The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25) - Lee Child Page 0,7
and the bar owner’s extreme discomfort – and begun walking back to the bus station. He had been planning to follow his time-honoured principle of taking the first bus to leave, regardless of its destination, when he heard a vehicle approaching slowly from behind. He stuck out his thumb on the off chance and to his surprise the car stopped. It was new and shiny and bland. A rental. Probably picked up at the airport. The driver was a tidy-looking guy in his early twenties. He was wearing a plain dark suit and the speed of his breathing and the pallor of his face suggested he wasn’t far from a full-blown panic attack. A business guy, Reacher thought. Let out alone for the first time. Desperate not to screw anything up. And therefore screwing up everything he touched.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The guy sounded even more nervous than he looked. ‘Do you know the way to I40? I need to go west.’ He gestured at a screen on his dashboard. ‘The GPS in this thing hates me. It keeps trying to send me down streets that don’t exist.’
‘Sure,’ Reacher said. ‘But it’s hard to explain. It would be easier to show you.’
The guy hesitated and looked Reacher up and down as if only just taking in his height. The breadth of his chest. His unwashed hair. His unshaved face. The web of scars around the knuckles of his enormous hands.
‘Unless you’d prefer to keep driving aimlessly around?’ Reacher attempted a concerned expression.
The guy swallowed. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Anywhere. I40 is as good a place to start as any.’
‘Well, OK.’ The guy paused. ‘I’ll take you to the highway. But I’m not going far after that. No place you’d want to go, I’m sure.’
‘How much further?’
‘Seventy-five miles, maybe. Some small town near a place named Pleasantville. Sounds inspiring, huh?’
‘Do they have a coffee shop in this town?’
The guy shrugged. ‘Probably. I can’t say for sure. I’ve never been there before.’
‘Probably’s good enough for me,’ Reacher said. ‘Let’s go.’
Rutherford picked up the cup and realized he had another unfamiliar dilemma to face. Where should he sit? Deciding wasn’t a problem, normally. He didn’t stay. And he didn’t have a dozen angry eyes probing him while he searched for an answer. He fought the urge to skulk at the back of the store. That would be the least uncomfortable option, for sure, but it would hardly serve his purpose. He didn’t want a window seat either – he wasn’t ready to put himself on display quite so prominently – so he opted for a small, square table in the centre. It had two chairs covered in red vinyl and its top had writing scrawled across every square inch of its surface. By previous customers, he guessed. There were song lyrics. Poems. Uplifting sayings. He scanned the words, found none he felt any connection to, then forced himself to look up. He attempted to make eye contact with the people at the other tables. And failed. Except with a toddler, whose parents got up and left when they realized what was going on. Rusty sipped at his coffee. He wanted to make it last at least an hour. He worked his way down to the dregs. And still achieved no interaction with anyone but the barista, who missed no opportunity to shoot him hostile glares. He refilled his cup and changed tables. Neither thing brought a change of luck. He stuck it out for another forty minutes, and then the barista approached and told him to either order some food or leave.
‘I won’t order any food,’ Rusty told her. ‘I’ll leave. But I’ll come back tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that until everyone believes I’m innocent.’
The barista gave him a blank look and retreated to the counter.
Rusty stood up. ‘Listen to me,’ he said.
No one paid any attention.
‘Listen to me!’ Rusty raised his voice. ‘What happened to the town totally sucks. I get that. But it was not my fault. None of it. The truth is I tried to stop it from happening. And I was the only one who did.’
No one paid any attention.
The barista leaned across the counter with a to-go cup in her hand. ‘Take this and leave, Mr Rutherford. No one believes you. And no one ever will.’
The same time Rusty Rutherford was leaving the coffee shop, Jack Reacher was arriving in his town. Getting out of Nashville hadn’t been a problem. Reacher had navigated using his