High Heat: A Jack Reacher Novella Read Online Free PDF

lights off. Like the Chevette. Instinctive, somehow. A shared assumption. Crowd behavior. Reacher caught a sudden whiff of fear.
Hide in the dark. Don’t stand out. Don’t be seen
.
    Herald Square had people in it. Where Broadway cut across, at 34th Street. Most of them were out in the middle of the triangle, away from the buildings, trying to see the sky. Some of them were formed up in moving bunches, like sports fans leaving the stadium after a win, with the same kind of boisterous energy. But Macy’s windows were all intact. So far.
    They kept going all the way to West 38th, crawling past the dead traffic lights and the cross streets, unsure every time whether they should yield or keep on going, but it turned out there was no real danger of either fender benders or confrontation, because everyone was moving slow and acting deferential, all
after you, no, after you
. Clearly thespirit so far was cooperation. On the roads, at least. Reacher wondered how long it would last.
    They went east on 38th and turned on Fifth four blocks north of the Empire State. Nothing to see. Just a broad dark base, like both sides of every other block, and then nothing above. Just spectral darkness. They parked on the Fifth Avenue curb, on the block north of 34th Street, and got out for a closer look. Thirty-fourth was a double-wide street, with a clear view east and west, dark all the way, except for an orange glow in the far distance above what must have been Brooklyn. Fires were burning there.
    “It’s starting,” Reacher said.
    They heard a cop car coming north on Madison, and they saw it cross the six-lane width of 34th Street one block over. Its lights looked amazingly bright. It drove on out of sight, and the night went quiet again. Chrissie said, “Why did the power go out?”
    “Don’t know,” Reacher said. “Overload from all the AC, or a lightning strike somewhere. Or the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion. Or maybe someone didn’t pay the bill.”
    “Nuclear explosion?”
    “It’s a known side effect. But I don’t think it happened. We’d have seen the flash. And depending where it was, we’d have been burned to a crisp.”
    “What kind of military are you?”
    “No kind at all. My dad’s a Marine, and my brother is going to be an army officer, but that’s them, not me.”
    “What are you going to be?”
    “I have no idea. Probably not a lawyer.”
    “Do you think your FBI friend was right about riots and looting?”
    “Maybe not so much in Manhattan.”
    “Are we going to be OK?”
    Reacher said, “We’re going to be fine. If all else fails, we’ll do what they did in the olden days. We’ll wait for morning.”
    They turned onto 34th Street and drove over as close as they could get to the East River. They stopped on a trash-strewn triangle half under the FDR Drive, and they stared through the windshield over the water to the dark lands beyond. Queens dead ahead, Brooklyn to the right, the Bronx way far to the left. The fires in Brooklyn looked pretty big already. There were fires in Queens, too. And the Bronx, but Reacher had been told there were always fires in the Bronx. Nothing behind them, in Manhattan. Not yet. But there were plenty of sirens. The darkness was getting angry. Maybe because of the heat. Reacher wondered how Macy’s windows were doing.
    Chrissie kept the engine running, for the AC. The gas was about half full. The tails of her shirt hid her shorts completely. She looked like she was wearing nothing else. Just the shirt. Which looked great. She was very pretty. He asked, “How old are you?”
    She said, “Nineteen.”
    “Where are you from?”
    “California.”
    “You like it here?”
    “So far. We get seasons. Heat and cold.”
    “Especially heat.”
    She asked, “How old are you?”
    “I’m legal,” he said. “That’s really all you need to know.”
    “Is it?”
    “I hope so.”
    She smiled, and turned off the engine. She locked her door, and leaned over to