Die Trying by Lee Child

your friend Reacher as for anybody else.”

“But what’s going to happen to him?” Holly asked again.

The woman laughed.

“Doesn’t take much imagination,” she said. “Or maybe it does. I don’t

expect it’s going to be anything real simple.”

Holly shook her head.

“It was self-defense,” she said. The guy was trying to rape me.”

The woman looked at her, scornfully.

“So how is that self-defense?” she said. “Wasn’t trying to rape him,

was he? And you were probably asking for it, anyhow.”

“What?” Holly said.

“Shaking your tail at him?” the woman said. “We know all about smart

little city bitches like you. Poor old Peter never stood a chance.”

Holly just stared at her. Then she glanced at the door.

“Where is Reacher now?” she asked.

“No idea,” the woman said. “Chained to a tree somewhere, I guess.”

Then she grinned.

“But I know where he’s going,” she said. The parade ground. That’s

where they usually do that sort of stuff. We’re all ordered up there

to watch the fun.”

Holly stared at her. Then she swallowed. Then she nodded.

“Will you help me with this bed?” she asked. “Something wrong with

it.”

The woman paused. Then she followed her over.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

Holly pulled the blanket back and heaved the mattress onto the floor.

The bolts seem a little loose,” she said.

“Where?” the woman said.

“Here,” Holly said.

She used both hands on the long tube. Whipped it upward and spun and

smashed it like a blunt spear into the side of the woman’s head. The

flange hit her like a metal fist. Skin tore and a neat rectangle of

bone punched deep into her brain and she bounced off the mattress and

was dead before she hit the floor. Holly stepped carefully over the

tray of lunch and limped calmly toward the open door.

THIRTY

HARLAND WEBSTER GOT BACK TO THE HOOVER BUILDING FROM Colorado at three

o’clock Thursday afternoon, East Coast time. He went straight to his

office suite and checked his messages. Then he buzzed his secretary.

“Car,” he said.

He went down in his private elevator to the garage and met his driver.

They walked over to the limousine and got in.

“White House,” Webster said.

“You seeing the president, sir?” the driver asked, surprised.

Webster scowled forward at the back of the guy’s head. He wasn’t

seeing the president. He didn’t see the president very often. He

didn’t need reminding of that, especially not by a damn driver sounding

all surprised that there even was such a possibility.

“Attorney general,” he said. “White House is where she is right

now.”

His driver nodded silently. Cursed himself for opening his big mouth.

Drove on smoothly and unobtrusively. The distance between the Hoover

Building and the White House was exactly sixteen hundred yards. Less

than a mile. Not even far enough to click over the little number in

the speedometer on the limousine’s dash. It would have been quicker to

walk. And cheaper. Firing up the cold V8 and hauling all that

bulletproof plating sixteen hundred yards really ate up the gas. But

the director couldn’t walk anywhere. Theory was he’d get assassinated.

Fact was there were probably about eight people in the city who would

recognize him. Just another DC guy in a gray suit and a quiet tie.

Anonymous. Another reason old Webster was never in the best of

tempers, his driver thought.

Webster knew the attorney general pretty well. She was his boss but

his familiarity with her did not come from their face-to-face meetings.

It came instead from the background checks the Bureau had run prior to

her confirmation. Webster probably knew more about her than anybody

else on earth did. Her parents and friends and ex-colleagues all knew

their own separate perspectives. Webster had put all of those together

and he knew the whole picture. Her Bureau file took up as much disk

space as a short novel. Nothing at all in the file made him dislike

her. She had been a lawyer, faintly radical at the start of her

career, built up a decent practice, grabbed a judgeship, never annoyed

the law-enforcement community, without ever becoming a rabid