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He checked it twice and hit the green button He raised the phone to his ear, which in many states would be a twenty-ninth crime all its own

But not in South Dakota

Not yet

Small mercies

The voice that answered was one he had heard four tih, and laced with a kind of rude aniht of as another world entirely It said, ‘Shoot, buddy,’ with a smile and an overtone of cruel enjoy his absolute power and control, and the lawyer’s own consequent discomfort and fear and revulsion

The lawyer sed once and started talking, reciting the lists and the instructions and the sentences and the paragraphs in much the sa seven e didn’t look e The roadbed continued absolutely level but the land below it fell away a little into a wide shallow gulch The gulch was dryineers had siant concrete tubes under the roadbed, all to stop the foundation getting washed away once a year It was a syste It had only one drawback, which showed up in the winter To counter it the engineers had placed signs ahead in both directions The signs said: Bridge Freezes Before Road

The lawyer drove and talked Seven ue he reached the ious of the fourteen proposals He recited it into the phone the same way he had heard it in the prison, which was neutrally and without ehed Which made the lawyer shudder A core moral spasm came up literally froround the phone across his ear

And moved his hand on the wheel

His front tyres slipped a little on the bridge ice and he corrected clu the other way and fishtailed once, twice, three ti the opposite way through the falling snow It hite It was huge It was ht at him The back part of his brain told him a collision was inevitable The front part of his brain told hirass median and two stouttraffic He bit his lip and relaxed his grip and straightened up and the bus blew past him exactly parallel and twenty feet away

He breathed out

The voice on the phone asked, ‘What?’

The lawyer said, ‘I skidded’

The voice said, ‘Finish the report, asshole’

The lawyer sed again and resu, at the head of the previous sentence

Thethe white bus in the opposite direction was a twelve-year veteran of his trade In the sood as it got He was properly licensed and well trained and adequately experienced He was no longer young, and not yet old Mentally and physically he was up there on a broad plateau of common sense and maturity and peak capability He was not behind schedule He was not speeding He was not drunk He was not high

But he was tired

He had been staring into featureless horizontal snow for the best part of two hours He saw the fishtailing car a hundred yards ahead Saw it dart diagonally straight at hiue produced a split second of dull delay Then the numb tension in his tired body produced an overreaction He yanked the wheel like he was flinching from a blow Toocar had straightened and was already behind him before his own front tyres bit Or tried to They hit the bridge ice just as the steering told theht was in the rear of the bus The huge cast iron engine block The water tank The toilet

Like a pendulu to overtake the front of the bus It didn’t get far Just a few crucial degrees The driver did everything right He fought the skid But the steering was feather light and the front tyres had lost traction There was no feedback The back of the bus ca out the other way

The driver fought hard for three hundred yards Twelve long seconds They felt like twelve long hours He spun the big plastic wheel left, spun it right, tried to catch the skid, tried to stop it building But it built anyway It gathered ht at the back slas crushed and bounced The tall body tilted and yawed The back of the bus swung forty-five degrees left, then forty-five right Bridge Freezes Before Road The bus passed over the last of the concrete tubes and the front tyres bit again But they bit while they were turned diagonally towards the shoulder The whole bus turned in that direction, as if following a legitiain The driver braked hard Fresh snow dammed in front of the tyres The bus held its new line It slowed

But not enough

The front tyres crossed the rumble strip, crossed the shoulder, and thumped down off the blacktop into a shallow ditch full of snow and frozen ed and scraped on the pave feet before all le, tilted a little, the front third in the ditch, the rear two-thirds still on the shoulder, and the engine co out in the traffic lane The front wheels hung down to the liine had stalled out and there was no sound beyond hot coently exhaling, and the passengers screa very quiet

The passengers were a hoeneous bunch, all except for one Twenty white-haired seniors plus a younger man, in a bus that could seat forty Twelve of the seniors ed women

The other eight made up four old roup on a cultural tour They had seen the Little Town on the Prairie Now they were on the long haul west to Mount Rushraphic centre of the United States had been pro the way A fine itinerary, but the wrong season South Dakota weather in the winter was not famously hospitable Hence the fifty per cent take up on the tickets, even though the tickets were cheap

The odd passenger out was a est of the others He was sitting alone three rows behind the last of the seniors They thought of him as a kind of stoay He had joined the bus that same day, at a rest stop just east of a town called Cavour After the Little Town on the Prairie, before the Dakotaland Museum There had been no explanation He

had just gotten on the bus Some had seen him in prior conversation with the driver Soed hands No one was sure what to think If he had paid for his passage, then he was er than a stoay Like a hitchhiker, but not quite

But in any case he was considered a nice enough fellow He was quiet and polite He was a foot taller than any of the other passengers and evidently very strong Not handsoly, either Like a just-retired athlete, maybe Perhaps a football player Not the best dressed of individuals He earing a creased untucked shirt under a padded canvas jacket He had no bag, which was strange But overall it was vaguely reassuring to have such a man on board, especially after he had proved hi behaviour from a man that size would have been unsee So up a conversation But the e any such atteh most of the drive tiambits had so far been entirely courteous but brief, and completely devoid of substance

But at least they knew his name One of the men had introduced himself, on his way back down the aisle froer had looked up fro the costs and benefits of a response Then he had taken the proffered hand and said, ‘Jack Reacher’

TWO

REACHER WOKE UP WHEN THE MOMENTUM OF THE SKID SMASHED his head against theHe knehere he was, instantly On a bus He spent the next split second calculating the odds Snow, ice, reasonable speed, notto either hit the divider or fall off the shoulder Worst case, we’re going to tip over OK for hiood for the old folks in front of him But probably survivable He was more worried about the aftermath Twenty old people, shaken up, maybe injured, cuts, bruises, broken bones, strandedwinter storm

Not good

Then he spent the next eleven and a half seconds holding on, gently resisting the alternating inertia of the fishtails He was the rear it worst The folks nearer the front were swinging through sile He could see their necks snapping from side to side He could see the driver’s face in the rear-view oing to lose A luxury bus was a very unwieldy type of vehicle Be careful what you wish for He had been in Marshall, Minnesota, for no verywest to Huron, South Dakota, but for souy wouldn’t take him all the way and had dumped him at a rest stop outside of a place called Cavour Which had seemed like bad luck, initially, because Cavour was not exactly tee with transcontinental traffic But two cups of coffee later a white luxury forty-seat bus had pulled in and only twenty people had gotten out, which meant empty places were there to be had The driver looked like a straightforward kind of a guy, so Reacher had approached hihtforward kind of a fashion Twenty bucks for a ride to Rapid City? The guy asked for forty and settled for thirty and Reacher had cli But the co, neither one of which was doing anyone any favours at the current moment

But seven seconds in, Reacher was getting opti Didn’t feel like it, but it had to be true Si as no other traffic hit them, they would wobble around for a spell and then co way, but still right side up and drivable Then he felt the front tyres bite again and saw they were going to drive straight off the road Which was bad But the driver braked hard and held tight through a whole lot of thu and they ended up half on and half off the blacktop, which was OK, except they had their asses hanging out in the traffic lane, which was not OK, and there were suddenly no active mechanical sounds at all, like the bus was dead, which was definitely not OK