Reckoning Road: A Get Jack Reacher Short Story Read Free Page A

stretcher from rolling.
    He said, “Hop in if you want to ride with us.”
    I jumped in the back and sat across from the first paramedic, and the second one shut the doors behind us.
    I heard the second one scramble around the outside of the ambulance and open the driver door and hop in. He fired up the engine and hit the gas, and we were on the blacktop, headed for some part of Route 66 called Cedar Corner.
    Chapter 4
    RETIRED UNITED STATES MARSHAL JOHN MARTIN woke up and repeated his early concerns.
    He looked at me with weak eyes and said, “You’ve got to get to her first.”
    I said, “Who? Get to who? Who’s she?”
    The first paramedic said, “He needs to be silent.” And he started to put an oxygen mask over Martin’s mouth, but Martin reached up with a shaky arm and grabbed the guy’s hand. He shook his head. The paramedic said, “Sir, it appears as if you’ve had a mild cardiac event.”
    I looked up at the paramedic, realizing that must’ve been why Martin had been swerving all over the road. He’d probably been speeding to help whoever this girl was that he kept mentioning, and then he’d seen me on the road and was struck with a mild heart attack. It had caused him to drive recklessly, and he’d crashed into a tree.
    In a way, it made me feel a little guilty, like what if it had all happened because he had unexpectedly seen me, a hulking stranger, standing in the road in the middle of the night? What if that had been the trigger for his heart attack?
    I shrugged it off. Couldn’t help it now if that was the case.
    He was both a lucky and an unlucky guy. Unlucky because of the heart attack. Lucky because the tree had been there to save his life. It had stopped the car and stopped him from ramming into another vehicle or hitting a ditch and flipping his car. Either way, he could’ve been dead, and in my book, any guy who survives a career in law enforcement, a heart attack, and a car accident to boot was a pretty lucky guy. No matter which way you cut it.
    Martin said, “Wait. Wait.”
    He breathed heavy like it was his first breath after being submerged deep underwater for months. He reached out toward me with his left hand like he wanted to grab me but couldn’t reach. He said, “You. I need your. Help.”
    I moved down the bench past some medical equipment, some of which was foreign to me and some I had seen in movies or in my limited experiences in medical settings. I neared the side of his stretcher. He relaxed his hand.
    The ambulance sirens were off because there was no traffic, not even a car on the highway, but the lights swirled through the air, ricocheting red beams through the front windshield and into the rear of the vehicle.
    The red lights flashed across the paramedics face as he listened.
    John Martin said, “Help her.”
    I asked, “Who? Help who?”
    He said, “Kara. Kara. She’s in danger. They know. They know.”
    He paused and swallowed hard and then he said, “They know where she is. They’re coming tonight. Right now.”
    I said, “Who is?”
    “Them. The bad guys. Carter.”
    I said, “Who is she?”
    He said, “Kara. Kara’s witness. Protection.”
    I said, “Where?”
    John Martin said, “Twenty years. She’s been off the books for twenty years. I promised her she’d be safe. Her and her little girl.”
    I said, “Martin, where are they?”
    John Martin’s eyes faded in and out, his pupils dilated.
    The paramedic said, “He needs to breathe now.”
    I said, “Where’s Kara? Tell me!”
    He looked at me once more and said, “Diner. Waitress. Please.”
    Then he was gone—out cold—and from the look of him, he wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Not soon enough for Kara, the waitress.
    The paramedic hovered over him and put two fingers on his neck. Then he forced a clear oxygen breather over Martin’s face and watched as Martin took slow breaths.
    The paramedic said, “What the hell is he talkin’ about?”
    I said, “His duty, I guess.”
    I was