Make Me

There was also a custom business. Level five. Community members were invited to write in with their requests. As detailed as they liked. Whole scripts, if they wanted. Every attempt would be made to satisfy. It all depended on the right actor coming along. No payment was required until the face and the price had been agreed.

Chang scrolled to the end of a catalog page and said, “Check this out.”

A small voice, full of defeat.

Reacher looked. The latest addition to the Mother’s Rest video library was red hot, brand-new, and now available for instant streaming. It was called Thin Man All Ribs Broken First.

The guy from the train. In the suit and the collared shirt. With the fine leather bag.

He was a thin man.

Reacher’s head hurt.

Chang scrolled backward, from brand-new to recent, and stopped on Sad Couple With Something to Be Sad About.

She said, “This has to be Michael McCann, and his friend Exit. Doesn’t it?”

Reacher said nothing.

Westwood said, “Look at this.” He was in some kind of root directory. He pointed at the lines of numbers. He said, “Let’s call them movies. Because that’s what they are. They’re snuff films. Some of them are very long. The shortest is two hours. The oldest is from five years ago and the newest was put up yesterday.”

Then he ran his finger down the screen and stopped close to the bottom. He said, “Guess how many movies they made before McCann first called me.”

Reacher said, “Two hundred.”

“Now two hundred and nine.”

Reacher said nothing.

Westwood said, “You want to see Death by a Thousand Cuts?”

“No.”

“I wonder what they would have called my movie.”

“Hack Attack, probably. Stabbed to death by pens.”

“How long does the con last? When do people figure this out? Only after they step in that room?”

Chang said, “I think they figure it out when the Cadillac driver opens their door and they smell the pigs. I think that’s when the guns come out.”

“We should ask,” Reacher said. “We know where the con men are.”

They walked through to the bedroom hallway. To the one-time linen closet. To the sofa, jammed sideways between the hatch and the opposite wall.

Reacher said, “It would be easier to move the truck.”

Chang said, “You OK?”

He nodded. “Under the circumstances.”

They went out the front, and walked where they figured the tunnel ran, to the small building with the double doors. Chang got in the crew cab and pulled it forward. She got out and left it idling. She looked at the hatch and said, “How do you want to do this?”

Reacher said, “I doubt if they’re crouching right there, right now. But plan for the worst. Westwood opens the lid and stands back, and we aim straight down the hole. OK?”

She nodded. Westwood nodded. Reacher took up position, right of dead center, with his H&K ready. New mag, full auto. Chang mirrored him exactly, left of center.

Westwood bent down and grasped the handle.

He threw open the door and jumped back.

There was no hole.

Chapter 57

The hatch assembly had been bought in a store and then brought home and cemented down on a flat concrete floor. No hole, no stair head. No penetration of any kind. A continuous unbroken slab. The same pebbly surface on the left of the hatch, and the right of the hatch, and under the hatch.

Like a blind eye.

A fake.

A decoy.

Reacher said, “My fault. I wasn’t thinking.”

Westwood said, “Spilled milk. But we need to know where it really is.”

“No,” Chang said. “We need to know if they used it yet.”

Which question was immediately answered by a supersonic crack in the air and a hiss of rifling whine and the granular punch of a NATO round passing through a wooden wall, a yard from their heads. Followed instantly by the blast of the rifle itself. Sound waves were slower than bullets. But in this case not much later. Which meant the rifle was close. A hundred feet, Reacher thought. Which was closer than close. It was heading toward point-blank range, even for these guys.

They hustled inside, and another round punched through the wood, leaving a bright spot of sun. And another, eight feet away. Through-the-wall tactics. Sight unseen. Purely random. This was the A-team, Reacher thought. These were the guys who could hit the side of a barn. He walked past tangles of metal to the far back corner. Invisible from the outside. And fairly invulnerable. Not protected by any kind of a physical shield, but protected by the lottery of aiming blind. The walls weren’t worth a damn, but numbers never lied.