Page 25 of Exit Strategy
‘How?’
‘Did you write the total down somewhere? Maybe doing calculations, figuring out your budget, where to scrape the money together from. How fast the interest was building up. On a scrap of paper. The back of an envelope. A notebook. Something someone could have found in the trash.’
‘You think I had a budget?’ Gilmour spotted a cop car lurking in a side street and lifted off the gas a little. ‘The way I was living? A closet full of space lasers would have been more useful. So no. I never wrote the number down. I didn’t need to. It was all I could think about. It was front and center in my brain, twenty-four seven.’
‘Did you apply for a loan anywhere, looking to pay it off?’
‘What kind of bank would have touched me? I had nojob back then, remember. And I was acting like a basket case.’
‘So a loan shark? Plenty of backstreet operations out there. Those guys have no scruples.’
‘I’m not insane. Out of the frying pan, into the runaway nuclear reactor? No, thank you.’
‘So how did he know?’
‘I’m telling you, he couldn’t have.’
‘All right. We need another angle. Some other way to connect him to you.’
‘Like what?’
Reacher thought for a moment. ‘He told you to apply for the job at the port. There must have been a process. How did that work?’
‘He texted me a link. It led to a form – an application. I completed it. An HR person got back to me. She sent me an email. Invited me for an interview. I went. I passed, by some miracle. I started the next week.’
‘The HR person who emailed. Did she handle the interview as well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone, or with someone?’
Gilmour glanced across at Reacher. ‘Alone. She actually apologized. Said it was policy to have an ops representative there, but whoever she’d lined up was out sick. She offered to postpone if I wasn’t comfortable. I said hell no, I was there, I wanted to get it over with. I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance, anyway. Why waste time coming back?’
‘Did she send the offer letter? The same woman?’
‘The offer email. Yes.’
‘And did she handle your induction, or orientation, or whatever they do at the port?’
Gilmour nodded. ‘It was all her. I was happy about that. I liked her. She was kind of cute.’
‘Were you qualified for the job?’
‘Hell no. Not even close. I had no experience, at that point. No qualifications. I was unemployed. I had a massive gap in my résumé. I had no references. My clothes looked like I stole them from a scarecrow. I wasn’t sleeping or eating, so I looked like a heroin addict. My hair hadn’t been cut for months. Birds could have been living in it for all I knew. And I probably stank.’
‘So—’
‘I get it.’ Gilmour pulled a quick left under the wheels of an oncoming sports car, causing the driver to honk and flip him off. ‘No need to hammer it home. The fix was in. The guy had a hook in the HR woman, too. Or someone working with him did. Damn! I didn’t put that together before. I’m an idiot.’
‘Is she still with the company?’
‘I think so. I’ll find out in the morning.’ Gilmour pulled over. ‘You must think I’m stupid. I don’t know. Maybe I am. The job offer came and I was so damn grateful I didn’t question it. I didn’t connect the dots between getting it and the guy telling me to apply. I know I sound ridiculous, but back then it didn’t seem like he was using the debt against me. It seemed like he was saving me. Like an angel or something. Imagine you’re in a pit, and it’s pitch-black, and it’s filling up with water, and you know you’re going to drown, and suddenly a flashlight appears above you. Then a pair of hands, stretching down. Youdon’t ask questions. You don’t wonder why one’s there, and then the other. The light lets you see. You let the hands pull you out. And afterward, when you’re warm and dry and safe, you don’t look back. You just accept the freedom. I don’t know. It’s like some kind of emotional self-preservation mechanism, I guess.’
‘Whatever it is, don’t beat yourself up. What happened, happened. What’s the woman’s name?’
‘Sabrina Patten.’
‘All right. We’ll talk to her in the morning.’
