One Shot

then the note and the volume rose to full blast. Within ten seconds the second floor of the house was full of an insane shrieking. Ten seconds after that, the door on Reacher’s right opened. A small man stepped out. Reacher let him take a pace forward and then spun him around and jammed the Smith 60 hard in the base of his throat.
    And stared.
    The Zec.
He was a wide, ancient, twisted, stooped, battered old man. A wraith. Barely human. He was covered in livid scars and patches of discolored skin. His face was lined and drooping and seething with rage and hatred and cruelty. He was unarmed. His ruined hands didn’t seem capable of holding a weapon. Reacher forced him down the hallway. Into the kitchen, backward. To the stove. The noise from the kettle was unbearable. Reacher used his left hand and killed the flame. Then he hauled the Zec back toward the living room. The kettle’s whistle died away, like an air raid siren winding down. The house went quiet again.
    “It’s over,” Reacher said. “You lost.”
    “It’s never over,” the Zec replied. Hoarse voice, low, guttural.
    “Guess again,” Reacher said. He kept the Smith hard against the Zec’s throat. Too low and too close for him to see it. He eased the hammer back. Slowly, carefully. Deliberately. Loudly.
Click-click-click-crunch.
An unmistakable sound.
    “I’m eighty years old,” the Zec said.
    “I don’t care if you’re a hundred,” Reacher said. “You’re still going down.”
    “Idiot,” the Zec said back. “I meant I’ve survived things worse than you. Since long before you were born.”
    “Nobody’s worse than me.”
    “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re nothing.”
    “You think?” Reacher said. “You were alive this morning and you won’t be tomorrow. After eighty years. That makes me something, don’t you think?”
    No answer.
    “It’s over,” Reacher said. “Believe me. Long and winding road, OK, I understand all of that, but this is the end of it. Had to happen sometime.”
    No response.
    “You know when my birthday is?” Reacher asked.
    “Obviously not.”
    “It’s in October. You know what day?”
    “Of course not.”
    “You’re going to find out the hard way. I’m counting in my head. When I reach my birthday, I’m going to pull the trigger.”
    He started counting in his head.
First, second.
He watched the Zec’s eyes.
Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth.
No response.
Tenth, eleventh, twelfth.
    “What do you want?” the Zec said.
    Negotiation time.
    “I want to talk,” Reacher said.
    “Talk?”
    “The twelfth,” Reacher said. “That’s how long you lasted. Then you gave it up. You know why? Because you want to survive. It’s the deepest instinct you’ve got. Obviously. Otherwise how would you have gotten as old as you are? It’s probably a deeper instinct than I could ever understand. A reflex, a habit, roll the dice, stay alive, make the next move, take the next chance. It’s in your DNA. It’s
what you are.
”
    “So?”
    “So now we’ve got ourselves a competition. What you are, against what I am.”
    “And what are you?”
    “I’m the guy who just threw Chenko out a third-floor window. After crushing Vladimir to death with my bare hands. Because I didn’t like what they did to innocent people. So now you’ve got to pit
your
strong desire to survive against
my
strong desire to shoot you in the head and piss in the bullet hole.”
    No response.
    “One shot,” Reacher said. “In the head. Lights out. That’s your choice. Another day, another roll of the dice. Or not. As the case may be.”
    He saw calculation in the Zec’s eyes. Assessment, evaluation, speculation.
    “I could throw you down the stairs,” he said. “You could crawl over and take a look at Vladimir. I cut his throat afterward. Just for fun. That’s who
I
am. So don’t think I don’t mean what I say. I’ll do it and I’ll sleep like a baby the rest of my life.”
    “What do you want?” the Zec asked again.
    “Help with a problem.”
    “What problem?”
    “There’s an innocent man I need to get out of the prison ward. So I need you to tell the truth to a detective called Emerson. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I need you to finger Chenko for the shooting, and Vladimir for the girl, and whoever it was for Ted Archer. And whatever else you’ve done. The whole nine yards. Including how you and Linsky set it all up.”
    A flicker in the Zec’s eyes. “Pointless. I’d get the