Read Online 61 Hours by Lee Child - Free Book Online Page A

a trace of smoke.
    Peterson made the introductions. He spoke quietly, which made Reacher think there must be sleeping children upstairs. Peterson’s wife was called Kim and she seemed to know all about the accident with the bus and the need for emergency quarters. She said she had made up a pull-out bed in the den. She said it apologetically, as if a real bedroom would have been better.
    Reacher said, ‘Ma’am, the floor would have been fine. I’m very sorry to put you to any trouble at all.’
    She said, ‘It’s no trouble.’
    ‘I hope to move on in the morning.’
    ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to. It will be snowing hard before dawn.’
    ‘Maybe later in the day, then.’
    ‘They’ll keep the highway closed, I’m afraid. Won’t they, Andrew?’
    Peterson said, ‘Probably.’
    His wife said, ‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.’
    Reacher said, ‘Ma’am, that’s very generous. Thank you.’
    ‘Did you leave your bags in the car?’
    Peterson said, ‘He doesn’t have bags. He claims he has no use for possessions.’
    Kim said nothing. Her face was blank, as if she was having difficulty processing such information. Then she glanced at Reacher’s jacket, his shirt, his pants. Reacher said, ‘I’ll head out to a store in the morning. It’s what I do. I buy new every few days.’
    ‘Instead of laundry?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because it’s logical.’
    ‘You’ll need a warm coat.’
    ‘Apparently.’
    ‘Don’t buy one. Too expensive, for just a few days. We can lend you one. My dad is your size. He keeps a coat here, for when he visits. And a hat and gloves.’ She turned away and opened a closet door and leaned in to the back and wrestled a hanger off the rail. Came out with an enormous tan parka, the colour of mud. It had fat horizontal quilts of down the size of inner tubes. It was old and worn and had darker tan shapes all over it where patches and badges had been unpicked from it. The shapes on the sleeves were chevrons.
    ‘Retired cop?’ Reacher asked.
    ‘Highway Patrol,’ Kim Peterson said. ‘They get to keep the clothes if they take the insignia off.’
    The coat had a fur-trimmed hood, and it had a fur hat jammed in one pocket and a pair of gloves jammed in the other.
    ‘Try it on,’ she said.
    It turned out that her father was not Reacher’s size. He was bigger. The coat was a size too large. But too big is always better than too small. Reacher pulled it into position and looked down at where the stripes had been. He smiled. They made him feel efficient. He had always liked his sergeants. They did good work.
    The coat smelled of mothballs. The hat smelled of another man’s hair. It was made of tan nylon and rabbit fur.
    ‘Thank you,’ Reacher said. ‘You’re very kind.’ He shrugged the coat off again and she took it from him and hung it on a hook on the hallway wall, just inside the entrance, next to where Peterson was hanging his own police-issue parka. Then they all headed for the kitchen. It ran left to right across most of the width of the house. There was all the usual kind of kitchen stuff in it, plus a beat-up table and six chairs, and a family-room area with a battered sofa and two armchairs and a television set. The wood stove was at the far end of the room. It was roaring like a locomotive. Beyond it was a closed door.
    ‘That’s the den,’ Kim said. ‘Go straight in.’
    Reacher assumed he was being dismissed for the night, so he turned to say thanks once again, but found that Peterson was following right behind him. Kim said, ‘He wants to talk to you. I can tell, because he isn’t talking to me.’
    The man who had been told to kill the witness and the lawyer set about cleaning the gun he had been given for the job. It was a Glock 17, not old, not new, well proved, well maintained. He stripped it, brushed it out, oiled it, and reassembled it. The cheeks of the grip were stippled, and there was some accumulated grime in the