Worth Dying For

‘Call me back with the arrangements.’
    The doctor parked to the rear of the motel lounge, between its curved wall and a circular stockade that hid the trash cans and the propane tanks, nose to tail with Vincent’s own car, which was an old Pontiac sedan. Not a perfect spot. The truck would be clearly visible from certain angles, both north and south. But it was the best he could do. He got out and paused inthe chill and checked the road. Nothing coming.
    He found Vincent in the lounge, just sitting there in one of his red velvet armchairs, doing absolutely nothing at all. He had a black eye and a split lip and a swelling the size of a hen’s egg on his cheek. Exactly like the doctor himself, in fact. They were a matched pair. Like looking in a mirror.
    The doctor asked, ‘You need anything?’
    Vincent said, ‘I have a terrible headache.’
    ‘Want painkillers?’
    ‘Painkillers won’t help. I want this to be over. That’s what I want. I want that guy to finish what he started.’
    ‘He’s on his way to Virginia.’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘He said he’s going to check in with the county cops along the way. He said he’s going to come back if there’s something wrong with the case file from twenty-five years ago.’
    ‘Ancient history. They’ll have junked the file.’
    ‘He says not.’
    ‘Then they won’t let him see it.’
    ‘He says they will.’
    ‘But what can he find now, that they didn’t find then? Saying all that just means he’s never coming back. He’s softening the blow, that’s all he’s doing. He’s slipping away, with an excuse. He’s leaving us in the lurch.’
    The strange round room went quiet.
    ‘You need anything?’ the doctor asked again.
    ‘Do you?’ Vincent asked back. ‘You want a drink?’
    ‘Are you allowed to serve me?’
    ‘It’s a little late to worry about that kind of thing, don’t you think? You want one?’
    ‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘I better not.’ Then he paused and said, ‘Well, maybe just one, for the road.’
    Safir called Rossi back and said, ‘I want a twenty per cent discount.’
    Rossi said, ‘In exchange for what?’
    ‘Helping you. Sending my boys up there.’
    ‘Fifteen per cent. Because you’ll be helping yourself too.’
    ‘Twenty,’ Safir said. ‘Because I’m talking about sending more boys than just mine.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘I’ve got guys babysitting me too. Two of them. Right here, right now. I told you that, didn’t I? So you think I’m taking my guys out of your office while I’ve still got guys in my own office? Well, dream on. That’s not going to happen any time soon, believe me. So I got my customer to agree to send his guys, too. Like a shared sacrifice. And anyway, a thing like this, we’ll all want our fingers in the pie.’
    Rossi paused.
    ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s good. That’s real good. Between us we’ll have six men up there. We can take care of this thing real fast. We’ll be out of the woods in no time at all.’
    ‘Arrangements?’
    Rossi said, ‘The nearest civilization is sixty miles south. Where the county offices are. The only accommodation is a Courtyard Marriott. My guys are based there. I’ll tell them to pull back there right now and I’ll book a couple more rooms. Then everyone can meet up as soon as possible, and then they can all get going.’
    The two-lane road stayed arrow-straight the whole way. Reacher kept the Cadillac rolling along at a steady sixty per, covering a mile a minute, no stress at all. Fifty minutes from where he started he passed a lonely bar on the right shoulder. It was a small hunched building made of wood, with dirty windows with beer signs in them, and three cars in its lot, and a name board that said Cell Block. Which was marginally appropriate. Reacher figured that if he squinted the place might look like a jail from an old Western movie. He blew past it and a mile later the far horizon changed. A water tower and a Texaco sign loomed up out of the afternoon gloom. Civilization. But not much of it. The place looked small. It was just a chequerboard of a dozen low-rise blocks dumped down on the dirt in the middle of nowhere.
    Eight hundred yards out there was a Chamber of Commercebillboard that listed five different ways a traveller could spend his money. If he wanted to eat, there were two restaurants. One was a diner, and one wasn’t. Reacher recognized neither name. Not chains. If a traveller needed to fix his car, there was a service station