Die Trying by Lee Child

He could feel the scratch of her eyelashes against the skin on the side

of his chest as she blinked. The truck roared on, faster than it

wanted to go. He could feel the driver pushing it against its natural

cruising speed.

“So I’m getting a little worried,” she said.

“You look out for me,” he said. “And I’ll look out for you.”

“I’m not asking you to do that,” she said.

“I know you’re not,” he said.

“Well, I can’t let you do that,” she said.

“You can’t stop me,” he said. “This is about me now, too. They made

it that way. They were going to shoot me down. I’ve got a rule,

Holly: people mess with me at their own risk. I try to be patient

about it. I had a teacher once, grade school somewhere. Philippines,

I think, because she always wore a big white hat. So it was somewhere

hot. I was always twice the size of the other kids, and she used to

say to me: count to ten before you get mad, Reacher. And I’ve counted

way past ten on this one. Way past. So you may as well face it, win

or lose, now we do it together.”

They went quiet. The truck roared on.

“Reacher?” Holly said.

“What?” he said.

“Hold me,” she said.

“I am holding you,” he said.

He squeezed her gently, both arms, to make his point. She pressed

closer.

“Reacher?” she said again.

“Yes?” he said.

“You want to kiss me again?” she said. “Makes me feel better.”

He turned his head and smiled at her in the dark.

“Doesn’t do me a whole lot of harm, either,” he said.

Eight hours at maybe sixty-five or seventy miles an hour.

Somewhere between five hundred and five hundred and fifty miles. That’s

what they’d done. That was Reacher’s estimation. And it was beginning

to give him a clue about where they were.

“We’re somewhere where they abolished the speed limit,” he said.

Holly stirred and yawned.

“What?” she said.

“We’ve been going fast,” he said. “Up to seventy miles an hour,

probably, for hours. Loder is pretty thorough. He wouldn’t let Stevie

drive this fast if there was any danger of getting pulled over for it.

So we’re somewhere where they raised the limit, or abolished it

altogether. Which states did that?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “Mainly the western states, I think.”

Reacher nodded. Traced an arc on the map in his head.

“We didn’t go east,” he said. “We figured that already. So I figure

we’re in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana. Maybe as

far as Idaho, Utah, Nevada or Arizona. Not in California yet.”

The truck slowed slightly, and they heard the engine note harden up.

Then they heard the crunch as the driver came down out of fifth gear

into fourth.

“Mountains,” Holly said.

It was more than a hill. More than an up-grade. It was a smooth,

relentless climb. A highway through the mountains. Clearly engineered

to help out the laboring traffic, but they were adding hundreds of

feet, every mile they drove. Reacher felt the lurch as the truck

pulled out to pass slower vehicles. Not many, but a few. It stayed in

fourth gear, the guy’s foot hard down, hammering uphill, then relaxing,

changing up to fifth, then down again, charging upwards.

“We could run out of gas,” Holly said.

“It’s diesel, not gas,” Reacher said. “We used these things in the

army. Thirty-five gallon tank. Diesel will do maybe twenty-five to

the gallon, highway mileage. Best part of nine hundred miles, before

they run out.”

That could get us all the way out of the States,” she said.

They cruised on. The truck roared through the mountains for hours,

then it left the highway. Night had fallen. The bright holes in the

roof had dimmed. Then they had disappeared. They had turned darker

than the roof itself. Positive and negative. They felt the lurch as

the truck pulled to the right, off the highway, and they felt the tires

grabbing at the pavement as the truck hauled around a tight right. Then

there was a confusing blur of turns and stops and starts. Bumpy