Die Trying by Lee Child

of the forest again and over to the large white building. They had not

spoken to her. Just marched her in and pushed her up the stairs to the

second floor. They had pulled open the stout new door and pushed her

up the step into the room. The step was more than a foot high, because

the floor inside the room was built up higher than the floor in the

hallway outside. She crawled up and in and heard the door slamming and

the key turning loudly behind her. There were no windows. A bulb in

the ceiling behind a wire grille lit the room with a vivid, hot yellow

light. All four walls, the floor and the ceiling were made from new

pine boards, unfinished, smelling strongly of fresh lumber. At the far

end of the room was a bed. It had a simple iron frame and a thin

crushed mattress. Like an army bed, or a prison cot. On the bed were

two sets of clothing. Two pairs of fatigue pants and two shirts. Dull

green, like the four silent women had been wearing. She limped over to

the bed and touched them. Old and worn, but clean. Pressed. The

creases in the pants were like razors.

She turned back and inspected the room closely. It was not small.

Maybe sixteen feet square. But she sensed it was smaller than it

should have been. The proportions were odd. She had noticed the

raised floor. It was more than a foot higher than it should have been.

She guessed the walls and the ceiling were the same. She limped to the

wall and tapped the new boarding. There was a dull sound. A cavity

behind. Somebody had built this simple timber shell right inside a

bigger room. And they had built it well. The new boards were tight

and straight. But there was damp in the tiny cracks between them. She

stared at the damp and sniffed the air. She shivered. The room

smelled of fear.

One corner was walled off. There was a door set in a simple diagonal

partition. She limped over to it and pulled it open. A bathroom. A

John, a sink. A trashcan, with a new plastic liner. And a shower over

a tub. Cheap white ceramic, but brand new. Carefully installed. Neat

tiling. Soap and shampoo on a shelf. She leaned on the doorjamb and

stared at the shower. She stared at it for a long time. Then she

shrugged off her filthy Armani suit. She balled it up and threw it in

the trashcan. She started the shower running and stepped under the

torrent of water. She washed her hair three times. She scrubbed her

aching body all over. She stood in the shower for the best part of an

hour.

Then she limped back to the bed and selected a set of the old fatigues.

They fitted her just about perfectly. She lay down on the bed and

stared at the pine ceiling and listened to the silence. For the first

time in more than sixty hours she was alone.

Readier was not alone. He was still in the forest clearing. He was

twenty feet from the white Econoline, chained to a tree, guarded by six

silent men with machine guns. Dogs were padding free through the

clearing. Reacher was leaning back on the rough bark, waiting,

watching his guards. He was cold. He could feel pine resin sticking

to his thin shirt. The guards were cautious. They were standing in a

line, six feet away from him, weapons pointed at him, eyes gleaming

white out of darkened faces. They were dressed in olive fatigues.

There were some kind of semicircular flashes on their shoulders. It

was too dark for Reacher to read them.

The six men were all maybe forty years old. They were lean and

bearded. Comfortable with their weapons. Alert. Silent. Accustomed

to night duty. Reacher could see that. They looked like the survivors

of a small infantry platoon. Like they had stepped into the forest on

night patrol twenty years ago as young recruits and had never come back

out again.

They snapped to attention at the sound of footsteps approaching behind