Die Trying by Lee Child

do, it happens because of your father. I got straight As in school, I

went to Yale and Harvard, went to Wall Street, but it wasn’t me doing

it, it was this weird other person called General Johnson’s daughter

doing it. It’s been just the same with the Bureau. Everybody assumes

I made it because of my father, and ever since I got there half the

people are still treating me especially nice, and the other half are

still treating me especially tough just to prove how much they’re not

impressed.”

Reacher nodded. Thought about it. He was a guy who had done better

than his father. Forged ahead, in the traditional way. Left the old

man behind. But he’d known guys with famous parents. The sons of

great soldiers. Even the grandsons.

However bright they burned, their light was always lost in the glow.

“OK, so it’s tough,” he said. “And the rest of your life you can try

to ignore it, but right now it needs dealing with. It opens up a whole

new can of worms.”

She nodded. Blew an exasperated sigh. Reacher glanced at her in the

gloom.

“How long ago did you figure it out?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“Immediately, I guess,” she said. “Like I told you, it’s a habit.

Everybody assumes everything happens because of my father. Me too.”

“Well, thanks for telling me so soon,” Reacher said.

She didn’t reply to that. They lapsed into silence. The air was

stifling and the heat was somehow mixing with the relentless drone of

the noise. The dark and the temperature and the sound were like a

thick soup inside the truck. Reacher felt like he was drowning in it.

But it was the uncertainty that was doing it to him. Many times he’d

traveled thirty hours at a stretch in transport planes, worse

conditions than these. It was the huge new dimension of uncertainty

that was unsettling him.

“So what about your mother?” he asked her again.

She shook her head.

“She died,” she said. “I was twenty, in school. Some weird cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. Paused, nervously. “Brothers and sisters?”

She shook her head again.

“Just me,” she said.

He nodded, reluctantly.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. “I was kind of hoping this could be

about something else, you know, maybe your mother was a judge or you

had a brother or a sister who was a congressman or something.”

“Forget it,” she said. There’s just me. Me and Dad. This is about

Dad.”

“But what about him?” he said. “What the hell is this supposed to

achieve? Ransom? Forget about it. Your old man’s a big deal, but

he’s just a soldier, been clawing his way up the army pay-scales all

his life. Faster than most guys, I agree, but I know those

pay-scales.

I was on those scales thirteen years. Didn’t make me rich and they

won’t have made him rich. Not rich enough for anybody to be thinking

about a ransom. Somebody wanted a ransom out of kidnaping somebody’s

daughter, there are a million people ahead of you in Chicago alone.”

Holly nodded.

This is about influence,” she said. “He’s responsible for two million

people and two hundred billion dollars a year. Scope for influence

there, right?”

Reacher shook his head.

“No,” he said. That’s the problem. I can’t see what this is liable to

achieve.”

He got to his knees and crawled forward along the mattresses.

“Hell are you doing?” Holly asked him.

“We got to talk to them,” he said. “Before we get where we’re

going.”

He lifted his big fist and started pounding on the bulkhead. Hard as

he could. Right behind where he figured the driver’s head must be. He

kept on pounding until he got what he wanted. Took a while. Several

minutes. His fist got sore. But the truck lurched off the highway and

started slowing. He felt the front wheels washing into gravel. The

brakes bit in. He was pressed up against the bulkhead by the momentum.

Holly rolled a couple of feet along the mattress. Gasped in pain as

her knee twisted against the motion.

“Pulled off the highway,” Reacher said. “Middle of nowhere.”