Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [14]
Brett, Reacher thought.
The woman said, “They’ll connect the dots and figure out where you are. I mean, where else could you be? They’ll pay you a visit. Maybe they’re already on their way.”
“From where?”
“The Duncan depot is twenty miles from here. Most of their people live close to it.”
“How many football players have they got?”
“Ten.”
Reacher said nothing.
The woman said, “My husband heard you say you’re headed for Virginia.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Is that where you live?”
“As much as anywhere else.”
“We should get going. You’re in big trouble.”
“Not unless they send all nine at once,” Reacher said.
“All nine what?”
“Football players.”
“I said there were ten.”
“I already met one of them. He’s currently indisposed. They’re one short, as of tonight.”
“What?”
“He got between me and Seth Duncan.”
“What did you do to Seth Duncan?”
“I broke his nose.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus. Why?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, sweet, sweet Jesus. Where are the car keys?”
“What will happen to Mrs. Duncan?”
“We need to get going. Right this minute.”
“First answer the question.”
“Mrs. Duncan will be punished too. For calling my husband. She’s been told not to do that. Just like he’s been told not to go treat her.”
“He’s a doctor. He doesn’t get a choice. They take an oath, don’t they?”
“What’s your name?”
“Jack Reacher.”
“We have to go, Mr. Reacher. Right now.”
“What will they do to Mrs. Duncan?”
“This isn’t your business,” the woman said. Which, strictly speaking, was fairly close to Reacher’s own opinion at that point. His business was to get himself to Virginia, and he was being offered a ride through the hardest part of the journey, fast and free. I-80 awaited, two hours away. An on-ramp, the last of the night drivers, the first stirrings of morning traffic. Maybe breakfast. Maybe there was a rest area or a truck stop with a greasy spoon café. Bacon, eggs, coffee.
“What will they do to her?” he asked again.
The woman said, “Probably nothing much.”
“What kind of nothing much?”
“Well, they might put her on a coagulant. One of the uncles seems to have medical supplies. Or maybe they’ll just stop her taking so much aspirin. So she doesn’t bleed so bad next time. And they’ll probably ground her for a month. That’s all. Nothing too serious. Nothing for you to worry about. They’ve been married ten years, after all. She’s not a prisoner. She could leave if she wanted to.”
“Except this time she inadvertently got her husband’s nose broken. He might take that out on her, if he can’t take it out on me.”
The doctor’s wife said nothing. But it sounded like she was agreeing. The strange round room went quiet. Then Reacher heard tires on gravel.
Chapter 9
Reacher checked the window. There were four tires in total, big knobbly off-road things, all of them on a Ford pick-up truck. The truck had a jacked suspension and lights on a roof bar and a snorkel air intake and a winch on the front. There were two large shapes in the gloom inside. The shapes had thick necks and huge shoulders. The truck nosed slowly down the row of cabins and stopped twenty feet behind the parked Subaru. The headlights stayed on. The engine idled. The doors opened. Two guys climbed out.
They both looked like Brett, only bigger. Late twenties, easily six-six or six-seven, probably close to three hundred pounds each, big waists made tiny by huge chests and arms and shoulders. They had cropped hair and small eyes and fleshy faces. They were the kind of guys who ate two dinners and were still hungry afterward. They were wearing red Cornhuskers football jackets made gray by the blue light from the cabin’s eaves.
The doctor’s wife joined Reacher at the window.
“Sweet Jesus,” she said.
Reacher said nothing.
The two guys closed the truck’s doors and stepped back in unison to the load bed and unlatched a tool locker bolted across its width behind the cab. They lifted the lid and one took out an engineer’s ball-peen hammer and