Worth Dying For

They stopped at a featureless point on the road that had to be almost exactly halfway between the Apollo Inn and the Cell Block bar. Reacher opened his door and Dorothy Coe asked him, ‘Will you be OK here?’

He nodded.

He said, ‘I’ll be OK wherever I am. Will you be OK back there?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ll be better than I was.’

She sat there behind the wheel, a solid, capable woman, about sixty years old, blunt and square, worn down by work, worn down by hardship, fading slowly to grey, but better than she had been before. Reacher said nothing, and climbed out to the shoulder, and closed his door. She looked at him once, through the window, and then she looked away and turned across the width of the road and drove back north. Reacher pulled his hat down over his ears and jammed his hands in his pockets against the cold, and got set to wait for a ride.

He waited a long, long time. For the first hour nothing came by at all. Then a vehicle appeared on the horizon, and a whole minute later it was close enough to make out some detail. It was a small import, probably Japanese, a Honda or a Toyota, old, with blue paint faded by the weather. A sixth-hand purchase. Reacher stood up and stuck out his thumb. The car slowed, which didn’t necessarily mean much. Pure reflex. A driver’s eyes swivel right, and his foot lifts off the gas, automatically. In this case the driver was a woman, young, probably a college student. She had long fair hair. Her car was piled high inside with all kinds of stuff.

She looked for less than a second and then accelerated and drove by at sixty, trailing cold air and whirling grit and tyre whine. Reacher watched her go. A good decision, probably. Lone women shouldn’t stop in the middle of nowhere for giant unkempt strangers with duct tape on their faces.

He sat down again on the shoulder. He was tired. He had woken up in Vincent’s motel room early the previous morning, when Dorothy Coe came in to service it, and he hadn’t slept since. He pulled his hood up over his hat and lay down on the dirt. He crossed his ankles and crossed his arms over his chest and went to sleep.

* * *

It was going dark when he woke. The sun was gone in the west and the pale remains of a winter sunset were all that was lighting the sky. He sat up, and then he stood. No traffic. But he was a patient man. He was good at waiting.

He waited ten more minutes, and saw another vehicle on the horizon. It had its lights on against the gloaming. He flipped his hood down to reduce his apparent bulk and stood easy, one foot on the dirt, one on the blacktop, and he stuck his thumb out. The approaching vehicle was bigger than a car. He could tell by the way the headlights were spaced. It was tall and relatively narrow. It had a big windshield. It was a panel van.

It was a grey panel van.

It was the same kind of grey panel van as the two grey panel vans he had seen at the Duncan depot.

It slowed a hundred yards away, the automatic reflex, but then it kept on slowing, and it came to a stop right next to him. The driver leaned way over and opened the passenger door and a light came on inside.

The driver was Eleanor Duncan.

She was wearing black jeans and an insulated parka. The parka was covered in zips and pockets and it gleamed and glittered in the light. Its threads had been nowhere near any living thing, either plant or animal.

She said, ‘Hello.’

Reacher didn’t answer. He was looking at the truck, inside and out. It was travel-stained. It had salt and dirt on it, all streaked and dried and dusty. It had been on a long journey.

He said, ‘This was the shipment, right? This is the truck they used.’

Eleanor Duncan nodded.

He asked, ‘Who was in it?’

Eleanor Duncan said, ‘Six young women and ten young girls. From Thailand.’

‘Were they OK?’

‘They were fine. Not surprisingly. It seems that a lot of trouble had been taken to make sure they arrived in marketable condition.’

‘What did you do with them?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then where are they?’

‘They’re still in the back of this truck.’

‘What?’

‘We didn’t know what to do. They were lured here under false pretences, obviously. They were separated from their families. We decided we have to get them home again.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

‘I’m driving them to Denver.’

‘What’s in Denver?’

‘There are Thai restaurants.’

‘That’s your solution? Thai restaurants?’

‘It isn’t nearly as dumb as it sounds. Think about it, Reacher. We can’t go to the police. These women are illegal. They’ll be detained for months, in a government jail. That would be awful for them. We thought at least they should be with people who speak their own language. Like a supportive community. And restaurant workers are connected, aren’t they? Some of them were smuggled in themselves. We thought perhaps they could use the same organizations, but in reverse, to get out again.’

‘Whose idea was this?’

‘Everybody’s. We discussed it all day, and then we voted.’

‘Terrific.’

‘You got a better idea?’

Reacher said nothing. He just looked at the blank grey side of the van, and its salt stains, all dried in long feathered aerodynamic patterns. He put his palm on the cold metal.

Eleanor Duncan asked, ‘You want to meet them?’

Reacher said, ‘No.’

‘You saved them.’

Reacher said, ‘Luck and happenstance saved them. Therefore I don’t want to meet them. I don’t want to see their faces, because then I’ll get to thinking about what would have happened to them if luck and happenstance hadn’t come along.’

There was a long pause. The van idled, the breeze blew, the sky darkened, the air grew colder.

Then Eleanor Duncan said, ‘You want a ride to the highway at least?’

Reacher nodded and climbed in.

They didn’t talk for twenty miles. Then they rumbled past the Cell Block bar and Reacher said, ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

Eleanor Duncan said, ‘No.’ Then she said, ‘Yes.’ Then she said, ‘I thought I knew the exact opposite. I really did. I thought I knew it for absolute sure. I knew it so intensely that eventually I realized I was just trying to convince myself.’

‘You knew where Seth came from.’

‘I told you I didn’t. Just before you stole his car.’

‘And I didn’t believe you. Up to that point you had answered fourteen consecutive questions with no hesitation at all. Then I asked you about Seth, and you stalled. You offered us a drink. You were evasive. You were buying time to think.’

‘Do you know where Seth came from?’

‘I figured it out eventually.’

She said, ‘So tell me your version.’

Reacher said, ‘The Duncans liked little girls. They always had. It was their lifelong hobby. People like that form communities. Back in the days before the internet they did it by mail and clandestine face to face meetings. Photo swaps, and things like that. Maybe conventions. Maybe guest participation. There were alliances between interest groups. My guess is a group that liked little boys was feeling some heat. They went to ground. They fostered the evidence with their pals. It was supposed to be temporary, until the heat went away, but no one came back for Seth. The guy was probably beaten to death in jail. Or by the cops, in a back room. So the Duncans were stuck. But they were OK with it. Maybe they thought it was kind of cute, to get a son without the involvement of a real grown woman. So they kept him. Jacob adopted him.’

Eleanor Duncan nodded. ‘Seth told me he had been rescued. Back when we still talked. He said Jacob had rescued him out of an abusive situation. Like an act of altruism and charity. And principle. I believed him. Then over the years I sensed the Duncans were doing something bad, but what turned out to be the truth was always the last thing on my mental list. Always, I promise you. Because I felt they were so opposed to that kind of thing. I felt that rescuing Seth had proved it. I was blind for a long time. I thought they were shipping something else, like drugs or guns, or bombs, even.’