Copyright © 2019 by Lee Child
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
DELACORTE PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Title page art from an original photo by iStock.com/PeskyMonkey
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Child, Lee, author.
Title: Blue moon: a Jack Reacher novel / Lee Child.
Description: First edition. | New York: Delacorte Press, 2019. | Series: Jack Reacher; 24
Identifiers: LCCN 2019029141 (print) | LCCN 2019029142 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399593543 (hardcover: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780399593550 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Reacher, Jack (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3553.H4838 B58 2019 (print) | LCC PS3553.H4838 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029141
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029142
Ebook ISBN 9780399593550
randomhousebooks.com
Cover design: Carlos Beltrán
Cover photograph: Shutterstock
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 1
The city looked small on a map of America. It was just a tiny polite dot, near a red threadlike road that ran across an otherwise empty half inch of paper. But up close and on the ground it had half a million people. It covered more than a hundred square miles. It had nearly a hundred and fifty thousand households. It had more than two thousand acres of parkland. It spent half a billion dollars a year, and raised almost as much through taxes and fees and charges. It was big enough that the police department was twelve hundred strong.
And it was big enough that organized crime was split two separate ways. The west of the city was run by Ukrainians. The east was run by Albanians. The demarcation line between them was gerrymandered as tight as a congressional district. Nominally it followed Center Street, which ran north to south and divided the city in half, but it zigged and zagged and ducked in and out to include or exclude specific blocks and parts of specific neighborhoods, wherever it was felt historic precedents justified special circumstances. Negotiations had been tense. There had been minor turf wars. There had been some unpleasantness. But eventually an agreement had been reached. The arrangement seemed to work. Each side kept out of the other’s way. For a long time there had been no significant contact between them.
Until one morning in May. The Ukrainian boss parked in a garage on Center Street, and walked east into Albanian territory. Alone. He was fifty years old and built like a bronze statue of an old hero, tall, hard, and solid. He called himself Gregory, which was as close as Americans could get to pronouncing his given name. He was unarmed, and he was wearing tight pants and a tight T-shirt to prove it. Nothing in his pockets. Nothing concealed. He turned left and right, burrowing deep, heading for a backstreet block, where he knew the Albanians ran their businesses out of a suite of offices in back of a lumber yard.
He was followed all the way, from his first step across the line. Calls were made ahead, so that when he arrived he was faced by six silent figures, all standing still in the half circle between the sidewalk and the lumber yard’s gate. Like chess pieces in a defensive formation. He stopped and held his arms out from his sides. He turned around slowly, a full 360, his arms still held wide. Tight pants, tight T-shirt. No lumps. No bulges. No knife. No gun. Unarmed, in front of six guys who undoubtedly weren’t. But he wasn’t worried. To attack him unprovoked was a step the Albanians wouldn’t take. He knew that. Courtesies had to be observed. Manners were manners.
One of the six silent figures stepped up. Partly a blocking maneuver, partly ready to listen.
Gregory said, “I need to speak with Dino.”
Dino was the Albanian boss.
The guy said, “Why?”
“I have information.”
“About what?”
“Something he needs to know.”
