James Patterson: Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

"The way you walk," the driver said. "And your age, and the way you look. Guy your age looking like you look and walking in the rain didn't beat the draft for college, that's for damn sure."

Penney nodded.

"No, I didn't," he said. "I did a jungle tour."

"So let me give you a ride," the driver said. "A favor, one soldier to another. Consider it a veteran's benefit."

"Okay," Penney said.

"Where you headed?" the driver asked.

"I don't know," Penney said. "North, I guess."

"Okay, north it is," the driver said. "I'm Jack Reacher. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Penney said nothing.

"You got a name?" the guy called Reacher asked.

Penney hesitated.

"I don't know," he said.

Reacher put the car in drive and glanced over his shoulder. Eased back into the traffic stream. Clicked the switch and locked the doors.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"Do?" Penney repeated.

"You're running," Reacher said. "Heading out of town, walking in the rain, head down, no bag, don't know what your name is. I've seen a lot of people running, and you're one of them."

"You going to turn me in?"

"I'm a military cop," Reacher said. "You done anything to hurt the army?"

"The army?" Penney said. "No, I was a good soldier." "So why would I turn you in?" Penney looked blank.

"What did you do to the civilians?" Reacher asked. "You're going to turn me in," Penney said helplessly. Reacher shrugged at the wheel. "That depends. What did you do?"

Penney said nothing. Reacher turned his head and looked straight at him. A powerful, silent stare, hypnotic intensity in his eyes, held for a hundred yards of road. Penney couldn't look away. He took a breath.

"I burned my house," he said. "Near Mojave. I worked seventeen years and got canned yesterday and I got all upset because they were going to take my car away so I burned my house. They're calling it arson."

"Near Mojave?" Reacher said. "They would. They don't like fires down there."

Penney nodded. "I was real mad. Seventeen years, and suddenly I'm shit on their shoe. And my car got stolen anyway, first night I'm away."

"There are roadblocks all around here," Reacher said. "I came through one south of the city."

"For me?" Penney asked.

"Could be," Reacher said. "They don't like fires down there." "You going to turn me in?"

Reacher looked at him again, hard and silent. "Is that all you did?"

Penney nodded. "Yes, sir, that's all I did."

There was silence for a beat. Just the sound of the wet pavement under the tires.

"I don't have a problem with it," Reacher said. "A guy does a jungle tour, works seventeen years and gets canned, I guess he's entitled to get a little mad."

"So what should I do?"

"Start over, someplace else."

"They'll find me," Penney said.

"You're already thinking about changing your name," Reacher said.

Penney nodded. "I junked all my ID. Buried it in the woods." "So get new paper. That's all anybody cares about. Pieces of paper."

"How?"

Reacher was quiet another beat, thinking hard. "Classic way is find some cemetery, find a kid who died as a child, get a copy of the birth certificate, start from there. Get a social security number, a passport, credit cards, and you're a new person."

Penney shrugged. "I can't do all that. Too difficult. And I don't have time. According to you, there's a roadblock up ahead. How am I going to do all of that stuff before we get there?"

"There are other ways," Reacher said.

"Like what?"

"Find some guy who's already created false ID for himself, and take it away from him."

Penney shook his head. "You're crazy. How am I going to do that?"

"Maybe you don't need to do that. Maybe I already did it for you."

"You got false ID?"

"Not me," Reacher said. "Guy I was looking for."

"What guy?"

Reacher drove one-handed and pulled a sheaf of official paper from his inside jacket pocket.

"Arrest warrant," he said. "Army liaison officer at a weapons plant outside of Fresno, peddling blueprints. Turns out to have three separate sets of ID, all perfect, all completely backed up with everything from elementary school onward. Which makes it likely they're Soviet, which means they can't be beat. I'm on my way back from talking to him right now. He was running, too, already on his second set of papers. I took them. They're clean. They're in the trunk of this car, in a wallet."

Traffic was slowing ahead. There was red glare visible through the streaming windshield. Flashing blue lights. Yellow flashlight beams waving, side to side.

"Roadblock," Reacher said.

"So can I use this guy's ID?" Penney asked urgently.

"Sure you can," Reacher said. "Hop out and get it. Bring the wallet from the jacket in the trunk."

He slowed and stopped on the shoulder. Penney got out. Ducked away to the back of the car and lifted the trunk lid. Came back a long moment later, white in the face. Held up the wallet.

"It's all in there," Reacher said. "Everything anybody needs."

Penney nodded.

"So put it in your pocket," Reacher said.

Penney slipped the wallet into his inside jacket pocket. Reacher's right hand came up. There was a gun in it. And a pair of handcuffs in his left.

"Now sit still," he said quietly.

He leaned over and snapped the cuffs on Penney's wrists, one-handed. Put the car back into drive and crawled forward. "What's this for?" Penney asked. "Be quiet," Reacher said.

They were two cars away from the checkpoint. Three highway patrolmen in rain capes were directing traffic into a corral formed by parked cruisers. Their light bars were flashing bright in the shiny dark.

"What?" Penney said again.

Reacher said nothing. Just stopped where the cop told him and wound his window down. The night air blew in, cold and wet. The cop bent down. Reacher handed him his military ID. The cop played his flashlight over it and handed it back.

"Who's your passenger?" he asked.

"My prisoner," Reacher said. He handed over the arrest warrant. "He got ID?" the cop asked.

Reacher leaned over and slipped the wallet out from inside Penney's jacket, two-fingered like a pickpocket. Flipped it open and passed it through the window. A second cop stood in Reacher's headlight beams and copied the plate number onto a clipboard. Stepped around the hood and joined the first guy.

"Captain Reacher of the military police," the first cop said.

The second cop wrote it down.

"With a prisoner name of Edward Hendricks," the first cop said. The second cop wrote it down.

"Thank you, sir," the first cop said. "You drive safe, now."

Reacher eased out from between the cruisers. Accelerated away into the rain. A mile later, he stopped again on the shoulder. Leaned over and unlocked Penney's handcuffs. Put them back in his pocket. Penney rubbed his wrists.

"I thought you were going to turn me in," he said.

Reacher shook his head. "Looked better for me that way. I wanted a prisoner in the car for everybody to see."

Reacher handed the wallet back.

"Keep it," he said.

"Really?"

"Edward Hendricks," Reacher said. "That's who you are now. It's clean ID, and it'll work. Think of it like a veteran's benefit. One soldier to another."

Edward Hendricks looked at him and nodded and opened his door. Got out into the rain and turned up the collar of his leather jacket and started walking north. Reacher watched him until he was out of sight and then pulled away and took the next turn west. Turned north and stopped again where the road was lonely and ran close to the ocean. There was a wide gravel shoulder and a low barrier and a steep cliff with the Pacific tide boiling and foaming fifty feet below it.

He got out of the car and opened the trunk and grasped the lapels of the jacket he had told Penney about. Took a deep breath and heaved. The corpse was heavy. Reacher wrestled it up out of the trunk and jacked it onto his shoulder and staggered with it to the barrier. Bent his knees and dropped it over the edge. The rocky cliff caught it and it spun and the arms and legs flailed limply. Then it hit the surf with a faint splash and was gone.