institutional thinking is rational."

"So they really need somebody?"

"If they want to get anywhere."

"But why you?"

"Lots of reasons. I was involved with a couple of the cases, they could find me, I was senior enough to know where to look for things, senior enough that the current generation probably still owes me a few favors. "

She nodded. "So put it all together, they probably are serious."

He said nothing.

"So what are we going to do?"

He paused.

"We could think laterally," he said into the silence.

"How?"

"You could come with me."

She shook her head. "They wouldn't let me come with you. And I can't, anyway. Could be weeks, right? I have to work. The partnership decision is coming up."

He nodded. "We could do it another way."

"OK, how?"

"I could go take Petrosian out."

She stared at him. Said nothing.

"No more threat," he said. "Like trumping their ace."

She turned her stare to the ceiling, and then she shook her head again, slowly.

"We have a thing at the firm," she said. "We call it the so what else rule. Suppose we've got some bankrupt guy we're looking after. Sometimes we dig around and find he's got some funds stashed away that he's not telling us about. He's hiding them from us. He's cheating. First thing we do, we say so what else? What else is he doing? What else has he got?"

"So?"

"So what are they really doing here? Maybe this is not about the women at all. Maybe this is about Petrosian. He's presumably a smart, slippery guy. Maybe there's nothing to pin on him. No evidence, no witnesses. So maybe Cozo is using Blake and Lamarr to get you to get Petrosian. They profiled you, right? Psychologically? They know how you think. They know how you'll react. They know if they use Petrosian to threaten me, your very first thought will be to go get Petrosian. Then he's off the street without a trial, which they probably couldn't win anyway. And nothing is traceable back to the Bureau. Maybe they're using you as an assassin. Like a guided missile or something. They wind you up, and off you go."

He said nothing.

"Or maybe it's something else," she said. "This guy killing these women sounds pretty smart too, right? No evidence anywhere? Sounds like it's going to be a difficult case to prove. So maybe the idea is you eliminate him. There might not be enough proof to satisfy the courts, but there might be enough to satisfy you. In which case you fix him, on behalf of the women you knew. Job done, cheap and quick, nothing traceable back. They're using you like a magic bullet. They fire it here in New York, and it hits home wherever and whenever."

Reacher was silent.

"Maybe you were never a suspect at all," she said. "Maybe they weren't looking for a killer. Maybe they were looking for somebody who would kill a killer."

There was silence in the room. Outside, the street sounds of early morning were starting up. It was dark gray dawn, and traffic was building.

"Could be both things," Reacher said. "Petrosian and this other guy."

"They're smart people," Jodie said.

He nodded. "They sure as hell are."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know. All I know is I can't go to Quantico and leave you here alone in the same city as Petrosian. I just can't do that."

"But maybe they're not serious. Would the FBI really do something like that?"

"You're going around in a circle. The answer is, we just don't know. And that's the whole point. That's the effect they wanted. Just not knowing is enough, isn't it?"

"And if you don't go?"

"Then I stay here and guard you every minute of every day until we get fed up with it to the point where I go after Petrosian anyway, irrespective of whether they were kidding in the first place or not."

"And if you do go?"

"Then they keep me on the ball with the threat against you. And in their opinion on the ball means what? Can I stop after I find the guy? Or do they make me go all the way and rub him out?"

"Smart people," she said again.

"Why didn't they just ask me straight?"

"They can't just ask you. It would be a hundred percent illegal. And you mustn't do it, anyway."

"I can't?"

"No, not Petrosian or the killer. You mustn't do either thing they want."

"Why not?"

"Because then they own you, Reacher. Two vigilante homicides, with their knowledge? Right under their noses? The Bureau would own you, the whole rest of your life."

He leaned his hands on the window frame and stared at the street below.

"You're in a hell of a spot," she said. "We both are."

He said nothing.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked again.

"I'm going to think," he said. "I've got until eight o'clock."

She nodded. "Think carefully."

JODIE WENT BACK to work. The partnership track beckoned. Reacher sat alone in her apartment and thought hard for thirty minutes, and then he was on the phone for twenty. Blake had said maybe there are people who still owe you favors. Then at five minutes to eight he called the number Lamarr had given him. She answered, first ring.

"I'm in," he said. "I'm not happy about it, but I'll do it."

There was a brief pause. He imagined the crooked teeth, revealed in a smile.

"Go home and pack a bag," she said. "I'll pick you up in two hours exactly."

"No, I'm going to see Jodie. I'll meet you at the airport."

"We're not going by plane."

"We're not?"

"No, I never fly. We're driving."

"To Virginia? How long will that take?"

"Five, six hours."

"Six hours? In a car with you? Shit, I'm not doing that."

"You're doing what you're told, Reacher. Garrison, in two hours."

JODIE'S OFFICE WAS on the fortieth floor of a sixty-floor tower on Wall Street. The lobby had twenty-four-hour security and Reacher had a pass from Jodie's firm that let him through, day or night. She was alone at her desk, reviewing morning information from the markets in London.

"You OK?" he asked her.

"Tired," she said.

"You should go back home."

"Right, like I'm really going to sleep."

He moved to the window and looked out at a sliver of lightening sky.

"Relax," he said. "There's nothing to worry about."

She made no reply.

"I decided what to do," he said.

She shook her head. "Well, don't tell me about it. I don't need to know."

"It'll work out. I promise."

She sat still for a second, and then she joined him at the window. Nuzzled into his chest and held him tight, her cheek against his shirt.

"Take care," she said.

"I'll take care," he said. "Don't worry about it."

"Don't do anything stupid."

"Don't worry about it," he said again.

She turned her face up and they kissed. He kept it going, long and hard, figuring the feeling was going to have to last him into the foreseeable future.

HE DROVE FASTER than usual and was back at his house ten minutes before Lamarr's two hours were up. He took his folding toothbrush from the bathroom and clipped it into his inside pocket. He bolted the basement door and turned the thermostat down. Turned all the faucets off hard and locked the front door. Unplugged the phone in the den and went outside through the kitchen.

He walked to the end of the yard through the trees and looked down at the river. It was gray and sluggish, lined with morning mist like a quilt. On the opposite bank, the leaves were starting to turn, shading from tired green to brown and pale orange. The buildings of West Point were barely visible.

The sun was coming over the ridge of his roof, but it was watery, with no warmth in it. He walked back to the house and skirted the garage and came out on his driveway. Hunched into his coat and walked out to the street. He didn't look back at the house. Out of sight, out of mind. That was the way he wanted it. He crossed the shoulder and leaned on his mailbox, watching the road, waiting.