Die Trying by Lee Child

McGrath. That’s a promise, you hear?”

It was totally dark. There were vehicles between Reacher and the

cracks of light around the door. But not the white truck. That was

gone. He rolled up into the space where it had been and pulled the

Clock from his pocket. The thumping of the rotor blades was very

close. It was battering the doors and filling the cavern.

“I’ll trade her with you,” Milosevic screamed through the door. “I get

out of here unharmed, you get her back, OK? McGrath? You hear me?”

If there was a reply, Reacher didn’t hear it.

“I’m not with these guys,” Milosevic screamed. “This whole thing is

nothing to do with me. Brogan got me into it. He made me do it.”

The noise was shattering. The heavy doors were shaking.

“I did it for the money, that’s all,” Milosevic screamed. “Brogan was

giving me money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, McGrath. You’d

have done the exact same thing. Brogan was making me rich. He bought

me a Ford Explorer. The Limited Edition. Thirty-five grand. How the

hell else was I ever going to get one?”

Reacher listened to the screaming voice in the darkness. He didn’t

want to shoot him. For one crazy moment, he felt absurdly grateful to

him, because he had banished his childhood nightmare. He had forced

him to confront it and defeat it. He had made him a better

3QA

man. He wanted to run up to him and shake him by the hand. He could

picture himself doing it. But then the picture changed. He needed to

run up to him and shake him by the throat and ask him if he knew where

Stevie had taken the white truck. That was what he needed to do. That

was why he didn’t want to shoot him. He crept forward in the deafening

noise and skirted around the vehicles.

He was operating in a one-dimensional world. He could see nothing

because of the darkness. He could hear nothing, because of the

helicopter. He sensed movement near the doors. Came out from behind a

pickup and saw a shape framed against the cracks of light. A shape

that should have been two shapes. Wide at the top, four legs.

Milosevic with his arm around Holly’s throat, his gun at her head. He

waited for his vision to build. Their faces faded in from black to

gray. Holly in front of Milosevic. Reacher raised the Clock. Circled

left to get an angle. His shin caught a fender. He staggered and

backed into a pile of paint cans. They crashed silently to the rock

floor, inaudible in the crushing noise from outside. He sprinted

closer to the light.

Milosevic sensed it and turned. Reacher saw his mouth open in a silent

shout. Saw him twist and push Holly out in front of him like a shield.

Saw him stall with indecision, his revolver up in the air. Reacher

dodged right, then danced back left. He saw Milosevic track him both

ways. Saw Holly use the sway to tear herself out of his grip. The

rotor noise was shattering. He saw Milosevic glancing left and right.

Saw him making his decision. Reacher was armed, Holly was not.

Milosevic lunged forward. The .38 flashed silently in the noise. The

brief white flame was blinding in the dark. Reacher lost his sense of

where Holly was. He cursed and held his fire. He saw Milosevic aim

again. Beyond him, he saw Holly’s arm come up and stretch around his

head from behind. He saw her hand touch his face with gentle

precision. He saw him stumble. Then the door heaved open and Holly

staggered away from the shattering flood of noise and sunlight and

crashed straight into his arms.

The sunlight fell in a bright bar across Milosevic. He was lying on

his back. His .38 was in his hand. The hammer was back. There was a

shard of bathroom tile sticking out of his head where his left eye

should have been. It was maybe three inches in and three inches out. A

small worm of blood was running away from the point of entry.

Then the open door was crowded with people. Readier saw McGrath and