Bad Luck and Trouble (51 page)
111,822.18.
Then he grew disappointed with Dixon. Because the more he thought about it, the more he analyzed it, the more he was sure it really was a boring number.
Dixon’s head wasn’t in the game.
She had let him down.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
He pressed the button for the mini-statement. A slip of thin paper came out of a slot. Faint gray printing, the last five transactions against his account. Neagley’s original deposit from Chicago was still there, first on the list. Then second, his fifty-dollar withdrawal at the Portland bus depot, up in Oregon. Then third, his airfare from Portland to LAX, way back at the beginning.
Then fourth, a new deposit in the sum of one hundred and one thousand, eight hundred ten dollars, and eighteen cents.
Then fifth, on the same day, another deposit, in the sum of ten thousand and twelve dollars exactly.
101810.18.
10012.
He smiled. Dixon’s head was in the game after all. Totally, completely in the game. The first deposit was 10-18, repeated for emphasis. Military police radio code for
mission accomplished,
twice over. 10-18, 10-18. Herself and O’Donnell, rescued. Or Lamaison and Mahmoud, beaten. Or both things.
Nice, Karla,
he thought.
The second deposit was her zip code: 10012. Greenwich Village. Where she lived. A geographic reference.
A hint.
She had asked:
Feel like dropping by New York afterward?
He smiled again and balled up the slip of thin paper and dropped it in the trash. Took a hundred dollars from the machine and headed on inside the depot and bought a ticket for the first bus he saw. He had no idea where it was going.
He had answered:
I don’t make plans, Karla.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LEE CHILD is the author of eleven Jack Reacher thrillers, including the
New York Times
bestsellers
Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot,
which has been optioned for a major motion picture by Paramount Pictures, and
The Hard Way
. His debut,
Killing Floor,
won both the Anthony and the Barry Awards for Best First Mystery. Foreign rights in the Jack Reacher series have sold in forty territories. Child, a native of England and a former television writer, lives in New York City, where he is at work on his twelfth Jack Reacher thriller,
Play Dirty
.
ALSO BY LEE CHILD
KILLING FLOOR
DIE TRYING
TRIPWIRE
RUNNING BLIND
ECHO BURNING
WITHOUT FAIL
PERSUADER
THE ENEMY
ONE SHOT
THE HARD WAY
BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE
A Delacorte Press Book / May 2007
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Lee Child
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Child, Lee.
Bad Luck and Trouble : a Jack Reacher novel / Lee Child.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33685-3
1. Reacher, Jack (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Military police—Fiction. 3. Serial murders—Fiction. 4. Snipers—Fiction. 5. Middle West—Fiction. I. Title
PS3553.H4838 O53 2005
813'.54 22
2004058246
v1.0
