Make Me (Jack Reacher, #20)

by Lee Child

There was mismatched silverware, and odds and ends of canned food, presumably bought with temporary enthusiasm, but never eaten.

Their hair was still wet from the shower, and the afterglow was coming off them in waves, like nuclear radiation.

The guy was doing a new article every two weeks, approximately, each one fairly long and presumably researched fairly extensively. Which in terms of civilian employment was easier than being a coal miner or an ER doctor, no doubt, but not actually easy, in Reacher’s opinion. He had never written anything longer than an after-action report. Which was generally a discipline much shorter in form, and not necessarily researched, or even non-fiction.

The unarmed combat courses had been afterthoughts. There had been a whiff of embarrassment. Hand-to-hand implied failure at the hot-weapons stage. Worst of all, the pointy-heads couldn’t find anything to write in the manual. There were no valid theories. Martial arts didn’t work in the real world. Judo and karate were useless without the mats and the referee and the special pajamas.

We’re going to beat you so hard your kids will be born dizzy.”

The cops would call them perpetrators. Their lawyers would call them clients. Politicians would call them scum. Criminologists would call them sociopaths. Sociologists would call them misunderstood. The 110th MP would call them dead men walking.

“Why?” “I want to pay him a visit.” “Why?” “For Emily. And for McCann’s sister. And the guard in the gatehouse. And my back hurts and I have a headache now. Some things can’t be allowed to continue.”

“Admit nothing, even on your deathbed. You might suddenly get better.”

The guy’s house was a 1950s box remodeled in the 1970s to look like the 1930s. Reacher figured it had a triple layer of ironic authenticity all its own, and was therefore worth more than all the money he had made in his life.