Nothing to Lose

different purposes. It might have been a waiting room, or a reception lounge, or an officers’ club. Now it was different. It was dirty and badly maintained. Stained walls, dull floor, dust all over it. Cobwebs on the ceiling. It smelled faintly of antiseptic and urine. It had big red waist-high panic buttons wired through more plastic conduit. It was completely empty, except for two men strapped into wheelchairs. Both men were young, both were entirely slack and still, both had open mouths, both had empty gazes focused a thousand miles in front of them.
    Both had shaved heads, and misshapen skulls, and wicked scars.
    Reacher stood still.
    Looked at the panic buttons.
    Thought back to the medical files.
    He was in a clinic.
    He looked at the guys in the wheelchairs.
    He was in a residential home.
    He looked at the dust and the dirt.
    He was in a dumping ground.
    He thought back to the initials on the billboard.
    TBI.
    Traumatic Brain Injury.
    Vaughan had moved on, into a corridor. He caught up with her, halfway along its length.
    “Your husband had an accident?” he said.
    “Not exactly,” she said.
    “Then what?”
    “Figure it out.”
    Reacher stopped again.
    Both men were young.
    An old army building, mothballed and then reused.
    “War wounds,” he said. “Your husband is military. He went to Iraq.”
    Vaughan nodded as she walked.
    “National Guard,” she said. “His second tour. They extended his deployment. Didn’t armor his Humvee. He was blown up by an IED in Ramadi.”
    She turned into another corridor. It was dirty. Dust balls had collected against the baseboards. Some were peppered with mouse droppings. The lightbulbs were dim, to save money on electricity. Some were out and had not been changed, to save money on labor.
    Reacher asked, “Is this a VA facility?”
    Vaughan shook her head.
    “Private contractor,” she said. “Political connections. A sweetheart deal. Free real estate and big appropriations.”
    She stopped at a dull green door. No doubt fifty years earlier it had been painted by a private soldier, in a color and in a manner specified by the Pentagon, with materials drawn from a quartermaster’s stores. Then the private soldier’s workmanship had been inspected by an NCO, and the NCO’s approval had been validated by an officer’s. Since then the door had received no further attention. It had dulled and faded and gotten battered and scratched. Now it had a wax pencil scrawl on it: D. R. Vaughan, and a string of digits that might have been his service number, or his case number.
    “Ready?” Vaughan asked.
    “When you are,” Reacher said.
    “I’m never ready,” she said.
    She turned the handle and opened the door.

50
    David Robert Vaughan’s room was a twelve-foot cube, painted dark green below a narrow cream waist-high band, and light green above. It was warm. It had a small sooty window. It had a green metal cabinet and a green metal footlocker. The footlocker was open and held a single pair of clean pajamas. The cabinet was stacked with file folders and oversized brown envelopes. The envelopes were old and torn and frayed and held X-ray films.
    The room had a bed. It was a narrow hospital cot with locked wheels and a hand-wound tilting mechanism that raised the head at an angle. It was set to a forty-five-degree slope. In it, under a tented sheet, leaning back in repose like he was relaxing, was a guy Reacher took to be David Robert Vaughan himself. He was a compact, narrow-shouldered man. The tented sheet made it hard to estimate his size. Maybe five-ten, maybe a hundred and eighty pounds. His skin was pink. He had blond stubble on his chin and his cheeks. He had a straight nose and blue eyes. His eyes were wide open.
    Part of his skull was missing.
    A saucer-sized piece of bone wasn’t there. It left a wide hole above his forehead. Like he had been wearing a small cap at a jaunty angle, and someone had cut all around the edge of it with a saw.
    His brain was protruding.
    It swelled out like an inflated balloon, dark and purple and corrugated. It looked dry and angry. It was draped with a thin manmade membrane that stuck to the shaved skin around the hole. Like Saran Wrap.
    Vaughan said, “Hello, David.”
    There was no response from the guy in the bed. Four IV lines snaked down toward him and disappeared under the tented sheet. They were fed from four clear plastic bags hung high on chromium stands next to the bed. A colostomy line and a urinary catheter