The Hard Way

CHAPTER 64

THEY TURNED OFF the highway at Newmarket and set out cross-country toward Norwich. This time the road was familiar, but that didn’t make it any faster. Forward motion, without any visible result. A big sky, whipped clean by wind.

“Think about the dynamic here,” Reacher said. “Why would Kate ask Taylor for help? How could she ask any of them for help? They’re all insanely loyal to Lane. Did Knight help Anne? Kate had just heard that story. Why would she walk up cold to another of Lane’s killers and say, hey, want to help me get out of here? Want to double-cross your boss? Help me steal his money?”

Pauling said, “They already had a thing going.”

Reacher nodded at the wheel. “That’s the only way to explain it. They had already started an affair. Maybe long ago.”

“The CO’s wife? Hobart said no fighting man would do that.”

“He said no American fighting man would do that. Maybe the British SAS does things differently. And there were signs. Carter Groom is about as emotional as a fence post but he said that Kate liked Taylor and that Taylor got on well with the kid.”

“Dee Marie showing up must have acted like a kind of tipping point.”

Reacher nodded again. “Kate and Taylor made a plan and put it in action. But first they explained it to Jade. Maybe they thought it would be too much of a sudden trauma not to. They swore her to secrecy, as much as they could with an eight-year-old. And the kid did pretty well.”

“What did they tell her?”

“That she already had one replacement daddy, now she was getting another. That she already lived in one new place, now she was moving on.”

“Big secret for a kid to keep.”

“She didn’t exactly keep it,” Reacher said. “She was worried about it. She straightened it out in her head by drawing it. Maybe it was an old habit. Maybe mothers always say, draw a picture of something you’re going to see.”

“What picture?”

“There were four in her room. On her desk. Kate didn’t sanitize well enough. Or maybe she just mistook them for regular clutter. There was a big gray building with trees in front. At first I thought it was the Dakota from Central Park. Now I think it was the Grange Farm farmhouse. They must have shown her photographs, to prepare her. She got the trees just right. Thin straight trunks, round crowns. To withstand the wind. Like light green lollipops on brown sticks. And then there was a picture of a family group. I thought the guy was Lane, obviously. But there was something weird about his mouth. Like half his teeth had been punched out. So it wasn’t Lane. It was Taylor, clearly. The dentistry. Jade was probably fascinated by it. She drew her new family. Taylor, Kate, and her. To internalize the idea.”

“And you think Taylor brought them here to England?”

“I think Kate wanted him to. Maybe even begged him to. They needed a safe haven. Somewhere very distant. Out of Lane’s reach. And they were having an affair. They didn’t want to be apart. So if Taylor’s here, then Kate’s here, too. Jade did a picture of three people in an airplane. That was the journey she was going to take. Then she did one of two families together. Like double vision. I had no idea what it meant. But now my guess is that was Jackson and Taylor, and Susan and Kate, and Melody and herself. Her new situation. Her new extended family. Happy ever after on Grange Farm.”

“Doesn’t work,” Pauling said. “Their passports were still in the drawer.”

“That was crude,” Reacher said. “Wasn’t it? You must have searched a thousand desks. Did you ever see passports all alone in a drawer? Kind of ostentatiously displayed like that? I never did. They were always buried under other junk. Leaving them on show like that was a message. It said, hey, we’re still in the country. Which meant actually they weren’t.”

“How do you get out without a passport?”

“You don’t. But you once said, they don’t look as closely on the way out. You said sometimes a little resemblance is all you need.”

Pauling paused a beat. “Someone else’s passport?”

“Who do we know that fits the bill? A woman in her thirties and an eight-year-old girl?”

Pauling said, “Susan and Melody.”

“Dave Kemp told us Jackson had been alone at the farm,” Reacher said. “That was because Susan and Melody had flown to the States. They got all the correct entry stamps. Then they gave their passports to Kate and Jade. Maybe in Taylor’s apartment. Maybe over dinner. Like a little ceremony. Then Taylor booked on British Airways. He was sitting next to a British woman on the plane. We know that for sure. A buck gets ten she’s on the passenger manifest as Mrs. Susan Jackson. And another buck gets ten that next to her was a little British kid called Ms. Melody Jackson. But they were really Kate and Jade Lane.”

“But that leaves Susan and Melody stuck in the States.”

“Temporarily,” Reacher said. “What did Taylor mail back?”

“A thin book. Not many pages. With a rubber band around it.”

“Who puts a rubber band around a thin book? It was actually two very thin books. Two passports, bundled together. Mailed to Susan’s New York City hotel room, where she and Melody are right now sitting and waiting to get them back.”

“But the stamps will be out of sequence now. When they leave they’ll be exiting without having entered.”

Reacher nodded. “It’s an irregularity. But what are the people at JFK going to do about it? Deport them? That’s exactly what they want. So they’ll get home OK.”

“Sisters,” Pauling said. “This whole thing has been about the loyalty of sisters. Patti Joseph, Dee Marie Graziano, Susan Jackson.”

Reacher drove on. Said nothing.

“Unbelievable,” Pauling said. “We saw Kate and Jade this morning.”

“Setting out with their hoes,” Reacher said. “Starting out on their new lives.”

Then he accelerated a little, because the road was widening and straightening for the bypass around the town called Thetford.

John Gregory was hitting the gas, too. He was at the wheel of a rented dark green seven-seat Toyota Land Cruiser sports utility vehicle. Edward Lane was next to him in the front passenger seat. Kowalski and Addison and Carter Groom were shoulder to shoulder on the rear bench. Burke and Perez were on the jump seats way in back. They were joining the M-11 at its southern tip, having blasted straight through central London to the northeast corner of the inner city.