Worth Dying For

girlfriend?’
    ‘Someone I talked to on the phone, that’s all. I wanted to meet her in person. Although now I’m not so sure. Not yet, anyway. Not looking like this.’
    ‘What’s the matter with the way you look?’
    ‘My nose,’ Reacher said. He touched the tape, and smoothed it down, two-handed. He said, ‘It’s going to be a couple of weeks before it’s presentable.’
    ‘What’s her name, this woman in Virginia?’
    ‘Susan.’
    ‘Well, I think you should go. I think if Susan objects to the way you look, then she isn’t worth meeting.’
    They stopped at a featureless point on the road that had to be almost exactly halfway between the Apollo Inn and the CellBlock bar. Reacher opened his door and Dorothy Coe asked him, ‘Will you be OK here?’
    He nodded.
    He said, ‘I’ll be OK wherever I am. Will you be OK back there?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ll be better than I was.’
    She sat there behind the wheel, a solid, capable woman, about sixty years old, blunt and square, worn down by work, worn down by hardship, fading slowly to grey, but better than she had been before. Reacher said nothing, and climbed out to the shoulder, and closed his door. She looked at him once, through the window, and then she looked away and turned across the width of the road and drove back north. Reacher pulled his hat down over his ears and jammed his hands in his pockets against the cold, and got set to wait for a ride.
    He waited a long, long time. For the first hour nothing came by at all. Then a vehicle appeared on the horizon, and a whole minute later it was close enough to make out some detail. It was a small import, probably Japanese, a Honda or a Toyota, old, with blue paint faded by the weather. A sixth-hand purchase. Reacher stood up and stuck out his thumb. The car slowed, which didn’t necessarily mean much. Pure reflex. A driver’s eyes swivel right, and his foot lifts off the gas, automatically. In this case the driver was a woman, young, probably a college student. She had long fair hair. Her car was piled high inside with all kinds of stuff.
    She looked for less than a second and then accelerated and drove by at sixty, trailing cold air and whirling grit and tyre whine. Reacher watched her go. A good decision, probably. Lone women shouldn’t stop in the middle of nowhere for giant unkempt strangers with duct tape on their faces.
    He sat down again on the shoulder. He was tired. He had woken up in Vincent’s motel room early the previous morning, when Dorothy Coe came in to service it, and he hadn’t slept since. He pulled his hood up over his hat and lay down on the dirt. He crossed his ankles and crossed his arms over his chest and went to sleep.
    * * *
    It was going dark when he woke. The sun was gone in the west and the pale remains of a winter sunset were all that was lighting the sky. He sat up, and then he stood. No traffic. But he was a patient man. He was good at waiting.
    He waited ten more minutes, and saw another vehicle on the horizon. It had its lights on against the gloaming. He flipped his hood down to reduce his apparent bulk and stood easy, one foot on the dirt, one on the blacktop, and he stuck his thumb out. The approaching vehicle was bigger than a car. He could tell by the way the headlights were spaced. It was tall and relatively narrow. It had a big windshield. It was a panel van.
    It was a grey panel van.
    It was the same kind of grey panel van as the two grey panel vans he had seen at the Duncan depot.
    It slowed a hundred yards away, the automatic reflex, but then it kept on slowing, and it came to a stop right next to him. The driver leaned way over and opened the passenger door and a light came on inside.
    The driver was Eleanor Duncan.
    She was wearing black jeans and an insulated parka. The parka was covered in zips and pockets and it gleamed and glittered in the light. Its threads had been nowhere near any living thing, either plant or animal.
    She said, ‘Hello.’
    Reacher didn’t answer. He was looking at the truck, inside and out. It was travel-stained. It had salt and dirt on it, all streaked and dried and dusty. It had been on a long journey.
    He said, ‘This was the shipment, right? This is the truck they used.’
    Eleanor Duncan nodded.
    He asked, ‘Who was in it?’
    Eleanor Duncan said, ‘Six young women and ten young girls. From Thailand.’
    ‘Were they OK?’
    ‘They were fine. Not surprisingly. It seems that a lot oftrouble had been