Reacher looked at the odometer in the clattering old Ford and saw the numbers all turn at once, clocking in another thousand miles. There were more miles on the car than he had seen since being stationed on a small Pacific island with a fat General named Bullimore.
General Bullimore had an old army issue Jeep that he kept directly outside his command hut. He refused to walk anywhere in the humid Pacific weather and used the clapped out machine to take him to the mess hall, the barracks and anywhere else he fancied going. He ran up thousands of miles on a tiny island with no more than ten miles of paved road. It came to no ones surprise when the Jeep was found in a ditch halfway between the command hut and the aeroplane hanger with the General dead behind the wheel. The medics confirmed it as a heart attack.
The engine on the Ford spluttered and coughed but Reacher kept it going down Route 93 until he hit Interstate 15 towards California.
He had picked up the old machine after a scuffle outside a bar in some no name part of Nevada from a sympathetic old soldier whose name he never got. It was unfortunate business but it didn't feel like the type of place where strangers would be given a bed and three hot meals if they found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Which Reacher calculated he would have.
He would have liked to thank that old man, but by the time he got out of the Las Vegas traffic and back on the road he wasn't sure the old rust bucket would have managed the return trip. Everything was steaming in the heat.
The dashboard, what was left of it anyway, was untouchable, and Reacher tried to keep his hands off the wheel as much as he could, glad they had built the roads so straight he could use his knees to hold it steady. Looking at the rest of the interior, springs shooting up through the seats, leather peeling away from the metal, he dreaded to think what condition the engine was in.
He didn't have to think for long.
About an hour outside Vegas the noise inside the cab, already at deafening levels, doubled. And just in case Reacher was unsure of the situation, smoke started to bellow into the cab, causing him to choke and spit. He pulled the Ford to the side of the road, opened the door and staggered to a safe distance, trying to catch his breath in the humid California heat.
The old truck was dead and Reacher had neither the tools nor the knowledge to fix it.
So there he stood, boiling, by the side of the highway with his thumb out, looking back up the long stretch of empty highway and trying to remember the last time he saw a car.
Bill McRae tossed an apple core out the driver side window and quickly put the glass back up. The air conditioning didn't work as effectively with the window down and there was no way Bill would survive in this heat without it.
He was a New Englander, living in Hanover New Hampshire, his entire life. He had only been out of the state once before, also his first time on a aeroplane, to visit relatives in Des Moines when he was thirty-one. He was now forty-three. He was not what people would call a cultured or well travelled man, but he now found himself in a scorched, dry desert in a rental car with sweat dripping down the back of his inappropriate flannel shirt.
The Chevrolet Aveo was driving nicely, although it didn't live up to the flutter he felt in his stomach when the pretty but bored cashier had held out the keys and he saw that Chevrolet logo dangling. His mind raced with the image of him driving through the desert in a hot red convertible Corvette, wind blowing through what was left of his hair and rock music on the radio.
As it happened he was inside a dull grey subcompact listening to the only station he could get, a Mexican mariachi band, while keeping one eye on the road and one eye on the hand written directions on the passenger seat.
The straightness of the road had caused him to lose interest and look for stimulation elsewhere, so when his efforts to retune the radio, double check his position on the map and wipe sweat from his wrinkled brow cause the car to drift of the highway onto the dirt and dust he never noticed until his wind shield was almost filled by the back end of a truck that was more rust than any actual colour.
His chubby legs seized up inside his corduroy trousers and jammed down onto the brake pedal as his hands moved with uncharacteristic quickness to swerve past the tail end and come to a stop inside a plume of desert dust.
Breathing heavy and gasping for air he looked up to see a mountain of a man with his arm outstretched and a large thumb poking up through a clenched fist.
Reacher had seen the car coming, and although it hadn't slowed down it did appear to be pulling over. It moved slowly onto the side of the road before breaking suddenly, firing a barrage of stone and gravel against his legs and torso. He turned his head to shield his eyes and when he looked back he saw a short, squat man behind the wheel with a face as white as the only cloud in the sky.
He walked over to the passenger side and opened the door, gasping with relief at the cold air rushing out and around him. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the unforgiving sun.
The pudgy little man looked shaken, but was otherwise unhurt.
"Ah.. car trouble?" Bill McRae was not good in tense situations. His first thought was that he almost killed this man, his second was to make up for it as quickly as he could. Guilt rode shotgun with Bill most days, but today it stood at his passenger door letting all the cold air out.
"Yeah, you know anything about radiators or engines?" Asked Reacher.
"No, sorry, I don't usually drive much. I'm sorry I almost hit you, you need help calling someone?"
"No one to call. I could use a ride into town, or to a bus station though."
"Sure, get in." Bill was surprised at the way he handled the situation, then immediately regretted it, realising he has just invited a stranger into his car, a stranger with fists like bowling balls.
But at least the door was closed and A.C was picking up again.
"What's your name? I'm Bill, Bill McRae."
"Reacher, Jack Reacher."
"Please to meet you Jack. Where you heading?"
"No where special. West I guess. You?"
"I'm actually on my way to meet a woman."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah she lives out here somewhere, I've got directions. You from around here? I could use a hand reading them."
"I'm not really from anywhere, but I can read a map and directions pretty good." Reacher took the directions from the dashboard and unfolded the map underneath them.
"Thanks. You can be my navigator, call it the price of the ride to town." Bill smiled as he said it, hoping it would come across jovial and friendly. Then he remembered what his Aunt Poppy had said, that he looked like a carved pumpkin whenever he smiled.
"Glad to help, Bill."
Reacher was a little unsure about the sweating man in the driver seat. He seemed harmless enough if a little jumpy, and figured some conversation would calm him down.
"So is this a blind date?" He asked, hoping he had picked up on the way the man had spoken of the unnamed woman.
"Hmm? Oh no I've spoke to her before, only on the phone though. I met her on a dating site." As soon as he said it, Bill knew he had made a mistake
"A what?"
"A dating website, you know, on the internet?"
"Not really."
"You don't use the internet? Or you don't use dating sites? Ah why would you?" Bill looked at the large man, dressed like a hobo drifter, and knew that women would still prefer him over what he was. An over weight mid-life crisis waiting to happen. Although he guess it had already started.
"Not really, never had much call to." Reacher replied.
"Well of course not, but it's the future my friend! It's going to be everywhere soon, believe you me."
"You know a lot about it?"
"Yeah, I sell it. Well computers anyway. But I'm telling you, soon, everyone will be on the internet. It's the new way to meet people."
"And you met this woman on there?" Asked Reacher.
"Yeah on a dating site. You put in what you're looking for and it matches you up with someone suitable."
"Sounds complicated. Can't you just meet someone in a bar?"
"That's old style, no one does that anymore! This way you know when you meet up you'll have things in common."
"What do you have in common?"
"Well she works out here in California for a computer programming company, you heard of Silicon Valley?"
"Nope."
"Well a lot of computer companies have set up there, it's near San Jose. She works freelance for them and other companies from there to San Diego."
Reacher looked down at his map, trying to find a town of some sort that matched the directions he was reading.
"And she lives out here?"
"Yeah, somewhere." Bill replied.
"This is leading us off the highway, it doesn't look like there is much there."
"Yeah I know, weird huh? She says it's a little remote but there is a town nearby. Although I couldn't find it on the map."
At that point a little alarm went of somewhere in the back of Reacher's mind, and his gut gave a convincing growl.
"Well if we find it you can drop me there, I'm sure they have a bus station or something. I think it's the next turn off up ahead."
"No problem. Thanks for helping out."
They drove in silence for a while, the road turning from asphalt to dirt after a few miles, then becoming less and less like a road, more of a dirt trail with wagon wheel ruts cut into it.
The little subcompact bounced up and down, and Reacher struck his head on the roof more than a few times.
After forty minutes Reacher double checked the map and came to the conclusion they were either at the town, or had passed it. But still there was nothing in any direction but flat desert sand and small dry flowers.
"I think we are here, according to the map and the directions." Reacher said, looking over at Bill.
"But there is nothing here, I must have got the miles wrong, I wonder if it was in kilometres?"
The sweat had build up around Bill so much he felt he had a thick layer of oil covering his whole body, and he was getting desperate to reach his destination. Not only to meet the woman of his dreams but to ditch his monstrous passenger before anything bad happened. He had said too much to the stranger, and he was ready to part ways now he was close.
Up ahead, just coming into view was a shape. He couldn't make it out but he knew it was something, and it gave him hope. He smiled to himself and pointed it out.
"There! I see something, I knew we were close."
Reacher squinted against the harsh light, and saw the small box shape in the distance getting bigger, and knew what it was.
"It's a phone booth. Guess there is a town here." He said, although not fully convinced.
As they got closer they could see the road stretching further and further into the distance, with nothing but barren land on all sides.
"Stop here." Said Reacher.
Bill pulled up along side a smashed and gunshot phone booth. They both got out and looked at the dilapidated structure, and surveyed the landscape around them. Bill walked into the booth and read the number printed under the handle.
"This is it. This is her number. This is the number she gave me whenever I called her. This doesn't make sense." Bill was getting worked up, his sweat patches, already large under his arms and on his back, grew larger his breathing quickened.
"You sure?" But Reacher knew he was sure. He knew it was a scam and someone had played a terrible joke on this kind and portly man.
As Reacher stood under the blazing sun and watched Bill McRae pace back and forth, muttering to himself and working through everything he thought he knew, the phone rang.
Bill stopped and looked at the phone, looked at Reacher and back at the ringing handset, then lurched forward and lifted the receiver.
"Bill?" Said the husky voice on the other side of the line.
"Stefanie? Is that you? I'm here but there is nothing here but this phone booth." The line crackled ever time he spoke, and he stared at the graffiti and bullet holes and wondered just what the hell was going on.
"Yes it's me Bill, listen, there has been a change of plan. Who's that with you?"
He stuck his head out the side and looked around, seeing nothing for miles.
"You can see me? Where are you?" He asked, getting frantic.
Reacher listened to the one sided conversation and started to scan the horizon. He was being watched and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He slowly pivoted 360 degrees and kept an eye out for the glint of binoculars or a scope. He saw nothing.
"You need to come meet me, leave the big man behind. It won't be good for either of you if he gets back in that shitty little car." Bill listened to the words and became very cold in the boiling heat. He had been warned by people, mainly his mother, about the dangers of meeting women on the internet. But he had shrugged it all off, blinded by the love he felt for this woman.
"But... but you said..." He trailed of, his brain trying desperately to think of what to do.
"Forget what I said. You done real good making it out here, now if you want to make it back I suggest you ditch your travel partner and come meet me. You don't want us coming to you."
Us? Who was us? Bill panicked and dropped the receiver, his hands shaking, his whole body trembling as he replayed the last 8 months over and over in his mind.
Reacher watched the breakdown happen and waited. He knew there was trouble coming. He could feel it. But at least out here he would see it coming.
"Bill?" Said Reacher.
The man Reacher had thought to be a little naïve, an innocent man who had been taken in by a scam because he had wanted so much to be loved, stopped shaking and stood up straight. He took the receiver in his hand and put it back into its cradle.
"It's the money. She just wants the money." Bill said, looking directly into Reacher's eyes, the first time he had done so since they met.
"What money? What did she say?" Reacher asked, staring back at the soft face and red, watery eyes.
"She said I've to leave you here and go meet here, but I know she just wants the money." His voice cracked and sounded like it had on the badly connected phone line.
"What money Bill? Did you bring money with you?" Reacher knew it was a delicate situation.
"No, it's all in a bank account. I got lucky in the stock market a few years ago. I took stock instead of a wage when I was working for Microsoft in the early 90's, and the price just went up and up. I was going to sell it and retire with Stefanie, but she just wants the money, I can tell."
"What did she say Bill?"
"She said I should go to her, that I wouldn't want them coming to me. I don't know who she is with."
Before Reacher could answer the phone rang again. Bill picked up and said nothing.
"Last chance Bill, get in the car in the next ten seconds and drive straight down the road, or I'm coming to you." Said the voice he had once trusted. Then the line went dead.
Bill stood and stared at Reacher, then walked to the front of his car and faced the empty road and shook his head defiantly.
Reacher watched this walked to the back of the car.
"Get in the car and pop the trunk Bill."
Bill got in behind the wheel and flicked a lever under the seat.
Reacher fished around in the back of the rental, searching for anything he could use, and finding only a lug wrench. He kept it low, knowing he was still being watched, and waited.
After thirty seconds he spotted a cloud of dust in the distance.
He could tell it was a SUV, and it looked like it was travelling fast. It was coming from the distant hills, and he knew they had been watching him with binoculars. He made his mind up then that this was an amateur operation, although even amateurs can have guns.
Reacher went to the front of the car, and started a slow walk down the road.
The SUV was gaining fast. It would be at him within the minute. He waited thirty seconds, forty, fifty, then raised his arm up high and behind his head, and tossed the lug wrench with all his might at the driver's side of the window.
It spun in the air, like a four sided boomerang, and smashed into the glass and disappeared. The SUV jerked sideways off the road, killing a few cacti before trying to right itself. The back wheels spun in the sand and dirt and tried to regain traction but failed, the back end spinning out of control as Reacher started out after it.
He pulled his t-shirt up over his mouth and tried to shield his eyes as he ran through the dust, catching up as the SUV came to a spinning stop. He went for the passenger side, yanking open the door and pulling the man inside out, delivering a clubbing blow to the bridge of the nose and shattering a face that wouldn't have won any beauty pageants anyway. He saw the driver leaning over the wheel, the lug wrench had struck him in the head, he was no threat, and turned his attention to the back seats.
That's when the back passenger window exploded outward with a massive eruption, and Reacher felt the buckshot just miss his head. In that split second he saw only one man in the back seat, a poor shot even with a single action shotgun. He got his large arms up and into the broken window and grabbed the man by shirt, knocking the gun away before it could be reloaded. He pulled the man head first through the open window and deposited him on the ground, where he clamped a large hand around the throat and started asking questions.
"Where is she? Tell me who she is and where I can find her or end up like your friends here."
The man rolled his eyes and shook his head and confessed he knew nothing, even after Reacher broke the trigger finger on his right hand.
That's when the rushing in his ears started to drain away and he could here Bill shouting from phone booth.
"Jack, she's gone Jack!"
Reacher looked at the man on the ground, then rapped his knuckles off the forehead and let him go. He went to the back seat and took out the shotgun, searched the other men for weapons and found a small handgun on one and a very large Smith & Wesson 586 on the other.
Walking back to the car and McRae, he looked at the guns. Amateurs indeed, using old guns probably stolen from daddy's collection. The shotgun especially. You really didn't see single barrels that much these days.
"She called again, said she was gone, we will never find her and to not bother looking. She said those guys were just hired to do a job. To take me to her and get the money from me. " Bill was out of breath, he had gotten all worked up just watching the action.
Reacher nodded, and tossed the guns behind the phone booth.
"Yeah. She's smarter than those guys anyway. Lets get out of here." He took the keys from Bill and got in behind the driver's seat. Bill got in beside him and slumped down low, dejected and defeated.
"I really thought she loved me." He murmured.
Reacher started the engine and felt the A.C turn the hot air cold as he drove away from the isolated phone booth in the middle of nowhere, and set a reminder in his head to meet women the old fashioned way.