He drove across the intersection with his head turned, half an eye ahead, and the rest of his attention focused sideways. Nothing there. No parked four-door. The obstruction was a striped sawhorse placed against an open manhole. There was a power company truck ten yards farther down the street. A gaggle of workmen on the sidewalk, drinking soda from cans. The traffic ground on. Stopped again, for the next light. He was four cars back.

This was not the street. The traffic pattern was wrong. It was flowing west, left to right in front of him. He had a good view out to his left. He could see fifty yards down the street. Nothing there. Not this one. It was going to be the next one.

Ideally he would have liked to do more than just drive straight by the two guys. A better idea would be to track around the block and come up behind them. Ditch the jeep a hundred yards away and stroll up on them from the rear. They would be craning forward, watching the crosswalk through the windshield. He could take a good look at them, as long as he wanted. He could even get right in their car with them. The rear doors would be unlocked, for sure. The guys would be staring straight ahead. He could slip in behind them and plant a hand on the side of each head and bang them together like a bandsman letting rip with the cymbals. Then he could do it again, and again, and again, until they started answering some basic questions.

But he wasn’t going to do that. Concentrate on the job in hand was his rule. The job in hand was getting Jodie to her office, safe and secure. Bodyguarding was about defense. Start mixing offense in with it, and neither thing gets done properly. Like he had told her, he used to do this for a living. He was trained in it. Very well trained, and very experienced. So he was going to stay defensive, and he was going to count it a major victory to see her walking in through her office door, all safe and secure. And he was going to stay quiet about how much trouble she was in. He didn’t want her worrying about it. No reason why whatever Leon had started should end up giving her any kind of anguish. Leon would not have wanted that. Leon would have just wanted him to handle everything. So that was how he was going to do it. Deliver her to the office door, no long explanations, no gloomy warnings.

The light went green. The first car took off, then the second. Then the third. He eased forward. Checked the gap ahead of him and craned his head right. Were they there? The cross street was narrow. Two lanes of stopped traffic, waiting at the light. Nothing parked up in the right lane. Nothing waiting. They weren’t there. He moved slowly through the whole width of the intersection, scanning right. Nobody there. He breathed out and relaxed and faced forward. There was a huge metallic bang. A tremendous loud metallic punch in his back. Tearing sheet metal, instant violent acceleration. The jeep was hurled forward and smashed into the vehicle ahead and stopped dead. The airbags exploded. He saw Jodie bouncing off her seat and crashing against the tension of her belt, her body stopping abruptly, her head still cannoning forward. Then it was bouncing backward off the airbag and whipping and smashing into the headrest behind her. He noticed her face was fixed in space exactly alongside his, with the inside of the car blurring and whirling and spinning past it, because his head was doing exactly the same things as hers.

The twin impacts had torn his hands off the wheel. The airbag was collapsing in front of him. He dragged his eyes to the mirror and saw a giant black hood buried in the back of the jeep. The top of a shiny chrome grille, bent out of shape. Some huge four-wheel-drive truck. One guy in it, visible behind the tinted screen. Not a guy he knew. Cars were honking behind them and traffic was pulling left and steering around the obstruction. Faces were turning to stare. There was a loud hissing somewhere. Steam from his radiator, or maybe ringing from his ears after the enormous sudden sounds. The guy behind was getting out of the four-wheel-drive. Hands held up in apology, worry and fright in his face. He was folding himself around his door, out there in the slow traffic stream, walking up toward Reacher’s window, glancing sideways at the tangle of sheet metal as he passed. A woman was getting out of the sedan in front, looking dazed and angry. The traffic was snarling around them. The air was shimmering from overheated motors and loud with horns blasting. Jodie was upright in her seat, feeling the back of her neck with her fingers.

“You OK?” he asked her.

She thought about it for a long moment, and then she nodded.

“I’m OK,” she said. “You?”

“Fine,” he said.

She poked at the collapsed airbag with her finger, fascinated.

“These things really work, you know that?”

“First time I ever saw one deploy,” he said.

“Me too.”

Then there was rapping on the driver’s-side window. The guy from behind was standing there, knocking urgently with his knuckles. Reacher stared out at him. The guy was gesturing for him to open up, urgently, like he was anxious about something.

“Shit,” Reacher yelled.

He stamped on the gas. The jeep struggled forward, pushing against the woman’s wrecked sedan. It made a yard, slewing to the left, sheet metal screeching.

“Hell are you doing?” Jodie screamed.

The guy had his hand on the door handle. His other hand in his pocket.

“Get down,” Reacher shouted.

He found reverse and howled back the yard he’d made and smashed into the four-wheel-drive behind. The new impact won him another foot. He shoved the selector into drive and spun the wheel and barged left. Smashed into the rear quarter of the sedan in a new shower of glass. Traffic behind was swerving and slewing all over again. He glanced right and one of the guys he’d seen in Key West and Garrison was at the window with his hand on Jodie’s door. He stamped on the gas and hurled the jeep backward, spinning the wheel. The guy kept tight hold, jerked backward by his arm, flung off his feet by the violent motion. Reacher smashed all the way backward into the black truck and bounced off again forward, screaming the motor, spinning the wheel. The guy was up again, still gripping the door handle, jerking and hauling, spare arm and legs flailing, like he was a wrangler and the jeep was a wild young steer in a desperate fight out of a trap. Reacher mashed the pedal and angled out forward close to the rear comer of the woman’s wrecked sedan and scraped the guy off against the trunk. The fender took him at the knees and he somersaulted and his head came down on the rear glass. In the mirror Reacher saw a blur of flailing arms and legs as his momentum carried him up over the roof. Then he was gone, sprawling back to the sidewalk.

“Watch out!” Jodie screamed.

The guy from the truck was still there at the driver’s window. Reacher was out in the traffic stream, but the traffic stream was slow and the guy was just running fast beside him, struggling to free something from his pocket. Reacher swerved left and came in parallel to a panel truck in the next lane. The guy was still running, skipping sideways, holding the door handle, coming out with something from his pocket. Reacher jammed left again and thumped him hard against the side of the truck. He heard a dull boom as the guy’s head hit the metal and then he was gone. The truck jammed to a panic stop and Reacher hauled left and got in front of it. Broadway was a solid mass of traffic. Ahead of him was a shimmering patchwork of metallic colors, sedan roofs winking in the sun, dodging left, dodging right, crawling forward, fumes rising, horns blasting. He hauled left again and turned and went through a crosswalk against the light, a crowd of jostling people skittering out of his way. The jeep was juddering and bouncing and pulling hard to the right. The temperature gauge was off the scale. Steam was boiling up through the gaps around the buckled hood. The collapsed airbag was hanging down to his knees. He jerked forward and hauled left again and jammed into an alley full of restaurant waste. Boxes, empty drums of cooking oil, rough wooden trays piled with spoiled vegetables. He buried the nose in a pile of cartons. They spilled down on the wrecked hood and bounced off the windshield. He killed the motor and pulled the keys.