Worth Dying For

‘OK.’ He told the doctor to keep a medical eye on all six of the captured football players, and then he went back out to the gravel path and put his coat back on. He reloaded the pockets with his improvised arsenal, and he found the car keys where they lay on the stones, and then he headed down the driveway to the white SUV parked beyond the fence.
    Eldridge Tyler moved, just a little, but enough to keep himself comfortable. He was into his second hour of daylight. He wasa patient man. His eye was still on the scope. The scope was still trained on the barn door, six inches left of the judas hole, six inches down. The rifle’s forestock was still bedded securely on the bags of rice. The air was wet and thick, but the sun was bright and the view was good.
    But the big man in the brown coat hadn’t come.
    Not yet.
    And perhaps he never would, if the Duncans had been successful during the night. But Tyler was still fully on the ball, because he was cautious by nature, and he always took his tasks seriously, and maybe the Duncans hadn’t been successful during the night. In which case the big man would show up very soon. Why would he wait? Daylight was all he needed.
    Tyler took his finger off the trigger, and he flexed his hand, once, twice, and then he put his finger back.

FIFTY-THREE
    T HE WHITE SUV TURNED OUT TO BE A C HEVY T AHOE , WHICH seemed to Reacher’s untutored eye the exact same thing as a GMC Yukon. The cabin was the same. All the controls were the same. All the dials were the same. It drove just the same, big and sloppy and inexact, all the way back to the two-lane, where Reacher turned right and headed south. There was mist, but the sun was well up in the east. The day was close to two hours old.
    He slowed and coasted and then parked on the shoulder, two hundred yards short of the motel. From the north he could see nothing of it except the rocket sign and the big round lounge. He got out of the truck and walked on the blacktop, slow and quiet. His angle changed with every step. First he saw the burned-out Ford. It was in the main lot, down on its rims, black and skeletal, with two shapes behind the glassless windows, both of them burned as smooth and small as seals. Then he saw the doctor’s Subaru, outside room six, jagged and damaged, but still a living thing in comparison to the Ford.
    Then he saw the dark blue Chevrolet.
    It was parked beyond the Subaru, outside room seven, or eight, or both, at a careless angle, at the end of four short gouges in the gravel. Frustrated men, tired and angry, jamming to a stop, ready for rest.
    Reacher came in off the road and walked to the lounge door, as quietly as he could on the loose stones, past the Ford. It was still warm. The heat of the fire had scorched fantastic whorls into the metal. The lounge door was unlocked. Reacher stepped inside and saw Vincent behind the reception desk. He was in the act of hanging up the telephone. He stopped and stared at Reacher’s duct-tape bandage. He asked, ‘What the hell happened to you?’
    ‘Just a scratch,’ Reacher said. ‘Who was on the phone?’
    ‘It was the morning call. The same as always. Like clockwork.’
    ‘The phone tree?’ Reacher asked.
    Vincent nodded.
    ‘And?’
    ‘Nothing to report. Three Cornhusker vehicles were tooling around all night, kind of aimlessly. Now they’ve gone somewhere else. All four Duncans are in Jacob’s house.’
    ‘You have guests here,’ Reacher said.
    ‘The Italians,’ Vincent said. ‘I put them in seven and eight.’
    ‘Did they ask about me?’
    Vincent nodded. ‘They asked if you were here. They asked if I had seen you. They’re definitely looking for you.’
    ‘When did they get here?’
    ‘About five this morning.’
    Reacher nodded in turn. A wild goose chase all night long, no success, eventual fatigue, no desire to drive an hour south to the Marriott and an hour back again, hence the local option. They had probably planned to nap for a couple of hours, and then saddle up once more, but they were oversleeping. Human nature.
    ‘They woke me up,’ Vincent said. ‘They were very bad-tempered. I don’t think I’m going to get paid.’
    ‘Which one of them shot the guys in the Ford?’
    ‘I can’t tell them apart. One did the shooting, and the other one set fire to the car.’
    ‘And you saw that with your own eyes?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Would you go to court and say so?’
    ‘No, because the Duncans are involved.’
    ‘Would you if the