Page 43 of In Too Deep

“You can get another.”

“What about Fletcher’s? And Kane’s?”

“They both use 9mm parabellum. They like the same brand. Hornady. I’ll make it look convincing. And it’s not like the Russians will be in a rush to call 911. There’ll be no ballistics labs working their magic on this one.”

Chapter20

The computer file Knight settledon turned out to be a PowerPoint presentation. Not her favorite format after all the hours of briefings she’d sat through over the years, but useful in some circumstances. She checked to see if the slides contained the kind of information she was hoping for. She scanned the thumbnails a second time. Then she turned to Reacher and said, “You’re going to want to see this.”

She took the computer back to the dining room, reconnected it, and fired up the projector. “We have the facilities. We might as well use them.”

Reacher didn’t look convinced.

Knight took the seat in front of the computer. Reacher stood behind her.

She said, “Ready?”

Reacher said, “As I’ll ever be.”

Knight hit a key and an image filled the projection screen. It was a picture of a house, nicely framed and perfectly lit. It looked like itcould have been taken from a real estate listing. The place was the same kind of age as the house they were in. The same kind of size. And style. It was pretty much indistinguishable from the ones that Kane’s guys were watching. All four must have been part of the same development. If you were in the market it would be hard to pick between them.

Knight waited a moment then moved on to the next slide. This showed a satellite image, heavily cropped to focus on the house and its immediate surroundings. Its roof looked in good shape. The gravel driveway was tidy. No vehicles were parked there. At the back the formal garden had received some recent attention. All the plants and hedges had been trimmed back, hard, like whoever had done it was more concerned with keeping the maintenance in check than worrying about its appearance.

One other thing in the picture caught Reacher’s attention. He pointed at the center of the screen and said, “What’s that?”

Knight called up the next slide. It was a shot of the house from the road, and it showed that the driveway was closed off by a gate. It was black. Wrought iron. Maybe eight feet tall at the center. The top was curved and it had the kind of heraldic-style emblems and flourishes that are designed to look classy, but really are shaped and sharpened to make it hard to climb.

Reacher said, “Can we see the lock?”

Knight moved on to the next slide. It was a close-up of the center of the gate. Where the two halves joined, three feet from the ground, there was a keypad. Knight hit the spacebar again and a box appeared on the screen, superimposed over the shiny black bars. It contained a string of six digits, then the hash symbol.

Reacher said, “Interesting.”

“Isn’t it?”

Knight hit the spacebar again. The next slide showed the frontdoor. The next was a close-up of its handle. It showed another keypad. The next click brought up a text box. It showed another string of digits followed by a hash symbol. Knight stayed on the image for a moment, then clicked again. The next image was different. It was a diagram, not a photograph. It showed how a battery of deadbolts extended from the frame into the top and the sides of the door. It gave the specification of the metal that was used. It was too hard to be cut. Too thick to be bent. And it was complemented by even thicker strips that braced the door’s entire height and width. A two-headed arrow indicated that the door opened out, not in.

Knight checked that Reacher had finished absorbing the detail then hit the spacebar another time. A picture of one of the first-floor windows appeared. It was a little grainy, like someone had zoomed in on the image too aggressively.

Knight said, “What are we looking at here?”

It took Reacher a moment, then he realized. “Bars, behind the glass. For security.”

Knight shivered. “Not very homey. You probably like it.”

“I doubt it’s being used as a home.”

“No kidding.”

Knight hit the spacebar. Another diagram appeared. It showed an armored panel suspended above a door. Knight hit the bar again. The panel dropped down, blocking the exit.

She said, “What the…”

The next slide showed a painting hanging on a wall. It was a Van Gogh–style landscape in an ornate, gilded frame. The next slide showed it pulled away from the wall, hinged at the left like an open cupboard door. Behind it was another keypad. This one was slimmer than the others, with a touchscreen instead of regular keys. The next click of the spacebar brought up another textbox, with another code.

Knight said, “So what does this mean? You need a code to getthrough the gate. You need a second code to get through the front door. Then if you don’t know to use a third code on the pad hidden behind the picture, a cage drops down and locks you in?”

Reacher said, “That’s how it looks.”

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