Die Trying by Lee Child

your daughter standing together in front of a headstone, this asshole’s

name on it.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

FOUR MEN WERE DRAGGING LODER’S BODY AWAY AND THE CROWD was dispersing

quietly. Reacher was left standing on the courthouse steps with his

six guards and Fowler. Fowler had finally unlocked the handcuffs.

Reacher was rolling his shoulders and stretching. He had been cuffed

all night and all morning and he was stiff and sore. His wrists were

marked with red weals where the hard metal had bitten down.

“Cigarette?” Fowler asked.

He was holding his pack out. A friendly gesture. Reacher shook his

head.

“I want to see Holly,” he said.

Fowler was about to refuse, but then he thought some more and nodded.

“OK,” he said. “Good idea. Take her out for some exercise. Talk to

her. Ask her how we’re treating her. That’s something you’re sure to

be asked later. It’ll be very important to them. We don’t want you

giving them any false impressions.”

Reacher waited at the bottom of the steps. The sun had gone pale and

watery. Wisps of mist were gathering in the north. But some of the

sky was still blue and clear. After five minutes Fowler brought Holly

down. She was walking slowy, with a little staccato

9m rhythm as her good leg alternated with the thump of her crutch. She

walked through the door and stood at the top of the steps.

“Question for you, Readier,” Fowler called down. “How far can you run

in a half-hour with a hundred and twenty pounds on your back?”

Reacher shrugged.

“Not far enough, I guess,” he said.

Fowler nodded.

“Right,” he said. “Not far enough. If she’s not standing right here

in thirty minutes, we’ll come looking for you. We’ll give it a

two-mile radius.”

Reacher thought about it and nodded. A half-hour with a hundred and

twenty pounds on his back might get him more than two miles. Two miles

was probably pessimistic. But he thought back to the map on Borken’s

wall. Thought about the savage terrain. Where the hell would he run?

He made a show of checking his watch. Fowler walked away, up behind

the ruined office building. The guards slung their weapons over their

shoulders and stood easy. Holly smoothed her hair back. Stood face up

to the pale sun.

“Can you walk for a while?” Reacher asked her.

“Slowly,” she said.

She set off north along the middle of the deserted street. Reacher

strolled beside her. They waited until they were out of sight. They

glanced at each other. Then they turned and flung themselves together.

Her crutch toppled to the ground and he lifted her a foot in the air.

She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.

“I’m going crazy in there,” she said.

“I’ve got bad news,” he said.

“What?” she said.

They had a helper in Chicago,” he said.

She stared up at him.

They were only gone five days,” he said. That’s what Fowler said at

the trial. He said Loder had been gone just five days.”

“So?” she said.

“So they didn’t have time for surveillance,” he said. They hadn’t been

watching you. Somebody told them where you were going to be, and when.

They had help, Holly.”

The color in her face drained away. It was replaced by shock.

orw;

“Five days?” she said. “You sure?”

Reacher nodded. Holly went quiet. She was thinking hard.

“So who knew?” he asked her. “Who knew where you’d be, twelve o’clock

Monday? A roommate? A friend?”

Her eyes were darting left and right. She was racing through the

possibilities.

“Nobody knew,” she said.

“Were you ever tailed?” he asked.

She shrugged helplessly. Reacher could see she desperately wanted to

say yes, I was tailed. Because he knew to say no was too awful for her

to contemplate.

“Were you?” he asked again.

“No,” she said quietly. “By a bozo like one of these? Forget it. I’d

have spotted them. And they’d have had to hang around all day outside

the Federal Building, just waiting. We’d have picked them up in a

heartbeat.”

“So?” he asked.

“My lunch break was flexible,” she said. “It varied, sometimes by a