Worth Dying For

tighter and tighter until she came back to her original line. She coasted for a second and straightened up and then she hit the gas and the truck leapt forward, ten yards, twenty, thirty, and Jacob Duncan glanced back in horror and darted left, and Dorothy Coe flinched right, involuntarily, a civilian with forty years of safe driving behind her, and she hit Jacob a heavy glancing blow with the left headlight, hard in his back and his right shoulder, sending the gun flying, sending him tumbling, spinning him around, hurling him to the ground.
    ‘Get back quick,’ Reacher said.
    But Jacob Duncan wasn’t getting up. He was on his back, one leg pounding away like a dog dreaming, one arm scrabbling uselessly in the dirt, his head jerking, his eyes open and staring, up and down, left and right. His gun was ten feet away.
    Dorothy Coe drove back and stopped and stood off ten yards away. She asked, ‘What now?’
    Reacher said, ‘I would leave him there. I think you broke his back. He’ll die slowly.’
    ‘How long?’
    ‘An hour, maybe two.’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Reacher gave her the Glock. ‘Or go shoot him in the head. It would be a mercy, not that he deserves it.’
    ‘Will you do it?’
    ‘Gladly. But you should. You’ve wanted to for twenty-five years.’
    She nodded slowly. She stared down at the Glock, laid flat like an open book on both her hands, like she had never seen such a thing before. She asked, ‘Is there a safety catch?’
    Reacher shook his head.
    ‘No safety on a Glock,’ he said.
    She opened the door. She climbed down, to the sill step, to the ground. She looked back at Reacher.
    ‘For Margaret,’ she said again.
    ‘And the others,’ Reacher said.
    ‘And for Artie,’ she said. ‘My husband.’
    She stepped sideways around her open door, touching it with one hand as she went, slowly, with reluctance, and then she crossed the open ground, small neat strides on the dirt, ten of them, twelve, turning a short distance into a long journey. Jacob Duncan went still and watched her approach. She stepped up close and pointed the gun straight down and to one side, holding it a little away from herself, making it not part of herself, separating herself from it, and then she said some words Reacher didn’t hear, and then she pulled the trigger, once, twice, three four five six times, and then she stepped away.

SIXTY-TWO
    T HE DOCTOR AND HIS WIFE WERE WAITING IN D OROTHY C OE ’ S truck, back on the two-lane road. Reacher and Dorothy parked ahead of them and they all got out and stood together. The Duncan compound was reduced to three vertical chimneys and a wide horizontal spread of ashy grey timbers that were still burning steadily, but no longer fiercely. Smoke was coming up and gathering into a wide column that seemed to rise for ever. It was the only thing moving. The sun was as high as it was going to get, and the rest of the sky was blue.
    Reacher said, ‘You’ve got a lot of work to do. Get everyone on it. Get backhoes and bucket loaders and dig some big holes. Really big holes. Then gather the trash and bury it deep. But save some space for later. Their van will arrive at some point, and the driver is just as guilty as the rest of them.’
    The doctor said, ‘We have to kill him?’
    ‘You can bury him alive, for all I care.’
    ‘You’re leaving now?’
    Reacher nodded.
    ‘I’m going to Virginia,’ he said.
    ‘Can’t you stay a day or two?’
    ‘You all are in charge now, not me.’
    ‘What about the football players at my house?’
    ‘Turn them loose and tell them to get out of town. They’ll be happy to. There’s nothing left for them here.’
    The doctor said, ‘But they might tell someone. Or someone might have seen the smoke. From far away. The cops might come.’
    Reacher said, ‘If they do, blame everything on me. Give them my name. By the time they figure out where I am, I’ll be somewhere else.’
    Dorothy Coe drove Reacher the first part of the way. They climbed back in the Yukon together and checked the gas gauge. There was enough for maybe sixty miles. They agreed she would take him thirty miles south, and then she would drive the same thirty miles back, and then after that filling the tank would be John’s own problem.
    They drove the first ten miles in silence. Then they passed the abandoned roadhouse and the two-lane speared onward and empty ahead of them and Dorothy asked, ‘What’s in Virginia?’
    ‘A woman,’ Reacher said.
    ‘Your