Worth Dying For

slightly, four cubic yards of bone and muscle, six hundred pounds of beef, now horizontal, not vertical. They were going to be very hard to move. The doctor’s wife said, ‘Now what the hell are we going to do?’
    Reacher said, ‘About what?’
    ‘I wish you hadn’t done that.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because nothing good can possibly come of it.’
    ‘Why not? What the hell is going on here? Who are these people?’
    ‘I told you. Football players.’
    ‘Not them,’ Reacher said. ‘The Duncans. The people who sent them.’
    ‘Did they see me?’
    ‘These two? I doubt it.’
    ‘That’s good. I really can’t get involved in this.’
    ‘Why not? What’s going on here?’
    ‘This isn’t your business.’
    ‘Tell that to them.’
    ‘You seemed so angry.’
    ‘Me?’ Reacher said. ‘I wasn’t angry. I was barely interested. If I had been angry, we’d be cleaning up with a fire hose. As it is we’re going to need a forklift truck.’
    ‘What are you going to do with them?’
    ‘Tell me about the Duncans.’
    ‘They’re a family. That’s all. Seth, and his father, and two uncles. They used to farm. Now they run a trucking business.’
    ‘Which one of them hires the football players?’
    ‘I don’t know who makes the decisions. Maybe it’s a majority thing. Or maybe they all have to agree.’
    ‘Where do they live?’
    ‘You know where Seth lives.’
    ‘What about the other three? The old guys?’
    ‘Just south of here. Three houses all alone. One each.’
    ‘I saw them. Your husband was staring at them.’
    ‘Did you see his hands?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘He was probably crossing his fingers for luck. Whistling past the graveyard.’
    ‘Why? Who the hell are they?’
    ‘They’re a hornets’ nest, that’s what. And you just poked it with a stick and now you’re going to leave.’
    ‘What was I supposed to do? Let them hit me with shop tools?’
    ‘That’s what we do. We take our punishments and we keep smiles on our faces and our heads down. We go along to get along.’
    ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
    She paused. Shook her head.
    ‘It’s not a big deal,’ she said. ‘Not really. So we tell ourselves. If you throw a frog in hot water, he’ll jump right out again. Put him in cold water and heat it up slowly, he’ll let himself get boiled to death without ever noticing.’
    ‘And that’s you?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s us.’
    ‘Give me the details.’
    She paused again. She shook her head again.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, no, no. You won’t hear anything bad about the Duncans from me. I want that on the record. I’m a local girl, and I’ve known them all my life. They’re a fine family. There’s nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all.’
    The doctor’s wife took a long hard look at the wrecked Subaru and then she set off walking home. Reacher offered her a ride in the pick-up truck, but she wouldn’t hear of it. He watched her out of the motel lot until she was swallowed by the dark and lost to sight. Then he turned back to the two guys on the gravel outside his door. No way could he lift an unconscious human weighing three hundred pounds. Three hundred pounds of free weights on a bar, maybe. But not three hundred pounds of inert flesh and blood the size of a refrigerator.
    He opened the pick-up’s door and climbed into the cab. It smelled of pine disinfectant and hot oil. He found the gearshift and took off forward on a curve and then stopped and backed up until the tailgate was in line with where the two guys lay. He got out again and stepped around the hood and looked at the winch that was bolted to the frame at the front. It was electric. It had a motor connected to a drum wrapped with thin steel cable. The cable had a snap hook on the end. There was a release ratchet and a winding button.
    He hit the ratchet and unwound the cable, ten feet, twenty, thirty. He flipped it up over the hood, over the roof of the cab, between two lights on the light bar, over the load bed, and down to where the guys were lying behind the truck. He dropped the tailgate flat and bent and fastened the hook on to the front of the first guy’s belt. He walked back to the front of the truck and found the winding button and pressed.
    The motor started and the drum turned and the slack pulled out of the cable. Then the cable went tight and quivered like a bowstring and burred a groove into the front edge of thehood and pulled a crease into the light bar on the roof. The