Worth Dying For

right as rain. No one had cell phones back then, of course. Some people didn’t even haveregular phones. Then you think the girl has gotten lost, and everyone starts driving around, looking for her. Then it goes dark, and then you call the cops.’
    Reacher asked, ‘What did the cops do?’
    ‘Everything they could. They did a fine job. They went house to house, they used flashlights, they used loudhailers to tell everyone to search their barns and outbuildings, they drove around all night, then at first light they got dogs and called in the State Police and the State Police called in the National Guard and they got a helicopter.’
    ‘Nothing?’
    The woman nodded.
    ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Then I told them about the Duncans.’
    ‘You did?’
    ‘Someone had to. As soon as I spoke up, others joined in. We were all pointing our fingers. The State Police took us very seriously. I guess they couldn’t afford not to. They took the Duncans to a barracks over near Lincoln and questioned them for days. They searched their houses. They got help from the FBI. All kinds of laboratory people were there.’
    ‘Did they find anything?’
    ‘Not a trace.’
    ‘Nothing at all?’
    ‘Every test was negative. They said the child hadn’t been there.’
    ‘So what happened next?’
    ‘Nothing. It all fizzled out. The Duncans came home. The little girl was never seen again. The case was never solved. The Duncans were very bitter. They asked me to apologize, for naming names, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t give it up. My husband, neither. Some folks were on our side, like the doctor’s wife. But most weren’t, really. They saw which way the wind was blowing. The Duncans withdrew into themselves. Then they started punishing us. Like revenge. We didn’t get our crop hauled that year. We lost it all. My husband killed himself. He sat right in that chair where you’re sitting and he put his shotgun under his chin.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    The woman said nothing.
    Reacher asked, ‘Who was the girl?’
    No reply.
    ‘Yours, right?’
    ‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘It was my daughter. She was eight years old. She’ll always be eight years old.’
    She started to cry, and then her phone started to ring.

SEVENTEEN
    T HE PHONE WAS A CLUNKY OLD N OKIA. I T WAS ON THE KITCHEN counter. It hopped and buzzed and trilled the old Nokia tune that Reacher had heard a thousand times before, in bars, on buses, on the street. Dorothy snatched it up and answered. She said hello and then she listened, to what sounded like a fast slurred message of some kind, maybe a warning, and then she clicked off and dropped the phone like it was scalding hot.
    ‘That was Mr Vincent,’ she said. ‘Over at the motel.’
    Reacher said, ‘And?’
    ‘Two men were there. They’re coming here. Right now.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘We don’t know. Men we’ve never seen before.’ She opened the kitchen door and glanced down a hallway towards the front of the house. There was silence for a second and then Reacher heard the distant hiss of tyres on blacktop, the moan of a slowing engine, the sound of brakes, and then the crunch of a wheel on gravel, then another, then two more together, as a car turned in and bumped on to the track.
    The woman said, ‘Get out of here. Please. They can’t know you’re here.’
    ‘We don’t know who they are.’
    ‘They’re Duncan people. Who else would they be? I can’t let them find you here. It’s more than my life is worth.’
    Reacher said, ‘I can’t get out of here. They’re already on the track.’
    ‘Hide out back. Please. I’m begging you. They can’t find you here. I mean it.’ She stepped out to the hallway, ready to meet them head on at the front door. They were close, and moving fast. The gravel was loud. She said, ‘They might search. If they find you, tell them you snuck in the yard. Over the fields. Please. Tell them I didn’t know. Make them believe you. Tell them you’re nothing to do with me.’ Then she closed the door on him and was gone.
    Angelo Mancini folded the sheet of handwritten directions and put it in his pocket. They were on some lumpy, bumpy, piece-of-shit farm track, heading for some broken-down old woebegone piece-of-shit farmhouse that belonged in a museum or a history book. The navigation screen showed nothing at all. Just white space. Roberto Cassano was at the wheel, hitting every pothole. What did he care? They were Hertz’s tyres, not his. Up ahead the front door