Die Trying

up, straight from the waist like a gymnast, and used both hands to flip her leg sideways. Propped herself on one elbow on the mattress. Hooked her hair behind her ear and looked down at him.
    “I don’t get anything about you,” she said.
    He looked back up at her. Shrugged.
    “You got questions, you ask them,” he said. “I’m all in favor of freedom of information.”
    “OK,” she said. “Here’s the first question: who the hell are you?”
    He shrugged again and smiled.
    “Jack Reacher,” he said. “No middle name, thirty-seven years and eight months old, unmarried, club doorman in Chicago.”
    “Bullshit,” she said.
    “Bullshit?” he repeated. “Which part? My name, my age, my marital status, or my occupation?”
    “Your occupation,” she said. “You’re not a club doorman.”
    “I’m not?” he said. “So what am I?”
    “You’re a soldier,” she said. “You’re in the Army.”
    “I am?” he said.
    “It’s pretty obvious,” she said. “My dad is Army. I’ve lived on bases all my life. Everybody I ever saw was in the Army, right up until I was eighteen years old. I know what soldiers look like. I know how they act. I was pretty sure you were one. Then you took your shirt off, and I knew for definite.”
    Reacher grinned.
    “Why?” he said. “Is that a really uncouth, soldierly kind of a thing to do?”
    Holly grinned back at him. Shook her head. Her hair came loose. She swept it back behind her ear, one finger bent like a small pale hook.
    “That scar on your stomach,” she said. “Those awful stitches. That’s a MASH job for sure. Some field hospital somewhere, took them about a minute and a half. Any civilian surgeon did stitches like that, he’d get sued for malpractice so fast he’d get dizzy.”
    Reacher ran his finger over the lumpy skin. The stitches looked like a plan of the ties at a railroad yard.
    “The guy was busy,” he said. “I thought he did pretty well, considering the circumstances. It was in Beirut. I was a long way down the priority list. I was only bleeding to death slowly.”
    “So I’m right?” Holly said. “You’re a soldier?”
    Reacher smiled up at her again and shook his head.
    “I’m a doorman,” he said. “Like I told you. Blues joint on the South Side. You should try it. Much better than the tourist places.”
    She glanced between his huge scar and his face. Clamped her lips and slowly shook her head. Reacher nodded at her, like he was conceding the point.
    “I used to be a soldier,” he said. “I got out, fourteen months ago.”
    “What unit?” she asked.
    “Military police,” he said.
    She screwed her face up in a mock grimace.
    “The baddest of the bad,” she said. “Nobody likes you guys.”
    “Tell me about it,” Reacher said.
    “Explains a lot of things,” she said. “You guys get a lot of special training. So I guess you really are qualified. You should have told me, damn it. Now I guess I have to apologize for what I said.”
    He made no reply to that.
    “Where were you stationed?” she asked.
    “All over the world,” he said. “Europe, Far East, Middle East. Got so I didn’t know which way was up.”
    “Rank?” she asked.
    “Major,” he said.
    “Medals?” she asked.
    He shrugged.
    “Dozens of the damn things,” he said. “You know how it is. Theater medals, of course, plus a Silver Star, two Bronzes, Purple Heart from Beirut, campaign things from Panama and Grenada and Desert Shield and Desert Storm.”
    “A Silver Star?” she asked. “What for?”
    “Beirut,” he said. “Pulled some guys out of the bunker.”
    “And you got wounded doing that?” she said. “That’s how you got the scar and the Purple Heart?”
    “I was already wounded,” he said. “Got wounded before I went in. I think that was what impressed them.”
    “Hero, right?” she said.
    He smiled and shook his head.
    “No way,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling anything. Wasn’t thinking. Too shocked. I didn’t even know I was hit until afterward. If I’d known, I’d have fallen down in a dead faint. My intestine was hanging out. Looked really awful. It was bright pink. Sort of squashy.”
    Holly was quiet for a second. The truck droned on. Another twenty miles covered. North or south or west. Probably.
    “How long were you in the service?” she asked.
    “All my life,” he said. “My old man was a Marine officer, served all over. He married a Frenchwoman in Korea. I was born in Berlin. Never even saw