The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(23)

Reacher increased the pressure on Marty’s throat until he could feel his windpipe begin to collapse. ‘Drop the gun.’

Marty continued to flail around for a moment before reality sank in and he let go of the gun. It bounced off the passenger seat and rattled down into the footwell.

Reacher relaxed the pressure a little. ‘Good. Now stop the car.’

Marty accelerated.

‘Not smart, Marty. If you don’t stop the car a number of things will happen. First, I’ll compress your neck. There are all kinds of veins and arteries in a person’s neck. They’ll be squashed flat. That’ll cut off the oxygen supply to your brain. Soon you’ll black out. If the car’s still moving, we’ll crash. Which would be fine from my point of view. The back of this seat will protect me. You, on the other hand, would have a problem. A major one. I don’t know how strong your grasp of physics is, but one principle in particular would come into play. Inertia. You know what that is?’

Reacher felt a slight shake of Marty’s head.

‘Inertia is the tendency for an object to maintain its current state. If something is stationary it stays stationary, unless something else moves it. If something is moving it keeps moving, unless something stops it. The same thing applies to the human body. It’s why cars have seat belts. Without them, if you crash, the car stops but the occupants keep moving. They burst through the windshield. Impale themselves on sharp objects. All kinds of painful things can happen. Maybe fatal things. And you’re not wearing a seat belt, are you, Marty? Not any more.’

The car slowed, but it was still moving.

‘And you have an extra problem. Inertia is working against you in another way. You feel how tight I’m holding your head? It won’t keep moving if the car hits something. It will stop. But your body won’t. There’s nothing to arrest its forward motion. The only thing restraining it at all is your neck. Not just veins and arteries in a person’s neck. There are nerves, too.’

Marty took his foot off the gas, rolled the car to the side of the road, and finally stopped. Reacher felt Marty’s body slacken.

‘I was told to take you to a gas station,’ Marty said. ‘An abandoned one.’

‘And?’ Reacher said.

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t told and I didn’t ask. As I’ve just demonstrated, I don’t have a death wish.’

‘Where is the gas station?’

‘Ahead, about half a mile. It’s on the right. Next to a derelict car showroom. They used to sell Studebakers. When you see the sign, you know you’re close.’

‘How much is Goodyear paying you?’

Marty tried to shake his head.

‘If it’s not money, what does he have on you? I hope it’s something big.’

‘This isn’t John’s doing,’ Marty said. ‘He’s a straight shooter. He told me he wanted you out of town because you’re a troublemaker, and I take that as the gospel truth. He did ask me to drive you to the highway. I did agree as a favour to a friend. The gas station thing is a separate deal. He knows nothing about it.’

‘Goodyear’s a straight shooter? So straight you could riddle me with bullets from an illegal gun, throw me in a ditch, and he’d turn a blind eye?’

Marty tried to shake his head again.

‘No. That’s all on me. And it’s bogus anyway. I just said those things to keep you under control. The gun’s not even loaded. It’s something I learned on the job. You make the bad guys believe you’re willing to hurt them. Then you don’t have to.’

‘OK. We’ll leave Goodyear aside for a moment. Who did you make this separate arrangement with?’

‘This is where things get difficult. I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to. Because I don’t know. He’s just a voice on the phone.’

‘So it’s a man, not a woman?’

‘Correct.’

‘So an unknown man calls you out of the blue and asks you to be an accessory to what? Kidnapping? Murder? And you say, sure, OK?’

‘It’s not that simple. It goes back to when I was a cop. I tried to do a guy a favour one time when I thought he’d gotten a bad break. I looked the other way on something and that was a mistake because as soon as he was off the hook he demanded more favours so as not to tell what I’d done. It went on for years. That’s why I quit the department in the end. I thought I’d be no use to him any more, so he’d leave me alone. But I was wrong. He made me deliver a package here. Collect some money there. Things like that. I thought it would never end. Then one day the guy died. He got run down crossing the street. By a drunk driver. I know it’s wrong to be happy about the death of another human being but I couldn’t help it. I was over the moon. I thought I was finally free. That I had my life back. It lasted a week. Then one evening the phone rang. A voice I’d never heard before said he’d inherited certain files from the dead guy and that unless I wanted them to be handed over to the police the previous arrangement would continue. He said it would be nothing too heavy. Just a little favour every now and again.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Honestly? I didn’t know. He did sound kind of serious. But I was tired and I was desperate so I decided to gamble. I told him, no dice. Leave me alone, or go ahead and do your worst. Which I guess he did. The next morning there was a knock on the door. By the time I got there someone had left a pair of packages. Same size. Same shape. They were numbered one and two. I opened number one first. Inside it was a man’s … private parts. All of them, if you know what I mean. I spent the next two hours in the bathroom. Then I opened the second box. It was empty apart from a piece of paper. There was handwriting on it. Some kind of old-school flowing script. It said if you want your manhood to end up in one of these, do nothing. Otherwise answer the phone at nine p.m. and follow the instructions to the letter.’