The Hard Way Read Free Page A

He held it two-handed, flat against his chest, high up, so that Reacher felt he had two people staring back at him. Above, Lane’s pale and worried features. Below, under glass, a woman of breathtaking classical beauty. Dark hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, a bud of a mouth, photographed with passion and expertise and printed by a master.
    “This is my wife,” Lane said.
    Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
    “Her name is Kate,” Lane said.
    Nobody spoke.
    “Kate disappeared late yesterday morning,” Lane said. “I got a call in the afternoon. From her kidnappers. They wanted money. That’s what was in the car. You watched one of my wife’s kidnappers collect their ransom.”
    Nobody spoke.
    “They promised to release her,” Lane said. “And it’s been twenty-four hours. And they haven’t called back.”

CHAPTER 3
    EDWARD LANE HELD the framed photograph like an offering and Reacher stepped forward to take it. He tilted it to catch the light. Kate Lane was beautiful, no question about it. She was hypnotic. She was younger than her husband by maybe twenty years, which put her in her early thirties. Old enough to be all woman, young enough to be flawless. In the picture she was gazing at something just beyond the edge of the print. Her eyes blazed with love. Her mouth seemed ready to burst into a wide smile. The photographer had frozen the first tiny hint of it so that the pose seemed dynamic. It was a still picture, but it looked like it was about to move. The focus and the grain and the detail were immaculate. Reacher didn’t know much about photography, but he knew he was holding a high-end product. The frame alone might have cost what he used to make in a month, back in the army.
    “My Mona Lisa,” Lane said. “That’s how I think of that picture.”
    Reacher passed it back. “Is it recent?”
    Lane propped it upright again, next to the telephone.
    “Less than a year old,” he said.
    “Why no cops?”
    “There are reasons.”
    “This kind of a thing, they usually do a good job.”
    “No cops,” Lane said.
    Nobody spoke.
    “You were a cop,” Lane said. “You can do what they do.”
    “I can’t,” Reacher said.
    “You were a military cop. Therefore all things being equal you can do better than them.”
    “All things aren’t equal. I don’t have their resources.”
    “You can make a start.”
    The room went very quiet. Reacher glanced at the phone, and the photograph.
    “How much money did they want?” he asked.
    “One million dollars in cash,” Lane answered.
    “And that was in the car? A million bucks?”
    “In the trunk. In a leather bag.”
    “OK,” Reacher said. “Let’s all sit down.”
    “I don’t feel like sitting down.”
    “Relax,” Reacher said. “They’re going to call back. Probably very soon. I can pretty much guarantee that.”
    “How?”
    “Sit down. Start at the beginning. Tell me about yesterday.”
    So Lane sat down, in the armchair next to the telephone table, and started to talk about the previous day. Reacher sat at one end of a sofa. Gregory sat next to him. The other five guys distributed themselves around the room, two sitting, two squatting on chair arms, one leaning against the wall.
    “Kate went out at ten o’clock in the morning,” Lane said. “She was heading for Bloomingdale’s, I think.”
    “You think?”
    “I allow her some freedom of action. She doesn’t necessarily supply me with a detailed itinerary. Not every day.”
    “Was she alone?”
    “Her daughter was with her.”
    “
Her
daughter?”
    “She has an eight-year-old by her first marriage. Her name is Jade.”
    “She lives with you here?”
    Lane nodded.
    “So where is Jade now?”
    “Missing, obviously,” Lane said.
    “So this is a
double
kidnapping?” Reacher said.
    Lane nodded again. “Triple, in a way. Their driver didn’t come back, either.”
    “You didn’t think to mention this before?”
    “Does it make a difference? One person or three?”
    “Who was the