Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [19]
There was a light behind a ground floor window in the house on the right. No other signs of activity.
Reacher pulled thirty feet ahead and then backed up and turned and reversed into the driveway. Gravel crunched and scrabbled under his tires. A noisy approach. He risked fifty yards, which was about halfway. Then he stopped and slid out and unlatched the tailgate. He climbed up into the load bed and grabbed the first guy by the belt and the collar and heaved and hauled and half-dragged and half-rolled him to the edge and then put the sole of his boot against the guy’s hip and shoved him over. The guy fell three feet and thumped down on his side and settled on his back.
Return to sender.
Reacher went back for the second guy and pushed and pulled and hauled and rolled him out of the truck right on top of his buddy. Then he latched the tailgate again and vaulted over the side to the ground and got behind the wheel and took off fast.
* * *
The four Duncans were still around the table in Jasper’s kitchen. Not a planned meeting, but they had a permanently long agenda and they were taking advantage of circumstances. Foremost in their minds was an emerging delay on the Canadian border. Jacob said, “We’re getting pressure from our friend to the south.”
Jonas said, “We can’t control what we can’t control.”
“Try telling that to him.”
“He’ll get his shipment.”
“When?”
“Whenever.”
“He paid up front.”
“He always does.”
“A lot of money.”
“It always is.”
“But this time he’s agitated. He wants action. And here’s the thing. It was very strange. He called me, and it was like jumping into the conversation halfway through.”
“What?”
“He was frustrated, obviously. But also a little surly, like we weren’t taking him seriously. Like he had made prior communications that had gone unheeded. Like we had ignored warnings. I felt like he was on page three and I was on page one.”
“He’s losing his mind.”
“Unless.”
“Unless what?”
“Unless one of us took a couple of his calls already.”
Jonas Duncan said, “Well, I didn’t.”
“Me either,” Jasper Duncan said.
“You sure?”
“Of course.”
“Because there’s really no other explanation here. And remember, this is a guy we can’t afford to mess with. This is a deeply unpleasant person.”
Jacob’s brothers both shrugged. Two men in their sixties, gnarled, battered, built like fireplugs. Jonas said, “Don’t look at me.”
“Me either,” Jasper said again.
Only Seth Duncan hadn’t spoken. Not a word. Jacob’s son.
His father asked, “What aren’t you telling us, boy?”
Seth looked down at the table. Then he looked up, awkwardly, the aluminum plate huge on his face. His father and his two uncles stared right back at him. He said, “It wasn’t me who broke Eleanor’s nose tonight.”
Chapter 11
Jasper Duncan took a part-used bottle of Knob Creek whiskey from his kitchen cabinet and stuck three gnarled fingers and a blunt thumb in four chipped glasses. He put them on the table and pulled the cork from the bottle and poured four generous measures. He slid the glasses across the scarred wood, a little ceremony, focused and precise. He sat down again and each man took an initial sip, and then the four glasses went back to the table, a ragged little volley of four separate thumps in the quiet of the night.
Jacob Duncan said, “From the beginning, son.”
Seth Duncan said, “I’m dealing with it.”
“But not very well, by the sound of it.”
“He’s my customer.”
Jacob shook his head. “He was your contact, back in the day, but we’re a family. We do everything together, and nothing apart. There’s no such thing as a side deal.”
“We were leaving money on the table.”
“You don’t need to go over ancient history. You found a guy willing to pay more for the same merchandise, and we surely appreciate that. But rewards bring risks. There’s no such thing as something for nothing. No free lunch. So what happened?”
“We’re a week late.”
“We aren’t. We don’t specify dates.”
Seth Duncan said nothing.
Jacob said, “What? You guaranteed a date?”
Seth Duncan nodded.
Jacob said,