Die Trying by Lee Child

crutch. He walked over and tossed it into the truck. It clanged and

boomed on the metal siding. He left her dry-cleaning in the back of

the sedan with her handbag. Then he pulled a set of handcuffs from the

pocket of his jacket. He caught the woman’s right wrist and cuffed it

with half the handcuff. Pulled her roughly sideways and caught

Reacher’s left wrist. Snapped the other half of the cuff onto it.

Shook the cuff to check it was secure. Slammed the truck’s left rear

door. Reacher saw the driver emptying plastic bottles into the sedan.

He caught the pale color and the strong smell of gasoline. One bottle

into the back seat, one into the front. Then the leader swung the

truck’s right rear door shut. Last thing Reacher saw before darkness

enveloped him was the driver, pulling a matchbook from his pocket.

TWO

ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWO MILES FROM CHICAGO by road guest

quarters were being prepared. They took the form of a single room. The

room was following an unconventional design, specified by a thorough

man after a great deal of careful thought. The design called for

several unusual features.

The quarters were designed for a specific purpose, and for a specific

guest. The nature of the purpose and the identity of the guest had

dictated the unusual features. The construction was concentrated on

the second floor of an existing building. A corner room had been

selected. It had a series of large windows on the two outside walls.

They faced south and east. The glass had been smashed out and replaced

by heavy plywood sheeting nailed to the remaining window frames The

plywood was painted white on the outside, to match the building’s

siding. On the inside, the plywood was left unfinished.

The corner room’s ceiling was torn out. It was an old building, and

the ceiling had been made of heavy plaster. It had been pulled down in

a shower of choking dust. The room was now open to the rafters. The

interior walling was torn off. The walls had been paneled in old pine,

worn smooth with age and polish. That was all gone. The framing of

the building and the heavy old tarpaper behind the exterior siding was

exposed. The floorboards were pulled up. The dusty ceiling of the

room below was visible under the heavy joists. The room was just a

shell.

The old plaster from the ceiling and the boards from the walls and the

floor, had been thrown out through the windows before they were covered

over with the plywood. The two men who had done the demolition work

had shoveled all that debris into a large pile, and they had backed

their truck up to the pile ready to cart the trash away. They were

very anxious to leave the place looking neat and tidy. This was the

first time they had worked for this particular employer, and there had

been hints of more work to come. And looking around, they could see

that there was plenty more needed doing. All in all, an optimistic

situation. New contracts were hard to find, and this particular

employer, had shown no concern over price. The two men felt that to

make a good first impression was very much in their long-term interest.

They were hard at work loading their truck with every last plaster

fragment when the employer himself stopped by.

“All done?” he asked.

The employer was a huge guy, freakishly bloated, with a high voice and

two nickel-sized red spots burning on his pale cheeks. He moved

lightly and quietly, like a guy a quarter his size. The overall effect

was a guy people looked away from and answered quickly.

“Just clearing up,” the first guy said to him. “Where do we dump this

stuff?”

“I’ll show you,” the employer said. “You’ll need to make two trips.

Bring those boards separately, right?”

The second guy nodded. The floorboards were eighteen inches wide, from

back when lumbermen had the pick of any tree they wanted. No way would

they fit into the flatbed with the rest of the junk. They finished

loading the plaster and their employer squeezed into their truck with