Page 28 of In Too Deep

“Zach Kane killed your father.”

“Who told you?”

“No one. I joined the dots.”

“How?”

“Four guys checked in to the hotel yesterday evening. They’re Kane’s associates. You followed them, hoping they’d lead you tohim. You saw me. Apparently Kane looks similar. You jumped to the conclusion.”

“The fact you beat the living…whatever out of some random lowlife and threw his body in the pig swill might have had something to do with that.”

Reacher shrugged.

The woman thought for a moment. “Now I get it. You’re looking for Kane, too. Are you a PI?”

“Yes, I’m looking for him. No, I’m not a PI. My name’s Reacher.” He held out his hand.

“Jenny Knight.” She gave his hand a firm shake. “So why are you looking for him?”

“I’ll come to that. But first, we have two problems.”

“Only two? My luck must be improving.”

“We can’t go after him separately. There’s too much chance of tripping each other up. Do that at a vital moment, one of us might not live to tell the tale.”

“True. So what do you suggest?”

“Kane is only of peripheral interest to me. It’s his boss and the rest of his crew I really want. Let me handle this. Stay out of my way. And I’ll give Kane to you when I close their operation down.”

Knight frowned. “I’ll think about that. What else?”

“You were a cop?”

“What makes you think that?”

“The phone call from the clerk in the middle of the night. You put her up to that?”

“What if I did?”

“That’s a classic cop trick. You thought Kane was in my room. He has a history of violence. You were trying to make him bolt. Run to a vehicle. Flee on foot. Whatever. You just wanted him out in the open. To gain the element of surprise. And reduce the risk toyourself. Because you have no one backing you up. You’re too young to be retired. You don’t seem like a quitter. You don’t have a line-of-duty disability. Which means you were fired.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

“Absolutely. Because I wasn’t fired. I’m on suspension. I’m a detective out of Phoenix, Arizona.”

“You’re on suspension because of Kane?”

Knight nodded. “My father was a cop. He was retired from the job and working security at a private gallery in Tempe. One night it got hit. He took a bullet in the chest. Got taken to the Emergency Room, unconscious. He came around for two minutes, a couple of hours before he died. I was there. He told me Kane was the shooter. He recognized him from his time on the job. Kane has a jacket two inches thick but nothing has ever stuck. Another detective caught the case but Kane disappeared off the map. Just vanished. The detective tried to get the Feds involved but they blew hot, then cold. In the end they wanted nothing to do with it so I ran with the case myself. Evenings. Weekends. Every spare minute I could find. My LT didn’t like it. He said it was a conflict of interest. A distraction from other investigations. He told me to stop. I didn’t, and here I am.”

“I can’t blame you. So what will you do when you find Kane?”

“I expect you want me to say something banal likemake sure justice is done,or promise to turn him over to the local cops, unharmed. But you know what? I can’t do that. What I’m going to do when I get my hands on the miserable son of a bitch is make sure he knows who I am, then shoot him in the gut and watch him die. Slowly. And in agony. That’s the truth, but you’re probably horrified now. In which case, so be it.”

“I’m not judging.” Reacher thought about his own response whensomeone murdered his brother. He was many things, but he wasn’t a hypocrite. He said, “It’s something else.”

“Such as?”

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