The area at the back of the hotel was not promising. There was a small pool and a bunch of white plastic lounging chairs all surrounded by a rickety wooden fence. It was eight feet tall. Ancient. No way would it take his weight. The only way out was through the office, and a pair of cops would be coming the other way any second. Two at the front. Two at the back. That was the obvious way to do it. He was trapped. And there was nowhere to hide. Not at ground level, anyway.

Reacher moved back to his bathroom window and lifted one foot onto the sill. He pushed up and grabbed the edge of the roof. Pulled with his arms. Scrambled over the lip. Rolled to the center. And lay completely still. He heard footsteps on both sides of the building. They were close. The ones at the front stopped moving. Someone thumped on the door.

“Gerrardsville Police Department. Open up.”

The officers at the rear were poking around the pool furniture. One of them took a chair and set it next to the fence. He climbed up and looked over and quartered the area on the far side with his flashlight. Then he jumped down and called, “Clear.”

Reacher heard the whirr of the lock and then a thump as the door to his room hit one of the unconscious guy’s heels. There was a pause, the door closed, then he heard the cop’s voice through the bathroom window. It sounded like he was on his radio.

“We have two male suspects, nonresponsive. Two guns secured at the scene.”

A second voice said, “Looks like they got into it over something. Got into it pretty good. No ID. No smell of booze. Better send a bus right away.”

The first voice came back, quieter. “They can stay in the hospital overnight. The detective can question them in the morning, if he wants to. We better seal this place, just in case.”

Reacher lay on the roof and watched an ambulance arrive. A pair of paramedics rolled the two guys out on gurneys, loaded them up, and drove off. The cops left a couple of minutes later. Reacher stayed where he was for another hour, until he was satisfied that there were no cops lurking and no nosey guests snooping around. Then he climbed down and walked to the office. A couple was leaving as he went in. They looked young. Flushed. Happy. And a little bit furtive.

The same guy was at the counter, wearing the same ridiculous clothes and looking just as sickly and malnourished. He saw Reacher and said, “You’re OK?”

Reacher said, “I’m fine. Why?”

“The cops let you out already?”

“They never took me in. I went for a walk. Came back and found my door sealed up with crime scene tape. What’s that all about?”

“It wasn’t my fault. Two guys came. Made me give them a passkey.”

“Then you dialed 911?”

“I guess the guy in 11 did that. He’s a real asshole.”

“I told you I didn’t want any neighbors.”

The guy pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to Reacher. “He comes here all the time. With his girlfriend. She’s also an asshole. That’s their favorite room. He insisted. I’m sorry.”

Reacher handed the twenty back. “Give me another room. No one on either side. And this time, no excuses.”

Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.

That’s what Lev Emerson was told by his father, years ago when he was still in high school. It wasn’t an original concept. It wasn’t the result of radical new thinking. But nonetheless, the advice was sound. Old Mr. Emerson had followed it himself. He had died happy at the age of seventy-four, at his workbench, after a lifetime making ladies’ hats in the corner of a little workshop in Brooklyn. Lev Emerson walked the same talk. Just as enthusiastically. Although it led him down a path his father could never have anticipated.

On the face of it Lev Emerson owned and operated a fire safety business out of a pair of nondescript warehouses on the south side of Chicago. It was a legitimate corporation. It was in good standing with the State of Illinois. It had articles of association. Shareholders. Executive officers. Employees. Accounts with all kinds of recognizable brand-name suppliers. It had plenty of customers, most of whom were satisfied. It paid taxes. It sponsored a local kids’ softball team. And it provided cover for certain other materials that Emerson had to have shipped in from a handful of less-well-known sources.

The bulk of the corporation’s reported income came from sprinkler installations and alarm systems. There was no shortage of co-ops and condo buildings in Chicagoland, as well as offices and industrial premises. New ones were constantly going up. Old ones were always getting refurbished. The pickings were rich for an outfit like Emerson’s. And it didn’t hurt that the rules and regulations changed so frequently. Something that was up to code one year could be condemned as dangerous the next. And again a couple of years after that. Hidden interests were served. The way things had always been in the Windy City. Pockets got lined. Companies got busy. Plenty of them. Including Emerson’s. Corporate clients were its bread and butter. But that didn’t mean it turned its back on the little guys. Emerson insisted on offering a full range of services to the safety-conscious homeowner, too. That helped to broaden the customer base, which was good from a business point of view. And the steady flow of station wagons and minivans through the parking lot added to an impression of banal normality. Which was good for another reason.

Emerson’s name might have been over the door but he had nothing to do with the banal, normal side of the business. For that he hired people who knew what they were doing. Who could be trusted to keep their fingers out of the register. And he left them to get on with it. Partly because he was naturally a good delegator. Partly because he had no interest in sprinklers and alarms or anything else that helped to prevent fires. But mostly because his time was fully occupied elsewhere. He had a parallel operation to run.

The thing he loved to do.

The jobs Emerson carried out personally fell into two categories. Those that looked like accidents. And those that didn’t. The job he was just finishing would not look like an accident. That was for damn sure. It would be a thing of beauty. Unmistakably deliberate. Impossible to trace back to Emerson. Or his client. Unambiguous in its meaning. And with a signature that was distinct and unique. That way, if the recipient was sufficiently stupid or obtuse, the message could be repeated and the connection would be clear.

Emerson knew it was a stretch to say he was still actively finishing the job. The work was essentially complete. There was nothing more he needed to do. Or that he could do. His continued presence would not affect the outcome in any way. He could have been hundreds of miles away and it would have made no difference. Four of his guys already were. They were heading back to base, driving a pair of anonymous white panel vans, preparing to clean their equipment and resupply for their next project. He could have gone with them. That would have been the prudent thing to do. But he stayed. He wanted to watch. He needed to watch.

Prudence be damned.

The thing he loved to do.

Emerson was on the Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Georgia, nearly six hundred feet above the Savannah River, midway between the mainland and Hutchinson Island. The strip of land that split the waterway that separated Georgia from South Carolina. He was standing, not driving. Leaning with his forearms against the lip of the concrete sidewall on the westbound side. Graeber, his right-hand man, was next to him. He was also leaning on the wall. His pose was exactly the same but he was just a little shorter. A little younger. A little less obsessed.