Die Trying by Lee Child

long moment. Nothing in his face. Not the same thing as friendly.

Reacher nodded. A small cautious movement. They left their toast

plates and their coffee mugs lying on the straw and the guy called

Loder unlocked their chains. They met in the central aisle. Two

Glocks and a shotgun aimed at them. The ugly driver leering. Reacher

looked him in the eye and ducked down and picked Holly up like she

weighed nothing at all. Carried her the ten paces to the truck. Put

her down gently inside. They crawled forward together to the

improvised sofa. Got themselves comfortable.

The truck’s rear doors slammed and locked. Holly heard the big barn

door open up. The truck’s engine turned over and caught. They drove

out of the barn and bounced a hundred and fifty yards over the rough

track. Turned an invisible right angle and cruised straight and slow

down a road for fifteen minutes.

“We aren’t in Pennsylvania,” Holly said. “Roads are too straight. Too

flat.”

Reacher just shrugged at her in the dark.

“We aren’t in handcuffs anymore, either,” he said. “Psychology.”

TWELVE

HELL IS THIS?” AGENT-IN-CHARGE MCGRATH SAID. He thumbed the remote

and rewound the tape. Then he pressed play and watched it again. But

what he saw meant nothing at all. The video screens were filled with

jerky speeding images and shashy white snow.

“Hell is going on here?” he asked again.

Brogan crowded in and shook his head. Milosevic pushed closer to look.

He’d brought the tape in, so he felt personally responsible for it.

McGrath hit rewind again and tried once more. Same result. Just a

blur of disjointed flashing pictures.

“Get the damn tech guy back in here,” he shouted.

Milosevic used the phone on the credenza next to the coffee pot. Called

upstairs to tech services. The head tech was in the room within a

minute. The tone of Milosevic’s voice had told him to hurry more

effectively than any words could have.

“Damn tape won’t run properly,” McGrath told him.

The technician took the remote in his hand with that blend of

familiarity and unfamiliarity that tech guys use the world over.

They’re all at home with complex equipment, but each individual piece

has its own peculiarities. He peered at the buttons and pressed

rewind, firmly, with a chewed thumb. The tape whirred back and he

pressed play and watched the disjointed stream of flashing images and

video snow.

“Can you fix that?” McGrath asked him.

The tech stopped the tape and hit rewind again. Shook his head.

“It’s not broken,” he said. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Typical

cheap surveillance video. What it does is record a freeze-frame,

probably every ten seconds or so. Just one frame, every ten seconds.

Like a sequence of snapshots.”

“Why?” McGrath asked him.

“Cheap and easy,” the guy said. “You can get a whole day on one tape

that way. Low cost, and you don’t have to remember to change the

cassette every three hours. You just change it in the morning. And

assuming a stick-up takes longer than ten seconds to complete, you’ve

got the perp’s face right there on tape, at least once.”

“OK,” McGrath said impatiently. “So how do we use it?”

The tech used two fingers together. Pressed play and freeze at the

same time. Up on the screen came a perfect black-and-white still

picture of an empty store. In the bottom-left corner was Monday’s date

and the time, seven thirty-five in the morning. The tech held the

remote out to McGrath and pointed to a small button.

“See this?” he said. “Frame-advance button. Press this and the tape

rolls on to the next still. Usually for sports, right? Hockey? You

can see the puck go right in the net. Or for porn. You can see

whatever you need to see. But on this type of a system, it jumps you

ahead ten seconds. Like on to the next snapshot, right?”

McGrath calmed down and nodded.

“Why’s it in black-and-white?” he said.

“Cheap camera,” the tech guy said. “The whole thing is a cheap system.

They only put them in because the insurance companies tell them they

got to.”

He handed the remote to McGrath and headed back for the door.