Die Trying by Lee Child

picked it up and dialed his office.

“Holly Johnson call in?” he asked his secretary.

“No, Mack,” she said.

So he dabbed the cradle and dialed the reception counter, two floors

below.

“Any messages from Holly Johnson?” he asked the agent at the door.

“No, chief,” the agent said. “Haven’t seen her.”

He hit the button again and called the main switchboard.

“Holly Johnson call in?” he asked.

“No, sir,” the switchboard operator said.

He held the phone and gestured for pen and paper. Then he spoke to the

switchboard again.

“Give me her pager number,” he said. “And her cellphone, will you?”

The earpiece crackled and he scrawled down the numbers. Cut the

switchboard off and dialed Holly’s pager. Just got a long low tone

telling him the pager was switched off. Then he tried the cellphone

number. He got an electronic bleep and a recorded message of a woman

telling him the phone he was dialing was unreachable. He hung up and

looked around the room. It was ten after five, Monday afternoon.

SIX

SIX-THIRTY ON REACHER’S WATCH, THE MOTION INSIDE THE TRUCK changed. Six

hours and four minutes they’d cruised steadily, maybe fifty-five or

sixty miles an hour, while the heat peaked and fell away. He’d sat,

hot and rocking and bouncing in the dark with the wheel well between

him and Holly Johnson, ticking off the distance against a map inside

his head. He figured they’d been taken maybe three hundred and ninety

miles. But he didn’t know which direction they were headed. If they

were going east, they would be right through Indiana and just about out

of Ohio by now, maybe just entering Pennsylvania or West Virginia.

South, they would be out of Illinois, into Missouri or Kentucky, maybe

even into Tennessee if he’d underestimated their speed. West, they’d

be hauling their way across Iowa. They might have looped around the

bottom of the lake and headed north up through Michigan. Or straight

out northwest, in which case they could be up near Minneapolis.

But they’d gotten somewhere, because the truck was slowing. Then there

was a lurch to the right, like a pull off a highway. There was gear

noise and thumping over broken pavement. Cornering forces slammed them

around. Holly’s crutch slid and rattled side to side across the ridged

metal floor. The truck whined up grades and down slopes, paused at

invisible road junctions, accelerated,

braked hard, turned a tight left, and then drove slowly down a straight

lumpy surface for a quarter hour.

“Farming country somewhere,” Reacher said.

“Obviously,” Holly said. “But where?”

Reacher just shrugged at her in the gloom. The truck slowed almost to

a stop and turned a tight right. The road surface got worse. The

truck bounced forward maybe a hundred and fifty yards and stopped.

There was the sound of the passenger door opening up in front. The

engine was still running. The passenger door slammed shut. Reacher

heard a big door opening and the truck moved slowly forward. The

engine noise boomed against metal walls. Reacher heard the door noise

again and the engine noise echoed louder. Then it shut down and died

away into stillness.

“We’re in some sort of a barn,” Reacher said. “With the door

closed.”

Holly nodded impatiently.

“I know that,” she said. “A cow barn. I can smell it.”

Reacher could hear muffled conversation outside the truck. Footsteps

walking around to the rear doors. A key going into the lock. The

handle turning. A blinding flood of light as the door opened. Reacher

blinked against the sudden electric brightness and stared out across

Holly at three men, two Clocks and a shotgun.

“Out,” the leader said.

They struggled out, handcuffed together. Not easy. They were stiff

and sore and cramped from bracing themselves against the wheel well for

six solid hours. Holly’s knee had gone altogether. Reacher started

back for her crutch.

“Leave it there, asshole,” the leader said.

The guy sounded tired and irritable. Reacher gave him a steady look

and shrugged. Holly stiffened and tried her weight on her leg. Gasped

in pain and gave it up. Glanced impersonally at Reacher like he was

some kind of a tree and stretched around with her free left hand to