Lee Child - The Midnight Line

The guy said, “Why?”

Because I want to get back in the trees, he thought.

Out loud he said, “I get the picture now.”

And he felt he did. Stackley was the new Billy. Inheritor of the whole local empire. Including the periodic voicemail instructions. Stackley must have gotten a new one. Shoot the Incredible Hulk from behind a tree. All over again. Or whichever cartoon character he was by then. Message received and understood. Except Stackley hadn’t tried to execute the mission himself. He had brought in mercenary services from the outside. During the big discussion behind the camper shell. The pitch, the offer, the bait, the acceptance. Maybe handshakes.

He knew because of the weapon. And culture, and habit, and plain common sense. How likely was it a Wyoming cowboy would venture into legitimate bear territory without a rifle capable of shooting a bear? It was like getting dressed in the morning. Therefore it became a logical sequence. The wrong gun meant there were no bears, which meant they were not close to where Porterfield had been found, where bears had been plausible, which meant the three guys had brought him to the wrong place for a completely different purpose. With an M14, which for sure was capable of shooting a person. Or gut-shooting a person. After that they wouldn’t need bears. What had the guy said, in the bar, with the long-neck bottle? You got hundreds of other species already lining up and licking their lips .

He looked all around. Not good. Wide gaps, slender trunks.

The middle of nowhere.

No witnesses.

No proof. That’s the whole beauty of it .

For a second he wondered how much they were getting paid, but then he dismissed the question, partly because it was inherently vain, and partly because the answer was obvious. Far as I can tell, it’s a beautiful thing. The way they talk about it, it’s the best thing ever . They were getting a couple boxes of oxycodone and fentanyl patches. Like getting offed in prison for a carton of cigarettes. Life was cheap. Then for another second he felt betrayed. He felt they had gotten along well so far. He had made an effort. He had been polite. Then he got real. He looked at it from their point of view. Some things were more important to a person. More important than family and friends and any kind of a regular trustworthy life.

No one should ever underestimate the appeal of an opiate high .

He hoped they were getting a couple boxes each.

They would have to earn them.

He turned and walked back, keeping the guy in the corner of his eye. He wasn’t too worried about the first cold shot. It would miss. Snatched at, unaimed. The second shot might get complicated. And the third. And the rest. There were twenty rounds in an M14 magazine. He slowed down, to keep the guy in front of him. He intended to keep him there all the way. A shot low in the back would work just as well. The round would go through and through, and bury its smeared and bloody self deep in the grit ten feet away. It would never be found. How could it? The round that killed him would be a random singularity a quarter-inch wide in an uninhabited state bigger than some foreign nations.

No proof. That’s the whole beauty of it .

He slowed again, a wordless shepherding, a polite after you . The guy with the rifle walked on ahead. He could afford to. They were heading back to the first clearing they had seen. Where the young tree had been pushed down by the moose. It was a place like this . Their preferred location, presumably. Why else had they stopped there?

They walked a minute downhill, some places single file, as the trees thickened up again. Reacher stayed last in line. Where he wanted to be.

He scanned ahead, and picked a spot.

Just in case.

He said, “Let’s go back a different route. I already saw this view.”

Which was a tactical risk. They didn’t know he knew. Not yet. The time for making waves came later, not sooner. But it was a much smaller risk than arriving exactly where they wanted him. That was for damn sure. Open ground, that they knew, and he didn’t.

The guy with the rifle stopped and turned around.

He said, “I don’t think there is another route.”

“Must be,” Reacher said.

“You wouldn’t want to get lost out here.”

“I have a pretty good sense of direction. Most days I can tell which way is up.”

The guy took a step. Now he was maybe ten feet from Reacher, face to face on a narrow section of path, with the rifle held easy down by his side. The other two guys were closer, maybe five feet away, standing apart, so the guy with the rifle could see through the gap between. Underfoot were roots and rocks and gravel. Either side were trees.

As good a place as any.

Reacher took a step.

He said, “This land is not where Porterfield was found.”

“You’re the big expert now?” the guy with the rifle said.

“Sheriff Connelly conducted a thorough investigation. At a minimum we can expect he searched every building on the land where the corpse was found. As it turns out the only building he searched was Porterfield’s. Therefore Porterfield was found on his own land. Which is about forty miles from here. With some kind of different ecology. They have bears there.”

The M14’s safety was a small manual catch tight in front of the trigger guard. Clicked back, it was set to safe. Flicked forward, it was set to fire.

Reacher watched it carefully.

So far it was set to safe.

But all four of the guy’s fingers were near it.

Reacher said, “Put the weapon down, and we’ll talk about it. It doesn’t have to be like this. Maybe we can all find a way out together.”

The guy said, “How?”

“Put the weapon down, and we’ll talk about it.”

The guy didn’t.

Reacher said, “You need to look ahead. Stackley is your best friend today, but tomorrow he could be out of business. Rose’s sister is taking her to Chicago. A suburb, not the city. A nice place. She could make it a charitable foundation. You could go with her.”

“We’re fine here.”

“They have Billy in a cell,” Reacher said. “They’re two steps from cutting you off.”

As soon as he said it he knew it was dumb. They reacted like Rose Sanderson had. Sudden breathing, and stiffened postures. The low hum of instant panic. Plus in their case some kind of instant urgency, about what to do next. As if the glittering payday they had been promised could be snatched away. Reacher saw in their faces his words cutting you off translate instantly into a howling voice in their heads screaming get more now now now .

The guy raised the rifle, right hand to left hand to right hand, a clumsy old thing, nearly twelve pounds in weight, nearly four feet long.

His trigger finger detoured ahead of the guard.

It flicked the safety catch forward.

Reacher crashed into the guy nearest him and used the bounce to hurl himself against a tree. Not really diving out of the way of a bullet, for such a thing was surely impossible, but it was easy enough to estimate a bullet’s likely future trajectory comparatively far ahead of time, and then avoid it, not forgetting that Newton’s Laws of Motion said the same bounce that helped him also helped the other guy, but in the opposite direction, toward the gun, action and reaction, which in his case got him killed. The rifle fired and the guy got hit and went down like he had walked into a clothesline. The roar of the shot died away to an immense cracking mountain echo, then a whisper, then nothing. The guy with the rifle stared. Reacher peeled off his tree and smacked him in the head and took his rifle away.

The guy staggered and dropped to his knees.