The Essential Jack Reacher 12-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  “Thanks,” Reacher said. “Take care. Best to your wife.” He hung up and redialed and listened to yet more ring tone, the same languid electronic purr, but this time from a different place, from somewhere inside the restored farmhouse, among the pastel colors and the fancy rugs and the oil paintings. He figured that if Seth was home, then Seth would answer. It seemed to be that kind of a relationship. But he bet himself a buck Seth wasn’t home. The Duncans were in two kinds of trouble, and Reacher’s experience told him they would huddle together until it passed. So Eleanor was probably home alone, and would pick up. Or not. Maybe she would just ignore the bell, whatever the barman thirty feet away thought about human nature.

  She picked up.

  “Hello?” she said.

  Reacher asked, “Is Seth there?”

  “Reacher? Where are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter where I am. Where’s Seth?”

  “He’s at his father’s. I don’t expect him home tonight.”

  “That’s good. You still up and dressed?”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to do something for me.”

  Chapter 34

  The old Caprice’s rear bench was contoured like two separate bucket seats, not by design but by age and relentless wear and tear. Mahmeini’s man settled into the right-hand pit, behind the front passenger seat, and cocked his head to the left so he could see out the windshield. He saw the blank back of a billboard in the headlight beams, and then he saw nothing. The road ahead was straight and empty. No oncoming lights, which was a disappointment. One drink on Asghar’s part might be overlooked. Or even two. Or three, followed by a prompt return. But a night of it would be considered desertion.

  The wheezing old motor had the needle trembling over the sixty mark. A mile a minute. Nine more miles to go. Nine minutes.

  Reacher said, “Exactly one hour and ten minutes from now, I want you to take a drive. In your little red sports car.”

  Eleanor Duncan said, “A drive? Where?”

  “South on the two-lane,” Reacher said. “Just drive. Eleven miles. As fast as you want. Then turn around and go home again.”

  “Eleven miles?”

  “Or twelve. Or more. But not less than ten.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter why. Will you do it?”

  “Are you going to do something to the house? You want me out of the way?”

  “I won’t come near the house. I promise. No one will ever know. Will you do it?”

  “I can’t. Seth took my car key. I’m grounded.”

  “Is there a spare?”

  “He took that too.”

  Reacher said, “He’s not carrying them around in his pocket. Not if he keeps his own key in a bowl in the kitchen.”

  Eleanor said nothing.

  Reacher asked, “Do you know where they are?”

  “Yes. They’re on his desk.”

  “On or in?”

  “On. Just sitting there. Like a test for me. He says obedience without temptation is meaningless.”

  “Why the hell are you still there?”

  “Where else could I go?”

  “Just take the damn keys, will you? Stand up for yourself.”

  “Will this hurt Seth?”

  “I don’t know how you want me to answer that question.”

  “I want you to answer it honestly.”

  “It might hurt him indirectly. And eventually. Possibly.”

  There was a long pause. Then Eleanor said, “OK, I’ll do it. I’ll drive south eleven miles on the two-lane and come back again. An hour and ten minutes from now.”

  “No,” Reacher said. “An hour and six minutes from now. We’ve just been talking for four minutes.”

  He hung up and stepped back to the main public room. The barman was working like a good barman should, using fast, efficient movements, thinking ahead, watching the room. He caught Reacher’s eye and Reacher detoured toward him and the guy said, “I should get you to sign a napkin or something. Like a memento. You’re the only guy who ever came in here to use a phone, not avoid one. You want a drink?”

  Reacher scanned what the guy had to offer. Liquor of all kinds, beer on tap, beer in bottles, sodas. No sign of coffee. He said, “No, thanks, I’m good. I should hit the road.” He moved on, shuffling sideways between the tables, and he pushed out the door and walked back to his car. He got in, started up, backed out, and drove away north.

  Mahmeini’s man saw a glow in the air, far ahead on the left. Neon, green and red and blue. The driver kept his foot down for a minute more, and then he lifted off and coasted. The engine coughed and the exhaust popped and sputtered and the taxi slowed. Way far up the road in the distance were a pair of red taillights. Very faint and far away. Almost not there at all. The taxi braked. Mahmeini’s man saw the bar. Just a simple wooden building. There were two weak spotlights under the eaves at the front. They threw two pools of token light into the lot. There were plenty of parked vehicles. But no yellow rental.

  The taxi pulled in and stopped. The driver looked back over his shoulder. Mahmeini’s man said, “Wait for me.”

  The driver said, “How long?”

  “A minute.” Mahmeini’s man got out and stood still. The taillights in the north had disappeared. Mahmeini’s man watched the darkness where they had been, just for a second. Then he walked to the wooden building’s door. He entered. He saw a large room, with chairs and tables on the left and a bar on the right. There were about twenty customers in the room, mostly men, none of them Asghar Arad Sepehr. There was a barman behind the bar, serving a customer, lining up the next, glancing over at the new arrival. Mahmeini’s man threaded between the tables toward him. He felt that everyone was watching him. A small man, foreign, unshaven, rumpled, and not very clean. The barman’s customer peeled away, holding two foaming glasses of beer. The barman moved on, to the next customer, serving him, but glancing beyond him for the next in line, as if he was planning two moves ahead.

  Mahmeini’s man said, “I’m looking for someone.”

  The barman said, “I guess we all are, sir. That’s the very essence of human nature, isn’t it? It’s an eternal quest.”

  “No, I’m looking for someone I know. A friend of mine.”

  “A lady or a gentleman?”

  “He looks like me.”

  “Then I haven’t seen him. I’m sorry.”

  “He has a yellow car.”

  “Cars are outside. I’m inside.”

  Mahmeini’s man turned and scanned the room, and thought about the red taillights in the north, and turned back and asked, “Are you sure?”

  The barman said, “I don’t want to be rude, sir, but really, if two of you had been in here tonight, someone would have called Homeland Security already. Don’t you think?”

  Mahmeini’s man said nothing.

  “Just saying,” the barman said. “This is Nebraska. There are military installations here.”

  Mahmeini’s man asked, “Then was someone else just here?”

  “This is a bar, my friend. People are in and out all night long. That’s kind of the point of the place.”

  The barman turned back to his current customer. Interaction over. Mahmeini’s man turned and scanned the room, one more time. Then he gave it up and moved away, between the tables, back to the door. He stepped into the lot and took out his phone. No signal. He stood still for a second and glanced north at where the red lights had gone, and then he climbed back into the taxi. He closed the door against a yowling hinge and said, “Thank you for waiting.”

  The driver looked back over his shoulder and asked, “Where to now?”

  Mahmeini’s man said, “Let me think about that for a minute.”

  Reacher kept the Malibu at a steady sixty. A mile a minute. Hypnotic. Power line poles flashed past, the tires sang, the motor hummed. Reacher took the fresh bottle of water from the cup holder and opened it and drank from it one-handed. He switched his headlights to bright. Nothin
g to see ahead of him. A straight road, then mist, then darkness. He checked the mirror. Nothing to see behind him. He checked the dials and the gauges. All good.

  Eleanor Duncan checked her watch. It was a small Rolex, a present from Seth, but probably real. She had counted ahead an hour and six minutes from when she had hung up the phone, and she had forty-five minutes still to go. She stepped out of the living room into the hallway, and stepped out of the hallway into her husband’s den. It was a small square space. She had no idea of its original purpose. Maybe a gun room. Now it was set up as a home office, but with an emphasis on gentlemanly style, not clerical function. There was a club chair made of leather. The desk was yew. It had a light with a green glass shade. There were bookshelves. There was a rug. The air in the room smelled like Seth.

  There was a shallow glass bowl on the desk. From Murano, near Venice, in Italy. It was green. A souvenir. It had paper clips in it. And her car keys, just sitting there, two small serrated lances with big black heads. For her Mazda Miata. A tiny red two-seat convertible. A fun car. Carefree. Like the old British MGs and Lotuses used to be, but reliable.

  She took one of the keys.

  She stepped back to the hallway. Eleven miles. She thought she knew what Reacher had in mind. So she opened the coat closet and took out a silk headscarf. Pure white. She folded it into a triangle and tied it over her hair. She checked the mirror. Just like an old-fashioned movie star. Or an old-fashioned movie star after a knockout round with an old-fashioned heavyweight champion.

  She left by the back door and walked through the cold to the garage, Seth’s empty bay to the right, hers in the middle, the doors all open. She got in her car and unlatched the clips above the windshield and dropped the top. She started up and backed out and turned and waited in the driveway, the motor running, the heater warming, her heart beating hard. She checked her watch. Twenty-nine minutes to go.

  Reacher cruised onward, sixty miles an hour, three more minutes, and then he slowed down and put his lights back on bright. He watched the right shoulder. The old abandoned roadhouse loomed up at him, right on cue, pinned and stark in his headlight beams. The bad roof, the beer signs on the walls behind the mud, the bruised earth all around where cars had once parked. He pulled off the road and into the lot. Loose stones popped and crunched and slithered under his tires. He drove a full circuit.

  The building was long and low and plain, like a barn cut off at the knees. Rectangular, except for two separate square bump-outs added at the back, one at each end of the structure, the first for restrooms, probably, and the second for a kitchen. Efficient, in terms of plumbing lines. Between the bump-outs was a shallow U-shaped space, like a bay, empty apart from a little windblown trash, enclosed on three sides, open only to the dark empty fields to the east. It was maybe thirty feet long and twelve feet deep.

  Perfect, for later.

  Reacher came back around to the south gable wall and parked thirty feet from it, out of sight from the north, facing the road at a slight diagonal angle, like a cop on speed trap duty. He killed the lights and kept the motor running. He got out into the cold and looped around the hood and walked to the corner of the building. He leaned on the old boards. They felt thin and veined, frozen by a hundred winters, baked by a hundred summers. They smelled of dust and age. He watched the darkness in the north, where he knew the road must be.

  He waited.

  Chapter 35

  Reacher waited twenty long minutes, and then he saw light in the north. Very faint, maybe five or six miles away, really just a high hemispherical glow in the mist, trembling a little, bouncing, weakening and strengthening and weakening again. A moving bubble of light. Very white. Almost blue. A car, coming south toward him, pretty fast.

  Eleanor Duncan, presumably, right on time.

  Reacher waited.

  Two minutes later she was two miles closer, and the high hemispherical glow was bigger, and stronger, still bouncing, still trembling, but now it had a strange asynchronous pulse inside it, the bouncing now going two ways at once, the strengthening and the weakening now random and out of phase.

  There were two cars on the road, not one.

  Reacher smiled. The sentry. The football player, posted to the south. A college graduate. Not a dumb guy. He knew his five buddies had been sent home to bed because absolutely nothing was going to happen. He knew he had been posted as a precaution only, just for the sake of it. He knew he was facing a long night of boredom, staring into the dark, no chance of glory. So what’s a guy going to do, when Eleanor Duncan suddenly blasts past him from behind, in her little red sports car? He’s going to see major brownie points on the table, that’s what. He’s going to give up on the blank hours ahead, and he’s going to pull out and follow her, and he’s going to dream of a promotion to the inner circle, and he’s going to imagine a scene and he’s going to rehearse a speech, because he’s going to pull Seth Duncan aside tomorrow, first thing in the morning, very discreetly, like an old friend or a trusted aide, and he’s going to whisper Yes, sir, I followed her all the way and I can show you exactly where she went. Then he’s going to add No, sir, I told no one else, but I thought you should know. Then he’s going to hop and shuffle in a modest and self-deprecating way and he’s going to say, Well, yes, sir, I thought it was much more important than sentry duty, and I’m glad you agree I did the right thing.

  Reacher smiled again.

  Human nature.

  Reacher waited.

  Two more minutes, and the traveling bubble of light was another two miles closer, now much flatter and more elongated. Two cars, with some little distance between them. Predator and prey, some hundreds of yards apart. There was no red glow in the bubble. The football player’s headlights were falling short of the Mazda’s paint. The guy was maybe a quarter of a mile back, following the Mazda’s taillights, no doubt thinking he was doing a hell of a job of staying inconspicuous. Maybe not such a smart guy. The Mazda had a mirror, and halogen headlights on a Nebraska winter night were probably visible from outer space.

  Reacher moved.

  He pushed off the corner of the building and looped around the Malibu’s hood and got in the driver’s seat. He locked the selector in first gear and put his left foot hard on the brake and his right foot on the gas. He goosed the pedal until the transmission was straining against the brake and the whole car was wound up tight and ready to launch. He kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the headlight switch.

  He waited.

  Sixty seconds.

  Ninety seconds.

  Then the Mazda flashed past, right to left, instantaneously, a tiny dark shape chasing a huge pool of bright light, its top down, a woman in a headscarf at the wheel, all chased in turn by tire roar and engine noise and the red flare of taillights. Then it was gone. Reacher counted one and flicked his headlights on and took his foot off the brake and stamped on the gas and shot forward and braked hard and stopped again sideways across the crown of the road. He wrenched open the door and spilled out and danced back toward the Malibu’s trunk, toward the shoulder he had just left. Two hundred yards to his right a big SUV was starting a panic stop. Its headlights flared yellow against the Malibu’s paint and then they nosedived into the blacktop as the truck’s front suspension crushed under the force of violent braking. Huge tires howled and the truck lost its line and slewed to its right and went into a four-wheel slide and its near-side wheels tucked under and its high center of gravity tipped over and its far-side wheels came up in the air. Then they crashed back to earth and the rear end fishtailed violently a full ninety degrees and the truck snapped around and came to rest parallel with the Malibu, less than ten feet away, stalled out and silent, the scream of stressed rubber dying away, thin drifts of moving blue smoke following it and catching it and stopping and rising all around it and billowing away into the cold night air.

  Reacher pulled the Iranian’s Glock from his pocket and stormed the driver’s door and wrenched it open and danced back and poi
nted the gun. In general he was not a big fan of dramatic arrests, but he knew from long experience what worked and what didn’t with shocked and unpredictable subjects, so he screamed GET OUT OF THE CAR GET OUT OF THE CAR GET OUT OF THE CAR as loud as he could, which was plenty loud, and the guy behind the wheel more or less tumbled out, and then Reacher was on him, forcing him down, flipping him, jamming him facedown into the blacktop, his knee in the small of the guy’s back, the Glock’s muzzle hard in the back of the guy’s neck, all the time screaming STAY DOWN STAY DOWN STAY DOWN, all the while watching the sky over his shoulder for more lights.

  There were no more lights. No one else was coming. No backup. The guy hadn’t called it in. He was planning a solo enterprise. All the glory for himself. As expected.

  Reacher smiled.

  Human nature.

  The scene went quiet. Nothing to hear, except the Malibu’s patient idle. Nothing to see, except four high beams stabbing the far shoulder. The air was full of the smell of burned rubber and hot brakes, and gas, and oil. The Cornhusker lay completely still. Hard not to, with 250 pounds on his back, and a gun to his head, and television images of SWAT arrests in his mind. Maybe real images. Country boys get arrested from time to time, the same as anyone else. And things had happened fast, all dark and noise and blur and panic, enough that maybe the guy hadn’t really seen Reacher’s face yet, or recognized his description from the Duncans’ warnings. Maybe the guy hadn’t put two and two together. Maybe he was waiting it out like a civilian, waiting to explain to a cop that he was innocent, like people do. Which gave Reacher a minor problem. He was about to transition away from what the guy might have taken to be a legitimate law enforcement takedown, straight to what the guy was going to know for sure was a wholly illegitimate kidnap attempt. And the guy was big. Six-six or a little more, two-ninety or a little more. He had on a large red football jacket and baggy jeans. His feet were the size of boats.