Nobody spoke. I closed my eyes, then I opened them again.
"There was a smell in a basement room," I said. "I should have recognized it. It was the smell of gun oil on cardboard. It's what you get when you stack boxes of new weapons and leave them there for a week or so."
Nobody spoke.
"And the prices in the Bizarre Bazaar books," I said. "Low, medium, high. Low for ammunition, medium for handguns, high for long guns and exotics."
Duffy was looking at the wall. She was thinking hard.
"OK," Villanueva said. "I guess we were all a little dumb."
Duffy looked at him. Then she stared at me. The tactical problem was finally dawning on her.
"We have no jurisdiction," she said.
Nobody spoke.
"This is ATF business," she said. "Not DEA."
"It was an honest mistake," Eliot said.
She shook her head. "I don't mean then. I mean now. We can't be in there. We have to butt out, right now, immediately."
"I'm not butting out," I said.
"You have to. Because we have to. We have to fold our tents and leave. And you can't be in there on your own and unsupported."
A whole new definition of alone and undercover.
"I'm staying," I said.
I searched my soul for a whole year after it happened and concluded I wouldn't have answered any differently even if she hadn't been fragrant and naked under a thin T-shirt and sitting next to me in a bar when she asked the fateful question. Will you let me make the arrest? I would have said yes, whatever the circumstances. For sure. Even if she had been a big ugly guy from Texas or Minnesota standing at attention in my office, I would have said yes. She had done the work. She deserved the credit. I was vaguely interested in getting ahead back then, maybe a little less so than most people, but any structure that has a ranking system tempts you to try to climb it. So I was vaguely interested. But I wasn't a guy who hijacked subordinates' achievements in order to make myself look good. I never did that. If somebody performed well, did a good job, I was always happy to stand back and let them reap the rewards. It was a principle I adhered to throughout my career. I could always console myself by basking in their reflected glow. It was my company, after all. There was a certain amount of collective recognition. Sometimes.
But anyway, I really liked the idea of an MP noncom busting an intel light colonel. Because I knew a guy like Quinn would absolutely hate it. He would see it as the ultimate indignity. A guy who bought Lexuses and sailboats and wore golf shirts didn't want to be taken down by a damn sergeant.
"Will you let me make the arrest?" she asked again.
"I want you to," I said.
"It's a purely legal issue," Duffy said.
"Not to me," I said.
"We have no authority."
"I don't work for you."
"It's suicide," Eliot said.
"I survived so far."
"Only because she cut the phones."
"The phones are history," I said. "The bodyguard problem resolved itself. So I don't need backup anymore."
"Everybody needs backup. You can't go undercover without it."
"ATF backup did the maid a whole lot of good," I said.
"We lent you a car. We helped you every step of the way."
"I don't need cars anymore. Beck gave me my own set of keys. And a gun. And bullets. I'm his new right-hand man. He trusts me to protect his family."
They said nothing.
"I'm an inch away from nailing Quinn," I said. "I'm not butting out now."
They said nothing.
"And I can get Teresa Daniel back," I said.
"ATF can get Teresa Daniel back," Eliot said. "We go to ATF now, we're off the hook with our own people. The maid was theirs, not ours. No harm, no foul."
"ATF isn't up to speed," I said. "Teresa will be caught in the crossfire."
There was a long silence.
"Monday," Villanueva said. "We'll sit on it until Monday. We'll have to tell ATF by Monday at the latest."
"We should tell them right now," Eliot said.
Villanueva nodded. "But we won't. And if necessary I'll make sure that we don't. I say we give Reacher until Monday."
Eliot said nothing more. He just looked away. Duffy laid her head back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling.
"Shit," she said.
"It'll be over by Monday," I said. "I'll bring Teresa back to you here and then you can head home and make all the calls you want."
She was quiet for a whole minute. Then she spoke.
"OK," she said. "You can go back. And you should probably go back right now. You've been gone a long time. That's suspicious in itself."
"OK," I said.
"But think first," she said. "Are you absolutely sure?"
"I'm not your responsibility," I said.
"I don't care," she said. "Just answer the question. Are you sure?"
"Yes," I said.
"Now think again. Still sure?"
"Yes," I said again.
"We'll be here," she said. "Call us if you need us."
"OK," I said.
"Still sure?"
"Yes," I said.
"So go."
She didn't get up. None of them did. I just eased myself off the bed and walked out through the silent room. I was halfway back to the Cadillac when Terry Villanueva came out after me. He waved me to wait and walked across to me. He moved stiff and slow, like the old guy he was.
"Bring me in," he said. "Any chance you get, I want to be there."
I said nothing.
"I could help you out," he said.
"You already did."
"I need to do more. For the kid."
"Duffy?"
He shook his head. "No, Teresa."
"You got a connection?"
"I got a responsibility," he said.
"How?"
"I was her mentor," he said. "It worked out that way. You know how that is?"
I nodded. I knew exactly, totally, and completely how that was.
"Teresa worked for me for a spell," he said. "I trained her. I broke her in, basically. Then she moved up. But ten weeks ago she came back to me and asked if I thought she should accept this mission. She had doubts."
"But you said yes."
He nodded. "Like a damn fool."
"Could you really have stopped her?"
"Probably. She would have listened to me if I had made a case why she shouldn't do it. She'd have made up her own mind, but she'd have listened."
"I understand," I said.
And I did, no question about it. I left him standing there in the motel lot and slid into the car and watched him watch me drive away.
I stayed on Route One all the way through Biddeford and Saco and Old Orchard Beach and then struck out east on the long lonely road out to the house. I checked my watch as I got close and figured I had been away two whole hours, of which only forty minutes were legitimate. Twenty minutes to the warehouse, twenty back. But I didn't expect to have to explain myself to anybody. Beck would never know I hadn't come straight home and the others would never know I had been supposed to. I figured I was right there in the endgame, freewheeling toward victory.
But I was wrong.
I knew it before Paulie got halfway through opening the gate. He came out of his house and stepped across to the latch. He was wearing his suit. No coat. He lifted the latch by butting it upward with his clenched fist. Everything was still normal. I had seen him open the gate a dozen times and he was doing nothing he hadn't done before. He wrapped his fists around the bars. Pulled the gate. But before he got halfway through opening it he stopped it dead. He just made enough space to squeeze his giant frame through. Then he stepped out to meet me. He walked around toward my window and when he got six feet from the car he stopped and smiled and took two guns out of his pockets. It happened in less than a second. Two pockets, two hands, two guns. They were my Colt Anacondas. The steel looked dull in the gray light. I could see they were both loaded. There were bright snub-nose copper jackets winking at me from every chamber I could see. Remington.44 Magnums, without a doubt. Full metal jacket. Eighteen bucks for a box of twenty. Plus tax. Ninety-five cents each. Twelve of them. Eleven dollars and forty cents' worth of precision ammunition, ready to go, five dollars and seventy cents in each hand. And he was holding those hands very steady. They were like rocks. The left was aimed a little ahead of the Cadillac's front tire. The right was aimed directly at my head. His fingers were tight on the triggers. The muzzles weren't moving at all. Not even a fraction. He was like a statue.