"Sir. Agent Winthrow and Colonel Marks are outside. They're requesting immediate access. They say it's urgent."
The man behind the desk said nothing for a moment. Just looked at the communications officer with those flat, unreadable eyes.
"Tell them to wait."
"Sir, they said?—"
"Tell them to wait."
The door closed.
The man looked back down at the file. Picked up his pencil. Read another paragraph, made another note. His hand was steady. The clock on the wall ticked through fifteen seconds. Twenty. Thirty.
Then he closed the file, placed it in the desk drawer, and locked it with a small key he kept on a ring with only two other keys. He straightened the pencil, aligned it with the edge of the desk. Folded his hands.
"Send them in."
The door opened fully this time.
Agent Winthrow came in first. Her face was pale, her jaw set. Behind her came Colonel David Marks, Army Intelligence, wearing his uniform even at midnight because men like Marks always wore their uniforms. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with iron-gray hair cut high and tight.
The man behind the desk gestured to the chairs. "Sit."
Winthrow sat. Marks remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back in a parade rest that was more aggressive than relaxed.
The man waited. Said nothing. Just looked at them.
Winthrow spoke first. "Sir. We have a situation. Simmons has been found dead in Michigan. Shot. Local police found the body earlier today. The alert system flagged it immediately and we were notified forty minutes ago."
The man's expression didn't change.
"And Reacher?"
"Missing. No contact."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Colonel Marks stepped forward, his voice hard and clipped. "This is exactly what I warned about. Exactly. Reacher was a liability from day one. Now we have one agent dead and another missing—either dead himself or he killed Simmons and ran. Either way, the operation is compromised. We need to shut it down immediately and send in real operators. People who know what the hell they're doing."
Winthrow turned in her chair. "With all due respect, sir, that's bullshit and you know it."
"Agent Winthrow?—"
"No." She stood up, facing Marks directly. She was eight inches shorter but she didn't back down an inch. "Reacher didn't kill anyone. That's absurd. Someone got to Simmons—probably the same people who tortured and murdered our CI. If Reacher's missing, he's either captured or he's still working. He wouldn't abandon his partner. He wouldn't run."
"You don't know that." Marks's voice was rising now, his parade-rest posture abandoned. "You don't know anything about what Reacher would or wouldn't do. You've been defending him since the beginning, but the fact is he's a goddamn accountant playing spy."
"We studied Reacher’s history quite extensively. This is not how he operates.”
"I think people do a lot of things when they're in over their heads. When they realize they've made a mistake that's going to get them killed." Marks leaned forward, his voice dropping to something colder. "I think your boy Reacher finally figured out he was playing in the deep end and he panicked. Either that or someone put a bullet in him too, which means we've lost two agents and gained nothing."
"We just need to find him." Winthrow's voice was steel now, all the emotion burned away. "We find Reacher but we don't shut down. We finish this."
"Finish what? Finish getting more people killed? Finish?—"
"Enough."
The word was quiet. Almost soft. But it cut through the argument effortlessly.
