Page 20 of Cold Target

"Yeah."

"How did they know? How did they know he was talking to us?"

"I don't know. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe this was about something else."

Reacher moved closer to the bed, careful not to disturb anything. He could see more details now. Cigarette burns on the man's chest and arms. Cuts that had been made with something sharp and precise, maybe a knife or a razor. Bruises that suggested he'd been beaten with something heavy, maybe a pipe or a bat.

On the floor next to the bed was a toolbox. It was open, and inside Reacher could see pliers, a blowtorch, a hunting knife, other implements. The tools of torture, laid out neatly.

Simmons holstered his weapon and ran a hand through his hair. He looked pale, shaken. "We need to call this in. Get a forensics team out here, process the scene."

"Yeah."

"If they knew about Danny, they might know about the whole operation. They might know we're coming."

"Probably. How much does he actually know about you?"

"Nothing, really.”

Reacher looked at the body on the bed, at the ruined face, at the wounds that spoke of hours of agony. Koshak had died hard, and he'd died alone, and whoever killed him had enjoyed it.

They stood there for a moment longer as the wind rattled the windows.

“What now?” Simmons asked.

“Let’s see what we can find, and then we’ll see if anyone’s watching.”

9

Reacher stood in the doorway of the bedroom, looking at Danny Koshak's body without moving closer.

"We need to search this place," Reacher said.

Simmons was still looking at the body, his face pale. "They already did."

"They searched for what they wanted," Reacher said. "We're searching for what they missed."

He stepped back into the main room and looked around with fresh eyes. The trailer had been torn apart, but not randomly. There was a pattern to the destruction. Drawers pulled out and dumped. Cushions sliced open. Cabinets emptied.

But the walls were intact. The floor wasn't torn up. The ceiling panels were still in place.

"They were in a hurry," Reacher said. "Or they found what they wanted and stopped looking."

"Or both," Simmons said.

Reacher nodded. "We start with the obvious places. Then we move to the less obvious ones."

"What's obvious?"

"Anywhere someone would hide something if they weren't trying very hard," Reacher said. "Drawers, closets, under the mattress. Places that feel hidden but aren't."

"They probably checked those."

"We’ll do it again," Reacher said.

They started in the kitchen. Simmons took the cabinets while Reacher went through the drawers. Most of them were empty now, their contents scattered across the floor. Utensils, dish towels, rubber bands, batteries, the accumulated junk of daily life. Reacher picked through it methodically, looking for anything that didn't belong.

He found a stack of bills held together with a paper clip. Electric, water, phone. All overdue. He set them aside.