Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [85]
A car, coming north toward him, pretty fast.
Chapter 36
The oncoming car was about two miles away. Doing about sixty, Reacher figured. Sixty was about all the road was good for. Two minutes. He said, “Sit tight, John. Stop thinking. This is your time of maximum danger. I’m going to play it very safe. I’ll shoot first and ask questions later. Don’t think I won’t.”
The guy sat still behind the Malibu’s wheel. Reacher watched across the roof of the car. The bubble of light in the south was still moving, still bouncing and trembling and strengthening and weakening, but coherently this time, naturally, in phase. Just one car. Now about a mile away. One minute.
Reacher waited. The glow resolved itself to a fierce source low down above the blacktop, then twin fierce sources spaced feet apart, both of them oval in shape, both of them low to the ground, both of them blue-white and intense. They kept on coming, flickering and floating and jittering ahead of a firm front suspension and fast go-kart steering, at first small because of the distance, and then small because they were small, because they were mounted low down on a small low car, because the car was a Mazda Miata, tiny, red in color, slowing now, coming to a stop, its headlights unbearably bright against the Malibu’s yellow paint.
Then Eleanor Duncan killed her lights and maneuvered around the Malibu’s trunk, half on the road and half on the shoulder, and came to a stop with her elbow on the door and her head turned toward Reacher. She asked, “Did I do it right?”
Reacher said, “You did it perfectly. The headscarf was a great touch.”
“I decided against sunglasses. Too much of a risk at night.”
“Probably.”
“But you took a risk. That’s for sure. You could have gotten creamed here.”
“He’s an athlete. And young. Good eyesight, good hand-eye coordination, lots of fast-twitch muscles. I figured I’d have time to jump clear.”
“Even so. He could have wrecked both vehicles. Then what would you have done?”
“Plan B was shoot him and ride back with you.”
She was quiet for a second. Then she said, “Need anything else?”
“No, thanks. Go on home now.”
“This guy will tell Seth, you know. About what I did.”
“He won’t,” Reacher said. “He and I are going to work something out.”
Eleanor Duncan said nothing more. She just put her lights back on and her car in gear and drove away, fast and crisp, the sound of her exhaust ripping the night air behind her. Reacher glanced back twice, once when she was half a mile away and again when she was gone altogether. Then he slid into the Malibu’s passenger seat, alongside the guy called John, and he closed his door. He held the Glock right-handed across his body. He said, “Now you’re going to park this car around the back of this old roadhouse. If the speedo gets above five miles an hour, I’m going to shoot you in the side. Without immediate medical attention you’ll live about twenty minutes. Then you’ll die, in hideous agony. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. Truth is, John, I’ve made it happen, more than once. We clear?”
“Yes.”
“Say it, John. Say we’re clear.”
“We’re clear.”
“How clear are we?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say we’re crystal clear.”
“You got it. Crystal.”
“OK, so let’s do it.”
The guy fumbled the lever into gear and turned the wheel and drove a wide circle, painfully slow, bumping up on the far shoulder, coming around to the near shoulder, bumping down onto the beaten earth of the old lot, passing the south gable wall, turning sharply behind the building. Reacher said, “Pull ahead and then back in, between the two bump-outs, like parallel parking. Do they ask for that in the Nebraska test?”
The guy said, “I passed in Kentucky. In high school.”
“Does that mean you need me to explain it to you?”
“I know how to do it.”
“OK, show me.”
The guy pulled ahead of the second square bump-out and lined up and backed into the shallow U-shaped bay. Reacher said, “All the way, now. I want