The Hard Way

semi-serious off-road tires a prestige SUV would wear.
    The kind of tires a rented Toyota Land Cruiser would wear.
    One set only.
    One way.
    The Toyota was a very capable off-road vehicle. Reacher knew that. It was one of the best in the world. But it was inconceivable that it had entered the farm overland. Not in a million years. The farm was bounded by ditches ten feet across and six feet deep. Steep sides. Impossible approach and exit angles. A Humvee couldn’t do it. A Bradley couldn’t do it. An Abrams couldn’t do it. The Grange Farm ditches were better than tank traps. So the Toyota hadn’t come in overland. It had driven in across the little flat bridge and up the length of the driveway. No other way.
    And it hadn’t driven out again.
    One set of tire tracks.
    One way.
    Lane was still on the property.

----

    Lane hit Jackson in the head with the flashlight one more time, hard. The lens smashed and Jackson went down again.
    “I need a new flashlight,” Lane said. “This one seems to be broken.”
    Addison smiled and took a new one out of a box. Lauren Pauling stared at the door. Her mouth was taped and her hands were bound behind her. The door was still closed. But it was going to open any minute. Through it would come either Perez or Reacher. Bad news or good.
    Let it be Reacher,
she thought.
Please. Bugs on windshields, no scruples. Please let it be Reacher.
    Lane took the new flashlight from Addison and stepped up close to Kate. Face-to-face, six inches from her. Eye to eye. They were about the same height. He lit up the flashlight beam and held it just under her chin, shining it directly upward, turning her exquisite face into a ghastly Halloween mask.
    “Till death us do part,” he said. “That’s a phrase I take seriously.”
    Kate turned her head away. Gasped behind the tape. Lane clamped her chin in his free hand and turned her head back.
    “Forsaking all others,” he said. “I took that part seriously, too. I’m so sorry that you didn’t.”
    Kate closed her eyes.

----

    Reacher kept on walking south. To the end of the driveway, over the bridge, east on the road, away from the farm, his flashlight on all the way. In case he was being watched. He figured he needed to let them see him go. Because the human mind loves continuity. To see a small spectral night-vision figure strolling south, and south, and then east, and east, and east sets up an irresistible temptation to believe that it’s going to go east forever.
It’s gone,
you say.
It’s out of here.
And then you forget all about it, because you know where it’s going, and you don’t see it coming back because you’re not watching it anymore.
    He walked east for two hundred yards and clicked off the Maglite beam. Then he walked east for another two hundred yards in the dark. Then he stopped. Turned ninety degrees and hiked north across the shoulder and slid down the boundary ditch’s nearside slope. Floundered through the thick black mud in the bottom and clawed his way up the far side with his rifle held one-handed high in the air. Then he ran, fast, straight north, stretching his stride long to hit the top of every plowed furrow.
    Two minutes later he was a quarter-mile in, level with the cluster of barns, three hundred yards behind them to the east, and out of breath. He paused in the lee of a stand of trees to recover. Thumbed his fire selector to single shots. Then he put the stock against his shoulder and walked forward. West. Toward the barns.
    Reacher, alone in the dark. Armed and dangerous. Coming back.

----

    Edward Lane was still face-to-face with Kate. He said, “I’m assuming you’ve been sleeping with him for years.”
    Kate said nothing.
    Lane said, “I hope you’ve been using condoms. You could catch a disease from a guy like that.”
    Then he smiled. A new thought. A joke, to him.
    “Or you could get pregnant,” he said.
    Something in her terrified eyes.
    He paused.
    “What?” he said. “What are you telling me?”
    She shook her head.
    “You’re pregnant,” he said. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you? You
are.
I know it. You look different. I can tell.”
    He put the flat of his hand on her belly. She pulled away, backward, hard against the pole she was tied to. He shuffled forward half a step. “Oh man, this is unbelievable. You’re going to die with another man’s child inside you.”
    Then he spun away. Stopped, and turned back. Shook his head.
    “Can’t allow that,” he said.