The Hard Way by Lee Child Read Free Book Online Page A

red door.
    Twelve minutes. Fifteen.
    Reacher asked himself:
Did they see me?
He answered himself:
Of course they did. Close to a certainty. The mugger saw me. That was for damn sure. And these other guys are smarter than any mugger. They’re the type who see everything.
Guys good enough to take down an SAS veteran outside a department store were going to check the street pretty carefully. Then he asked himself:
But were they worried?
Answered himself:
No, they weren’t.
The mugger saw a professional opportunity. That was all. To these other guys, people in doorways were like trash cans or mail boxes or fire hydrants or cruising taxis. Street furniture. You see them, you see the city. And he was alone. Cops or FBI would have come in a group. Mob-handed. There would have been a whole bunch of unexplained people hanging around looking shifty and awkward with walkie-talkies in brown paper bags made up to look like pints of liquor.
    So they saw me, but they didn’t scare.
    So what the hell was happening?
    Eighteen minutes.
    Fire hydrants,
Reacher thought.
    The BMW was parked on a fire hydrant. Rush hour was building. NYPD tow trucks were firing up and leaving their garages and starting their day. They all had quotas to make. How long could a sane person leave five million bucks inside an illegally parked car in New York City?
    Nineteen minutes.
    Reacher gave it up after twenty. Just rolled out of the doorway and stood up. Stretched once and hustled north, and then west on Prince all the way to Sixth Avenue, and then north again across Houston to the curb with the fireplug.
    It was empty. No BMW.

CHAPTER 8
    REACHER HEADED SOUTH again, all the way back to Spring Street. Six blocks, moving fast, seven minutes. He found Gregory on the sidewalk outside the dull red door.
    “Well?” Gregory said.
    Reacher shook his head.
    “Nothing,” he said. “Not a damn thing. Nobody showed up. It all turned to rat shit. Isn’t that what you SAS guys call it?”
    “When we’re feeling polite,” Gregory said.
    “The car is gone.”
    “How is that possible?”
    “There’s a back door,” Reacher said. “That’s my best guess right now.”
    “Shit.”
    Reacher nodded. “Like I said, rat shit.”
    “We should check it out. Mr. Lane is going to want the whole story.”
    They found an alley entrance two buildings west. It was gated and the gates were chained. The chains were secured with a padlock the size of a frying pan. Unbreakable. But reasonably new. Oiled, and frequently used. Above the gates was a single iron screen covering the whole width of the alley and extending twenty feet in the air.
    No way in.
    Reacher stepped back and looked left and right. The target building’s right-hand neighbor was a chocolate shop. A security screen was down over the window but Reacher could see confections the size of babies’ fists displayed behind it.
Fakes,
he guessed. Otherwise they would melt or go white. There was a light on in back of the store. He cupped his hands against the glass and peered inside. Saw a small shadowy figure moving about. He banged on the door, loud, with the flat of his hand. The small figure stopped moving and turned around. Pointed at something waist-high to Reacher’s right. There was a neatly engraved card taped to the door glass:
Opening hours, 10 am–10 pm.
Reacher shook his head and beckoned the small figure closer. It gave a little universal shrug of exasperation and headed his way. It was a woman. Short, dark, young, tired. She turned numerous complicated locks and opened the door against a thick steel chain.
    “We’re closed,” she said, through the narrow gap.
    “Department of Health,” Reacher said.
    “You don’t look like it,” the woman said. And she was right. Reacher had looked convincing as a bum in a doorway. He didn’t look convincing as a city bureaucrat. So he nodded at Gregory, in his neat gray suit.
    “He’s with the city,” he said. “I’m with him.”
    “I was just