Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [0]
Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
Running Blind
Echo Burning
Without Fail
Persuader
The Enemy
One Shot
The Hard Way
Bad Luck and Trouble
Nothing to Lose
Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Lee Child
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Title page art from an original photograph by Kinsey R. Christin
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Child, Lee.
Worth dying for : a Reacher novel / Lee Child.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33934-2
1. Reacher, Jack (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Ex-police officers—Fiction. 3. Missing children—Fiction. 4. Nebraska—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.H4838W67 2010
813′.54—dc22 2010023100
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1
For Ruth,
my daughter
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
About the Author
Chapter 1
Eldridge Tyler was driving a long straight two-lane road in Nebraska when his cell phone rang. It was very late in the afternoon. He was taking his granddaughter home after buying her shoes. His truck was a crew-cab Silverado the color of a day-old newspaper, and the kid was flat on her back on the small rear seat. She was not asleep. She was lying there wide-awake with her legs held up. She was staring fascinated at the huge white sneakers wobbling around in the air two feet above her face. She was making strange sounds with her mouth. She was eight years old. Tyler figured she was a late developer.
Tyler’s phone was basic enough to be nothing fancy, but complex enough to have different ringtones against different numbers. Most played the manufacturer’s default tune, but four were set to sound a low urgent note halfway between a fire truck siren and a submarine’s dive klaxon. And that sound was what Tyler heard, in the late afternoon, on the long straight two-lane road in Nebraska, ten miles south of the outlet store and twenty miles north of home. So he fumbled the phone up from the console and hit the button and raised it to his ear and said, “Yes?”
A voice said, “We might need you.”
Tyler said, “Me?”
“Well, you and your rifle. Like before.”
Tyler said, “ ‘Might’?”
“At this stage it’s only a precaution.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s a guy sniffing around.”
“Close?”
“Hard to say.”
“How much does he know?”
“Some of it. Not all of it yet.”
“Who is he?”
“Nobody. A stranger. Just a guy. But he got involved. We think he was in the service. We think he was a military cop. Maybe he didn’t lose the cop habit.”
“How long ago was he in the service?”
“Ancient history.”
“Connections?”
“None at all, that we can see. He won’t be missed. He’s a drifter. Like a hobo. He blew in like a tumbleweed. Now he needs to blow out again.”
“Description?”