Worth Dying For

pocket and headed for the lounge.
    Vincent was in there, behind the bar, wiping it with a rag. Hehad a black eye and a thick lip and a swelling the size of a mouse’s back on his cheek. One of the mirrors behind him was broken. Pieces of glass the shape of lightning bolts had fallen out. Old wallboard was exposed, taped and yellowing, earthbound and prosaic. The room’s cheerful illusion was diminished.
    Reacher said, ‘I’m sorry I got you in trouble.’
    Vincent asked, ‘Did you spend the night here?’
    ‘Do you really want to know?’
    ‘No, I guess I don’t.’
    Reacher checked himself in the broken mirror. One ear was scabbing over, where he had scraped it on the rock. His face had scratches from the thorns. His hands, too, and his back, where his coat and shirt and sweater had ridden up. He asked, ‘Did those guys have a list of places they were looking?’
    Vincent said, ‘I imagine they’ll go house to house.’
    ‘What are they driving?’
    ‘A rental.’
    ‘Colour?’
    ‘It was something dark. Dark blue, maybe? A Chevrolet, I think.’
    ‘Did they say who they were?’
    ‘Just that they were representing the Duncans. That’s how they put it. I’m sorry I told them about Dorothy.’
    ‘She did OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Don’t worry about it. She’s had bigger troubles in her life.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘You think the Duncans killed her kid?’
    ‘I would like to. It would fit with what we think we know about them.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘There was no evidence. Absolutely none at all. And it was a very thorough investigation. Lots of different agencies. Very professional. I doubt if they missed anything.’
    ‘So it was just a coincidence?’
    ‘It must have been.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    Vincent asked, ‘What are you going to do now?’
    ‘A couple of things,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe three. Then I’m out of here. I’m going to Virginia.’
    He walked back out to the lot and climbed into the pick-up truck. He fired it up and took off, out to the road, towards the doctor’s house.

TWENTY-THREE
    M AHMEINI ’ S TWO TOUGH GUYS ARRIVED IN S AFIR ’ S L AS V EGAS office about an hour after Safir’s own two tough guys had left it. Mahmeini’s men were not physically impressive. No straining shirt collars, no bulging muscles. They were small and wiry, dark and dead-eyed, rumpled, and not very clean. Safir was Lebanese and he knew plenty of Iranians. Most of them were the nicest people in the world, especially when they lived somewhere else. But some of them were the worst. These two had brought nothing with them. No bags, no tools, no equipment. They didn’t need any. Safir knew they would have guns under their arms and knives in their pockets. It was the knives he was worried about. Guns were fast. Knives were slow. And these two Iranians could be very slow with knives. And very inventive. Safir knew that for a fact. He had seen one of their victims, out in the desert. A little decomposed, but even so the cops had taken longer than they should even to determine the sex of the corpse. Which was no surprise. There had been no external evidence of gender. None at all.
    Safir dialled his phone. Three rings, and one of his guysanswered, six blocks away. Safir said, ‘Give me a progress report.’
    His guy said, ‘It’s all messed up.’
    ‘Evidently. But I need more than that.’
    ‘OK, it turns out Rossi’s contacts are a bunch of Nebraska people called Duncan. They’re all in an uproar over some guy poking around. Nothing to do with anything, probably, but Rossi thinks the Duncans are going to stall until the guy is down, to save face, because they’ve been claiming the guy is the cause of the delay. Which Rossi thinks is most likely bullshit, but the whole thing has gone completely circular. Rossi thinks nothing is going to happen now until the guy is captured. He’s got boys up there, working on it.’
    ‘How hard?’
    ‘As hard as they can, I guess.’
    ‘Tell Rossi to tell them to work harder. Much, much harder. And make sure he knows I’m serious, OK? Tell him I’ve got people in my office too, and if I’m going to get hurt over this, then he’s going to get hurt first, and twice as bad.’
    Reacher remembered the way to the doctor’s house from the night before. In daylight the roads looked different. More open, less secret. More exposed. They were just narrow ribbons of blacktop, built up a little higher than the surrounding dirt, unprotected by hedgerows,