Worth Dying For

drum slowed, and then it dug in and kept on turning. The truck squatted low on its springs. Reacher walked back and saw the first guy getting dragged by his belt towards the load bed, scuffling along the ground, waist first, arms and legs trailing. The guy dragged all the way to the edge of the tailgate. Then the cable came up vertically and shrieked against the sheet metal and the guy’s belt stretched oval and he started up into the air, spinning a little, his back arched, his head and legs and arms hanging down. Reacher waited and timed it and pulled and pushed and shoved and got him up over the angle and watched as he dragged onward into the load bed. Reacher stepped back to the front and waited a beat and then stopped the winch. He came back and leaned into the load bed and released the hook, and then he did the same things all over again for the second guy, like a veterinarian called out to a couple of dead heifers.
    Reacher drove five miles south and slowed and stopped just before the shared driveway that ran west towards the three houses huddled together. They had been painted white a generation ago and still managed a grey gleam in the moonlight. They were substantial buildings, arranged along a short arc without much space between them. There was no landscaping. Just threadbare gravel and weeds and three parked cars, and then a heavy post-and-rail fence, and then flat empty fields running away into the darkness.
    There was a light behind a ground floor window in the house on the right. No other signs of activity.
    Reacher pulled thirty feet ahead and then backed up and turned and reversed into the driveway. Gravel crunched and scrabbled under his tyres. A noisy approach. He risked fifty yards, which was about halfway. Then he stopped and slid out and unlatched the tailgate. He climbed up into the load bed and grabbed the first guy by the belt and the collar and heaved and hauled and half dragged and half rolled him to the edge and then put the sole of his boot against the guy’s hip and shovedhim over. The guy fell three feet and thumped down on his side and settled on his back.
    Return to sender.
    Reacher went back for the second guy and pushed and pulled and hauled and rolled him out of the truck right on top of his buddy. Then he latched the tailgate again and vaulted over the side to the ground and got behind the wheel and took off fast.
    The four Duncans were still around the table in Jasper’s kitchen. Not a planned meeting, but they had a permanently long agenda and they were taking advantage of circumstances. Foremost in their minds was an emerging delay on the Canadian border. Jacob said, ‘We’re getting pressure from our friend to the south.’
    Jonas said, ‘We can’t control what we can’t control.’
    ‘Try telling that to him.’
    ‘He’ll get his shipment.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Whenever.’
    ‘He paid upfront.’
    ‘He always does.’
    ‘A lot of money.’
    ‘It always is.’
    ‘But this time he’s agitated. He wants action. And here’s the thing. It was very strange. He called me, and it was like jumping into the conversation halfway through.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘He was frustrated, obviously. But also a little surly, like we weren’t taking him seriously. Like he had made prior communications that had gone unheeded. Like we had ignored warnings. I felt like he was on page three and I was on page one.’
    ‘He’s losing his mind.’
    ‘Unless.’
    ‘Unless what?’
    ‘Unless one of us took a couple of his calls already.’
    Jonas Duncan said, ‘Well, I didn’t.’
    ‘Me either,’ Jasper Duncan said.
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Because there’s really no other explanation here. And remember, this is a guy we can’t afford to mess with. This is a deeply unpleasant person.’
    Jacob’s brothers both shrugged. Two men in their sixties, gnarled, battered, built like fireplugs. Jonas said, ‘Don’t look at me.’
    ‘Me either,’ Jasper said again.
    Only Seth Duncan hadn’t spoken. Not a word. Jacob’s son.
    His father asked, ‘What aren’t you telling us, boy?’
    Seth looked down at the table. Then he looked up, awkwardly, the aluminium plate huge on his face. His father and his two uncles stared right back at him. He said, ‘It wasn’t me who broke Eleanor’s nose tonight.’

ELEVEN
    J ASPER D UNCAN TOOK A PART-USED BOTTLE OF K NOB C REEK whiskey from his kitchen cabinet and stuck three gnarled fingers and a blunt thumb in four chipped glasses.