Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [37]
“Show me a county where someone doesn’t.”
“Dude, I hear you. The system stinks. No argument from me on that score. But the Duncans are worse than usual. They killed a kid. Did you know that? A little girl. Eight years old. They took her and messed her up real bad and killed her.”
“Did they?”
“Hell yes. Definitely.”
“You sure?”
“No question, my friend.”
“It was twenty-five years ago. You’re what, fifteen?”
“It happened.”
“The FBI said different.”
“You believe them?”
“As opposed to who? A stoner who wasn’t even born yet?”
“The FBI didn’t hear what I hear, man.”
“What do you hear?”
“Her ghost, man. Still here, after twenty-five years. Sometimes I sit out here at night and I hear that poor ghost screaming, man, screaming and wailing and moaning and crying, right here in the dark.”
Chapter 19
Our ship has come in. An old, old phrase, from old seafaring days, full of hope and wonder. An investor could spend all he had, building a ship, fitting it out, hiring a crew, or more than all he had, if he was borrowing. Then the ship would sail into a years-long void, unimaginable distances, unfathomable depths, incalculable dangers. There was no communication with it. No radio, no phone, no telegraph, no mail. No news at all. Then maybe, just maybe, one chance day the ship would come back, weather-beaten, its sails hoving into view, its hull riding low in the channel waters, loaded with spices from India, or silks from China, or tea, or coffee, or rum, or sugar. Enough profit to repay the costs and the loans in one fell swoop, with enough left over to live generously for a decade. Subsequent voyages were all profit, enough to make a man rich beyond his dreams. Our ship has come in.
Jacob Duncan used that phrase, at eleven-thirty that morning. He was with his brothers, in a small dark room at the back of his house. His son, Seth, had gone home. Just the three elders were there, stoic, patient, and reflective.
“I got the call from Vancouver,” Jacob said. “Our man in the port. Our ship has come in. The delay was about weather in the Luzon Strait.”
“Where’s that?” Jasper asked.
“Where the South China Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. But now our goods have arrived. They’re here. Our truck could be rolling tonight. Tomorrow morning, at the very latest.”
“That’s good,” Jasper said.
“Is it?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You were worried before, in case the stranger got nailed before the delay went away. You said that would prove us liars.”
“True. But now that problem is gone.”
“Is it? Seems to me that problem has merely turned itself inside out. Suppose the truck gets here before the stranger gets nailed? That would prove us liars, too.”
“We could hold the truck up there.”
“We couldn’t. We’re a transportation company, not a storage company. We have no facilities.”
“So what do we do?”
“We think. That’s what we do. Where is that guy?”
“We don’t know.”
“We know he hasn’t slept or eaten since yesterday. We know we’ve had our boys out driving the roads all morning and they haven’t seen a damn thing. So where is he?”
Jonas Duncan said, “Either he’s snuck in a chicken coop somewhere, or he’s out walking the fields.”
“Exactly,” Jacob said. “I think it’s time to turn our boys off the nice smooth roads. I think it’s time they drove out across the land, big circles, sweeping and beating.”
“We only have seven of them left.”
“They all have cell phones. First sight of the guy, they can call the boys from the south and turn the problem over to the professionals. If they need to, that is. Or at least they can get some coordinated action going. Let’s turn them loose.”
By that point Reacher was starting to hurry. He was about four hundred yards due west of the three Duncan houses, which was about as close as he intended to get. He was walking parallel to the road. He could already see the wooden buildings ahead. They were tiny brown pinpricks on the far horizon. Nothing between him and them. Flat land. He was watching for trucks. He knew they would be coming. By now his hunters would have checked the roads, and found