Hogan said, “Lighten up, man. No one had a stolen phone.”
“The fourth coincidence is that the stolen phone was stolen by the big ugly guy in the description. We know that for sure. We got a full report. The guy was acting alone at the time, but he is known to associate with a small dark-haired woman. Who was undoubtedly your dinner guest, because she wrote the word on the paper. Undoubtedly she copied it from the stolen phone. Because how else would she know that word? Why else would she be interested in that word right now?”
“I don’t know, man,” Hogan said. “Maybe we’re talking about different people.”
“He went out and stole the phone and brought it back to her. Did she instruct him to, ahead of time? Is she his boss? Did she send him on a mission?”
“I have no clue what you’re talking about, man.”
“Then you better get a clue,” the guy said. “You have been caught harboring enemies of the community. Doesn’t reflect well on you.”
“Whatever,” Hogan said.
“You want to move out of state?”
“I would prefer you to.”
Silence for a long moment.
Then the guy spoke again. Some new menace in his voice. Some new thought. He said, “Did they walk or drive?”
“Who?”
“The man and the woman you were harboring.”
“We weren’t harboring diddly squat. We had friends over for dinner.”
“Walk or drive?”
“When?”
“When they left your house at the end of the evening. When they didn’t stay over.”
“They walked.”
“Do they live close by?”
“Not very,” Hogan said, cautiously.
“So a walk of some length. We’re watching these blocks very carefully. We didn’t see a man and a woman walking home.”
“Maybe they had a car parked around the corner.”
“We didn’t see a man and a woman driving home, either.”
“Maybe you missed them.”
“I don’t think we would have.”
“Then I can’t help you, man.”
The guy said, “I know they were here. I saw the food they ate. I have the note they transcribed from the stolen phone. Tonight these are the most heavily watched blocks in the city. They were not seen leaving. Therefore they’re still here. I think they’re upstairs, right now.”
Silence for another long moment.
Then Hogan said, “You’re a pain in the ass, man. Go ahead up and take a look. Three rooms, all of them empty. Then get out of the house and don’t come back. Don’t send an invitation to the picnic.”
In the hallway upstairs Abby whispered, “We could still climb out the window.”
“We didn’t make the bed,” Reacher whispered back. “And I decided we need this guy’s car. We can’t let him leave anyway.”
“Why do we need his car?”
“Something I just realized we need to do.”
Below them the guy’s footsteps crossed the hallway. Toward the bottom of the stairs. A heavy tread. The old floor creaked and yielded under it. Reacher left his gun in his pocket. He didn’t want to use it. A gunshot on a city street at night is going to get a reaction. Too many complications. Evidently the Albanian guy thought the same way. His right hand snaked into view and gripped the stair rail. No gun. His left hand followed. No gun. But they were big hands. Smooth and hard, broad and discolored, thick blunt fingers, with what looked like a manicure done by a steak mallet.
The guy stepped up on the bottom stair. Big shoe. Large size. Wide fitting. Thick heavy legs. Bulky shoulders, a too-tight suit jacket. Maybe six-two, maybe two-twenty. Not a scrappy little Adriatic guy. A big side of beef. Once upon a time a police detective in Tirana. Maybe size was a requirement. Maybe it got better results.
The guy kept on climbing. Reacher backed away, out of sight. He figured he would step up and say hello just as the guy got to the top. From where he had the furthest to fall. All the way back down again. Maximum distance. Better than just falling on the floor. More efficient. The footsteps kept on coming. Every board squeaked. Reacher waited.
The guy got to the top.
Reacher stepped out.
The guy stared at him.
Reacher said, “Tell me about the rare and subtle word.”
In the hallway below, he heard Hogan say, “Oh, shit.”
The guy at the top of the stairs didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “Tell me about the bunch of meanings. Repulsive to the eye, no doubt, unpleasant to look at, hideous, offensive, unsightly, base, degraded, vile, repellent. All that good modern-day stuff. But if it’s originally an old folk word from years ago, then it’s mostly about fear. In most languages the words share a root. Things you feared, you called ugly. The creature who lived in the forest was never handsome.”
The guy didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “Are you guys scared of me?”
No reply.
Reacher said, “Take out your phone and place it on the floor at your feet.”
The guy said, “No.”
“And your car keys.”
“No.”
“I’m going to take them anyway,” Reacher said. “Up to you when and how.”
The same gaze. Steady, calm, amused, predatory, unhinged.
At that point the guy had two basic choices. He could think of something clever to say back, or he could skip the whole talk-fest altogether, and move straight to the action. Reacher was genuinely uncertain which way he would jump. Downstairs he had seemed to like the sound of his own voice. That was for sure. Once upon a time a police detective. He liked holding court. He liked revealing how the crime was solved. On the other hand, banter alone wasn’t going to win the day. He knew that. Sooner or later something of substance would have to be thrown in the mix. Why not start at the end?
The guy launched off the head of the stairs, off powerful legs, shoulders up, head down, aiming to charge, aiming to plant a shoulder in Reacher’s chest, aiming to knock him backward off balance. But Reacher was at least fifty percent ready, and he twitched forward toward the guy and threw a vicious right uppercut, except not vertically, more out at a forty-five degree angle, so that the guy’s charging, ducking face met it exactly square on, his own onrushing two-twenty meeting Reacher’s opposite-direction two-fifty in a colossal rupture of kinetic energy, face against fist, enough to lift the guy up off his heels, and dump him down on his butt, except the floor wasn’t there, so the guy somersaulted backward down the stairs, one complete flailing rotation, wide and high, and then he crashed against the bottom wall in a spatter of limbs.
Like a train wreck.
From which he got up. More or less immediately. He blinked twice and staggered once and then stood up straight. Like in an afternoon movie. Like a monster taking an artillery shell to the chest, and swiping absentmindedly at a scorched patch of fur with a battered paw, all the while staring forward implacably.
Reacher started down the stairs. The hallway at the bottom was narrow. Barton and Hogan were backing away into the front parlor. Through the open door. The Albanian guy was standing still. Tall and proud and hard as a rock. Apparently resentful at his recent treatment. His nose was bleeding. Hard to tell if it was broken. Hard to tell if there was anything left to break. The guy was no spring chicken. He had lived a hard life. A police detective in Tirana.
The guy took a step forward.
Reacher matched it. They both knew. Sooner or later all you could do was slug it out. The guy feinted left and threw a snap right, low, aimed for Reacher’s center mass, the straightest path to the target, but Reacher saw it coming and twisted away and took it on a slab of muscle high on his side, which hurt, but not as much as it would have, where it was headed before. The twist away was a pure reflex action, a jammed-wide-open panic response from his automatic nervous system, a sudden breathtaking gasp of adrenaline, no finesse at all, no modulation, no precision, just maximum available torque, instantly applied, which was a lot, which meant there was a lot of stored energy just hanging there for a split second, like a giant spring tightly wound, ready to suddenly unwind in the opposite direction, with exactly the same violent speed and force, a perfect equal and opposite reaction, but this time controlled, and timed, and aimed, and crafted. This time with the returning elbow setting out on an arc of its own, like a guided missile, coming up, riding the background rotation of his center mass, adding extra relative velocity of its own, then chopping down hard against the side of the guy’s head, a fraction above and in front of his ear, a colossal blow, like getting hit with a baseball bat or an iron bar. It would have busted most skulls it met. It would have killed most guys. All it did to the Albanian was bounce him off the parlor doorframe and drop him to his knees.