Free Make Me by Lee Child Page A

about it?”
    There was a pause, hot and lonely in the middle of nowhere, and then the two guys answered by brushing aside their coats, in tandem, casually, right-handed, both thereby showing black semi-automatic pistols, in pancake holsters, mounted on their belts.
    Which was a mistake, and Reacher could have told them why. He could have launched into a long and impatient classroom lecture, about sealing their fates by forcing a decisive battle too early, about short-circuiting a grander strategy by moving the endgame to the beginning. Threats had to be answered, which meant he was going to have to take their guns away, because probing pawns had to be sent back beaten, and because folks in Mother’s Rest needed to know for sure the next time he came to town he would be armed. He wanted to tell them it was their own fault. He wanted to tell them they had brought it on themselves.
    But he didn’t tell them anything. Instead he ducked his own hand under his own coat, grabbing at nothing but air, but the two guys didn’t know that, and like the good range-trained shooters they were they went for their guns and dropped into solid shooting stances all at once, which braced their feet a yard apart for stability, so Reacher stepped in and kicked the left-hand guy full in the groin, before the guy’s gun was even halfway out of its holster, which meant the right-hand guy had time to get his all the way out, but to no avail, because the next event in his life was the arrival of Reacher’s elbow, scything backhand against his cheekbone, shattering it and causing a general lights-out everywhere.

    Reacher stepped back, and then he checked on the first guy, who was preoccupied, like most guys he had kicked in the groin. The guns were Smith & Wesson Sigma .40s, which were modern part-polymer weapons, and expensive. They were both fully loaded. Both guys had wallets in their hip pockets, with about a hundred dollars between them, which Reacher took as spoils of war. Their driver’s licenses both showed the last name Moynahan, which meant they could indeed be brothers or cousins with an uncle in common. One had been christened John, and the other Steven.
    Reacher carried the guns back to the little green Ford. Chang’s window was down. He put one gun in his pocket and passed the other to Chang. She took it, a little reluctantly. He asked, “Did you hear any of what they said?”
    Chang said, “All of it.”
    “Conclusions?”
    “They might have been telling the truth. The motel might have been their only beef. On the other hand, it might not.”
    “I vote not,” Reacher said. “The room has been paid for. Why get so uptight?”
    “You could have been killed.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “Many times,” he said. “But all long ago. Not today. Not by these guys.”
    “You’re crazy.”
    “Or competent.”
    “So now what?”
    Reacher glanced back. The guy on the right was about to transition from unconscious to concussed. The guy on the left was squirming halfheartedly and pawing at everything between his ribcage and his knees.

    Reacher said, “Shoot them if they move.”
    He walked ten yards to their truck and climbed in. The glove compartment had registration and insurance in the name of Steven Moynahan. There was nothing else of interest in the cab. He got straightened up behind the wheel and put the truck in gear. He steered for the shoulder and parked straddling the gravel, with the left-hand wheels safely out of the traffic lane, and the right-hand wheels deep in the wheat, and the nose pointing back toward town. He shut it down and pulled the key.
    He dragged the guys one by one into the shade ahead of the front bumper, and sat them up against the chrome. Both were awake by that point. He said, “Watch carefully, now,” and when he had their attention he took their key and balanced it on his palm and tossed it underhand into the field. Forty or fifty feet. It would take them an hour to find, even under the best of