Nothing to Lose Read Free

and paused another beat and came inside. They paused again and scanned the room and found their target. They headed straight for Reacher’s table. Three of them sat down in the empty chairs and the fourth stood at the head of the table, blocking Reacher’s exit.

4
    The four guys were each a useful size. The shortest was probably an inch under six feet and the lightest was maybe an ounce over two hundred pounds. They all had walnut knuckles and thick wrists and knotted forearms. Two of them had broken noses and none of them had all their teeth. They all looked pale and vaguely unhealthy. They were all grimy, with ingrained gray dirt in the folds of their skin that glittered and shone like metal. They were all dressed in canvas work shirts with their sleeves rolled to their elbows. They were all somewhere between thirty and forty. And they all looked like trouble.
    “I don’t want company,” Reacher said. “I prefer to eat alone.”
    The guy standing at the head of the table was the biggest of the four, by maybe an inch and ten pounds. He said, “You’re not going to eat at all.”
    Reacher said, “I’m not?”
    “Not here, anyway.”
    “I heard this was the only show in town.”
    “It is.”
    “Well, then.”
    “You need to get going.”
    “Going?”
    “Out of here.”
    “Out of where?”
    “Out of this restaurant.”
    “You want to tell me why?”
    “We don’t like strangers.”
    “Me either,” Reacher said. “But I need to eat somewhere. Otherwise I’ll get all wasted and skinny like you four.”
    “Funny man.”
    “Just calling it like it is,” Reacher said. He put his forearms on the table. He had thirty pounds and three inches on the big guy, and more than that on the other three. And he was willing to bet he had a little more experience and a little less inhibition than any one of them. Or than all of them put together. But ultimately, if it came to it, it was going to be his two hundred and fifty pounds against their cumulative nine hundred. Not great odds. But Reacher hated turning back.
    The guy who was standing said, “We don’t want you here.”
    Reacher said, “You’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit what you want.”
    “You won’t get served in here.”
    “You could order for me.”
    “And then what?”
    “Then I could eat your lunch.”
    “Funny man,” the guy said again. “You need to leave now.”
    “Why?”
    “Just leave now.”
    Reacher asked, “You guys got names?”
    “Not for you to know. And you need to leave.”
    “You want me to leave, I’ll need to hear it from the owner. Not from you.”
    “We can arrange that.” The guy who was standing nodded to one of the guys in the seats, who scraped his chair back and got up and headed for the kitchen. A long minute later he came back out with a man in a stained apron. The man in the apron was wiping his hands on a dish towel and didn’t look particularly worried or perturbed. He walked up to Reacher’s table and said, “I want you to leave my restaurant.”
    “Why?” Reacher asked.
    “I don’t need to explain myself.”
    “You the owner?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    Reacher said, “I’ll leave when I’ve had a cup of coffee.”
    “You’ll leave now.”
    “Black, no sugar.”
    “I don’t want trouble.”
    “You already got trouble. If I get a cup of coffee, I’ll walk out of here. If I don’t get a cup of coffee, these guys can try to throw me out, and you’ll spend the rest of the day cleaning blood off the floor and all day tomorrow shopping for new chairs and tables.”
    The guy in the apron said nothing.
    Reacher said, “Black, no sugar.”
    The guy in the apron stood still for a long moment and then headed back to the kitchen. A minute later the waitress came out with a single cup balanced on a saucer. She carried it across the room and set it down in front of Reacher, hard enough to slop some of the contents out of the cup and into the saucer.
    “Enjoy,” she said.
    Reacher lifted