Worth Dying For

sisterhood, clustering together.
    A hundred feet out the Mazda slowed a little. Its top was up this time, like a tight little hat. Cold weather, no further need for instant identification. No more sentries to distract.
    Fifty feet out, it braked hard, ready for the turn in, and red light flared in the mist behind it.
    Twenty feet out, it swung wide and started to turn.
    Ten feet out, Reacher remembered three things.
    First, Eleanor Duncan was not on the phone tree.
    Second, his gun was in his coat.
    Third, his coat was in the kitchen.
    The Mazda swung in fast and crunched over the gravel and jammed to a stop right behind Dorothy Coe’s pick-up. The door opened wide and Seth Duncan unfolded his lanky frame and stepped out.
    He was holding a shotgun.

FORTY-ONE
    S ETH D UNCAN HAD A HUGE ALUMINIUM SPLINT ON HIS FACE, LIKE a dull metal patch taped to a large piece of rotten fruit. All kinds of sick moonlit colours were spreading out from under it. Yellows, and browns, and purples. He was wearing dark pants and a dark sweater with a new parka over it. The shotgun in his hands was an old Remington 870 pump. Probably a twelve-gauge, probably a twenty-inch barrel. A walnut stock, a seven-round tubular magazine, altogether a fine all-purpose weapon, well proven, more than four million built and sold, used by the Navy for shipboard security, used by the Marines for close-quarters combat, used by the army for heavy short-range firepower, used by civilians for hunting, used by cops as a riot gun, used by cranky homeowners as a get-off-my-lawn deterrent.
    Nobody moved.
    Reacher watched carefully and saw that Seth Duncan was holding the Remington pretty steady. His finger was on the trigger. He was aiming it from the hip, straight back at Reacher, which meant he was aiming it at Dorothy Coe and the doctorand his wife, too, because buckshot spreads a little, and all four of them were clustered tight together, on the driveway ten feet from the doctor’s front door. All kinds of collateral damage, just waiting to happen.
    Nobody spoke.
    The Mazda idled. Its door was still open. Seth Duncan started to move up the driveway. He raised the Remington’s stock to his shoulder and closed one eye and squinted along the barrel and walked forward, slow and steady. A useless manoeuvre on rough terrain. But feasible on smooth gravel. The Remington stayed dead on target.
    He stopped thirty feet away. He said, ‘All of you sit down. Right where you are. Cross-legged on the ground.’
    Nobody moved.
    Reacher asked, ‘Is that thing loaded?’
    Duncan said, ‘You bet your ass it is.’
    ‘Take care it doesn’t go off by accident.’
    ‘It won’t,’ Duncan said, all nasal and inarticulate, because of his injury, and because his cheek was pressed hard against the Remington’s walnut stock.
    Nobody moved. Reacher watched and thought. Behind him he heard the doctor stir and heard him ask, ‘Can we talk?’
    Duncan said, ‘Sit down.’
    The doctor said, ‘We should discuss this. Like reasonable people.’
    ‘Sit down.’
    ‘No, tell us what you want.’
    A brave try, but in Reacher’s estimation the wrong tactic. The doctor thought there was something to be gained by spinning things out, by using up the clock. Reacher thought the exact opposite was true. He thought there was no time to waste. None at all. He said, ‘It’s cold.’
    Duncan said, ‘So?’
    ‘Too cold to sit down outside. Too cold to stand up outside. Let’s go inside.’
    ‘I want you outside.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I do.’
    ‘Then let them go get their coats.’
    ‘Why should I?’
    ‘Self-respect,’ Reacher said. ‘You’re wearing a coat. If it’s warm enough not to need one, then you’re a pussy. If it’s cold enough to bundle up, then you’re making innocent people suffer unnecessarily. If you think you’ve got a beef with me, OK, but these folks have never hurt you.’
    Seth Duncan thought about it for a second, the gun still up at his shoulder, his head still bent down to it, one eye still closed. He said, ‘OK, one at a time. The others stay here, like hostages. Mrs Coe goes first. Get your coat. Nothing else. Don’t touch the phone.’
    Nobody moved for a beat, and then Dorothy Coe peeled out of the cluster and walked to the door and stepped inside. She was gone a minute, and then she came back wearing her coat, this time buttoned over her dress. She resumed her position.
    Duncan said, ‘Sit down, Mrs Coe.’
    Dorothy tugged her coat down