Running Blind Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for RUNNING BLIND

  “Truly surprising . . . a brain-teasing puzzle that gets put together piece by fascinating piece, and a central character with Robin Hood-like integrity and an engagingly eccentric approach to life.” —Publishers Weekly

  "Deeply satisfying . . . plan to stay up long past bedtime and do some serious hyperventilating toward the end.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This fourth Reacher thriller is easily the best. The plot is a masterpiece. ” —Booklist

  “With numerous plot twists and turns, Child puts Reacher through his paces brilliantly, arriving at an unusual solution. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

  “Running Blind is a great read.” —St. Petersburg Times

  “Reacher is one of the more interesting suspense heroes to come along in a while.” —San Antonio Express-News

  “Spectacular . . . muscular, energetic prose and pell-mell pacing.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “A superior series.” —The Washington Post Book World

  Praise for LEE CHILD

  "Reacher is a wonderfully epic hero: tough, taciturn, yet vulnerable.” —People

  "Great style and careful plotting. The violence is brutal . . . depicted with the kind of detail that builds dread and suspense.”

  —The New York Times

  “The author pens nightmarish images as casually as an ordinary writer would dot an ‘i’ or cross a ‘t.’ ”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “[Child] must be channeling Dashiell Hammett . . . Reacher handles the maze of clues and the criminal unfortunates with a flair that would make Sam Spade proud.” —Playboy

  “Reacher is as tough as he is resourceful.” —The Denver Post

  “Child . . . gives us one of the truly memorable tough-guy heroes in recent fiction: Jack Reacher.”

  —Jeffery Deaver, author of The Bone Collector

  “I love the larger-than-life hero Jack Reacher. I grew up a fan of John Wayne’s and Clint Eastwood’s movies, and it’s great to see a man of their stature back in business.” —Nevada Barr

  “Jack Reacher has presence and dimension—a man you definitely want on your side. Child has a sure touch and a strong voice. Definitely a talent to watch.” —Lynn Hightower

  Praise for Lee Child’s JACK REACHER NOVELS

  KILLING FLOOR

  A People Magazine “Page-Turner”

  An Anthony Award winner

  “It’ll blow you away.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “From its jolting opening scene to its fiery final confrontation, Killing Floor is irresistible.” —People

  DIE TRYING

  “Tough, elegant, and thoughtful.” —Robert B. Parker

  “A riveting thriller. It’s a winner.” —Greg Iles

  TRIPWIRE

  “Grabs hold with the first page . . . This is pulse-pounding suspense.” —Arizona Daily Star

  “Gives new meaning to what a page-turner should be.”

  —Michael Connelly

  WITHOUT FAIL

  “If Without Fail doesn’t hook you on Lee Child, I give up.”

  —The New York Times

  “Child’s plot is ingenious, his characters are first-rate, and his writing is fine indeed. This is a superior series.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  ECHO BURNING

  “Child is a vigorous storyteller, gradually building the suspense to almost unbearable levels.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “As sweltering as the El Paso sun. Bottom line: jalapeño-hot suspense.” —People

  Titles by Lee Child

  WITHOUT FAIL

  ECHO BURNING

  RUNNING BLIND

  TRIPWIRE

  DIE TRYING

  KILLING FLOOR

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Previously published in the United Kingdom under the title The Visitor.

  RUNNING BLIND

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  Copyright © 2000 by Lee Child.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-436-23322-4

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Edith and Norman,

  after twenty-six years of good times

  1

  PEOPLE SAY THAT knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery? All of them? Not guessed them, not dreamed them, but really knew them? What would you do? You would run to the store. You would mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win.

  Same for the stock market. Suppose you really kn
ew what was going to go way up? You’re not talking about a hunch or a gut feeling. You’re not talking about a trend or a percentage game or a whisper or a tip. You’re talking about knowledge. Real, hard knowledge. Suppose you had it? What would you do? You would call your broker. You would buy. Then later you’d sell, and you’d be rich.

  Same for basketball, same for the horses, whatever. Football, hockey, next year’s World Series, any kind of sports at all, if you could predict the future, you’d be home free. No question. Same for the Oscars, same for the Nobel prize, same for the first snowfall of winter. Same for anything.

  Same for killing people.

  Suppose you wanted to kill people. You would need to know ahead of time how to do it. That part is not too difficult. There are many ways. Some of them are better than others. Most of them have drawbacks. So you use what knowledge you’ve got, and you invent a new way. You think, and you think, and you think, and you come up with the perfect method.

  You pay a lot of attention to the setup. Because the perfect method is not an easy method, and careful preparation is very important. But that stuff is meat and potatoes to you. You have no problem with careful preparation. No problem at all. How could you, with your intelligence? After all your training?

  You know the big problems will come afterward. How do you make sure you get away with it? You use your knowledge. You know more than most people about how the cops work. You’ve seen them on duty, many times, sometimes close-up. You know what they look for. So you don’t leave anything for them to find. You go through it all in your head, very precisely and very exactly and very carefully. Just as carefully as you would mark the play card you knew for sure was going to win you a fortune.

  People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Which makes you just about the most powerful person on earth. When it comes to killing people. And then getting away with it.

  LIFE IS FULL of decisions and judgments and guesses, and it gets to the point where you’re so accustomed to making them you keep right on making them even when you don’t strictly need to. You get into a what if thing, and you start speculating about what you would do if some problem was yours instead of somebody else’s. It gets to be a habit. It was a habit Jack Reacher had in spades. Which was why he was sitting alone at a restaurant table and gazing at the backs of two guys twenty feet away and wondering if it would be enough just to warn them off or if he would have to go the extra mile and break their arms.

  It was a question of dynamics. From the start the dynamics of the city meant that a brand-new Italian place in Tribeca like the one Reacher was in was going to stay pretty empty until the food guy from the New York Times wrote it up or an Observer columnist spotted some celebrity in there two nights in a row. But neither thing had happened yet and the place was still uncrowded, which made it the perfect choice for a lonely guy looking to eat dinner near his girlfriend’s apartment while she worked late at the office. The dynamics of the city. They made it inevitable Reacher would be in there. They made it inevitable the two guys he was watching would be in there, too. Because the dynamics of the city meant any bright new commercial venture would sooner or later get a visit on behalf of somebody wanting a steady three hundred bucks a week in exchange for not sending his boys in to smash it up with baseball bats and ax handles.

  The two guys Reacher was watching were standing close to the bar, talking quietly to the owner. The bar was a token affair built across the corner of the room. It made a neat sharp triangle about seven or eight feet on a side. It was not really a bar in the sense that anybody was ever going to sit there and drink anything. It was just a focal point. It was somewhere to keep the liquor bottles. They were crowded three-deep on glass shelves in front of sandblasted mirrors. The register and the credit card machine were on the bottom shelf. The owner was a small nervous guy and he had backed away into the point of the triangle and was standing with his backside jammed against the cash drawer. His arms were folded tight across his chest, defensively. Reacher could see his eyes. They were showing something halfway between disbelief and panic and they were darting all around the room.

  It was a large room, easily sixty feet by sixty, exactly square. The ceiling was high, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet. It was made of pressed tin, sandblasted back to a dull glow. The building was more than a hundred years old, and the room had probably been used for everything, one time or another. Maybe it had started out as a factory. The windows were certainly large enough and numerous enough to illuminate some kind of an industrial operation back when the city was only five stories tall. Then maybe it had become a store. Maybe even an automobile showroom. It was big enough. Now it was an Italian restaurant. Not a checked-red-tablecloth and Mama’s-sauce type of Italian restaurant, but the type of place which has three hundred thousand dollars invested up front in bleached avant-garde decor and which gives you seven or eight handmade ravioli parcels on a large plate and calls them a meal. Reacher had eaten there ten times in the four weeks it had been open and he always left feeling hungry. But the quality was so good he was telling people about it, which really had to mean something, because Reacher was no kind of a gourmet. The place was named Mostro’s, which as far as he understood Italian translated as monster’s. He wasn’t sure what the name referred to. Certainly not the size of the portions. But it had some kind of a resonance, and the whole place with its pale maple and white walls and dull aluminum accents was an attractive space. The people who worked there were amiable and confident. There were whole operas played beginning to end through excellent loudspeakers placed high on the walls. In Reacher’s inexpert opinion he was watching the start of a big reputation.

  But the big reputation was obviously slow to spread. The spare avant-garde decor made it OK to have only twenty tables in a sixty-by-sixty space, but in four weeks he had never seen more than three of them occupied. Once he had been the only customer during the whole ninety-minute span he spent in the place. Tonight there was just one other couple eating, five tables away. They were sitting face-to-face across from each other, side-on to him. The guy was medium-sized and sandy. Short sandy hair, fair mustache, light brown suit, brown shoes. The woman was thin and dark, in a skirt and a jacket. There was an imitation-leather briefcase resting against the table leg next to her right foot. They were both maybe thirty-five and looked tired and worn and slightly dowdy. They were comfortable enough together, but they weren’t talking much.

  The two guys at the bar were talking. That was for sure. They were leaning over, bending forward from the waist, talking fast and persuading hard. The owner was against the register, bending backward by an equal amount. It was like the three of them were trapped in a powerful gale blowing through the room. The two guys were a lot bigger than medium-sized. They were dressed in identical dark wool coats which gave them breadth and bulk. Reacher could see their faces in the dull mirrors behind the liquor bottles. Olive skin, dark eyes. Not Italians. Syrians or Lebanese maybe, with their Arab scrappiness bred out of them by a generation of living in America. They were busy making one point after another. The guy on the right was making a sweeping gesture with his hand. It was easy to see it represented a bat plowing through the bottles on the shelf. Then the hand was chopping up and down. The guy was demonstrating how the shelves could be smashed. One blow could smash them all, top to bottom , he was suggesting. The owner was going pale. He was glancing sideways at his shelves.

  Then the guy on the left shot his cuff and tapped the face of his watch and turned to leave. His partner straightened up and followed him. He trailed his hand over the nearest table and knocked a plate to the floor. It shattered on the tile, loud and dissonant against the opera floating in the air. The sandy guy and the dark woman sat still and looked away. The two guys walked slowly to the door, heads up, confident. Reacher watched them all the way out to the sidewalk. Then the owner came out from behind the bar and knelt down and raked through the fragments of the broken plate with his fingertips.


  “You OK?” Reacher called to him.

  Soon as the words were out, he knew it was a dumb thing to say. The guy just shrugged and put an all-purpose miserable look on his face. He cupped his hands on the floor and started butting the shards into a pile. Reacher slid out of his chair and stepped away from the table and squared his napkin on the tile next to him and started collecting the debris into it. The couple five tables away was watching him.

  “When are they coming back?” Reacher asked.

  “An hour,” the guy said.

  “How much do they want?”

  The guy shrugged again and smiled a bitter smile.

  “I get a start-up discount,” he said. “Two hundred a week, goes to four when the place picks up.”

  “You want to pay?”

  The guy made another sad face. “I want to stay in business, I guess. But paying out two bills a week ain’t exactly going to help me do that.”

  The sandy guy and the dark woman were looking at the opposite wall, but they were listening. The opera fell away to a minor-key aria and the diva started in on it with a low mournful note.

  “Who were they?” Reacher asked quietly.

  “Not Italians,” the guy said. “Just some punks.”

  “Can I use your phone?”

  The guy nodded.

  “You know an office-supply store open late?” Reacher asked.

  “Broadway, two blocks over,” the guy said. “Why? You got business to attend to?”

  Reacher nodded.

  “Yeah, business,” he said.

  He stood up and slid around behind the bar. There was a new telephone next to a new reservations book. The book looked like it had never been opened. He picked up the phone and dialed a number and waited two beats until it was answered a mile away and forty floors up.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hey, Jodie,” he said.

  “Hey, Reacher, what’s new?”

  “You going to be finished anytime soon?”

  He heard her sigh.

  “No, this is an all-nighter,” she said. “Complex law, and they need an opinion like yesterday. I’m real sorry.”