Worth Dying For Read Free Page B

she’s still here.’
    ‘She will be,’ the guy said.
    ‘So let’s go.’
    They got out of the car.

FOUR
    T HE DOCTOR TOOK A LEATHER BAG FROM THE BACK OF THE CAR. Then he repeated his uphill drunk-guy stumble all the way along the path, this time with more reason, because the gravel surface was difficult. But he made it unassisted to the door, which was a fine piece of old wood with glassy white paint carefully applied to it. Reacher found a brass button and laid a knuckle on it. Inside he heard the sound of an electric bell, and then nothing for a minute, and then the sound of slow feet on floorboards. Then the door opened a crack and a face looked out.
    Quite a face. It was framed by black hair and had pale skin and frightened eyes at the top, and then a red-soaked handkerchief pressed tight at the apex of a triangular red gush that had flooded downward past the mouth and neck to the blouse below. There was a string of blood-soaked pearls. The blouse was silk and it was wet to the waist. The woman took the handkerchief away from her nose. She had split lips and blood-rimed teeth. Her nose was still leaking, a steady stream.
    ‘You came,’ she said.
    The doctor blinked twice and focused hard and turned down his mouth in a frown and nodded. He said, ‘We should take a look at that.’
    ‘You’ve been drinking,’ the woman said. Then she looked at Reacher and asked, ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I drove,’ Reacher said.
    ‘Because he’s drunk?’
    ‘He’ll be OK. I wouldn’t let him do brain surgery, but he can stop the bleeding.’
    The woman thought about it for a moment and then she nodded and put the handkerchief back to her face and opened the door wide.
    They used the kitchen. The doctor was drunk as a skunk but the procedure was simple and the guy retained enough muscle memory to get himself through it. Reacher soaked cloths in warm water and passed them across and the doctor cleaned the woman’s face and jammed her nostrils solid with gauze and used butterfly closures on her cut lips. The anaesthetic took the pain away and she settled into a calm and dreamy state. It was hard to say exactly what she looked like. Her nose had been busted before. That was clear. Apart from that she had good skin and fine bone structure and pretty eyes. She was slim and fairly tall, well dressed and solidly prosperous. As was the house itself. It was warm. The floors were wide planks, lustrous with a hundred years of wax. There was a lot of millwork and fine detail and subtle pastel shades. Books on the shelves, paintings on the walls, rugs on the floors. In the living room there was a wedding photograph in a silver frame. It showed a younger and intact version of the woman with a tall reedy man in a grey morning suit. He had dark hair and a long nose and bright eyes and he looked very smug. Not an athlete or a manual worker, not a professor or a poet. Not a farmer, either. A businessman, probably. An executive of some kind. An indoors type of guy, soft, with energy but no vigour.
    Reacher headed back to the kitchen and found the doctor washing his hands in the sink and the woman brushing her hair without the help of a mirror. He asked her, ‘You OK now?’
    She said, ‘Not too bad,’ slow and nasal and indistinct.
    ‘Your husband’s not here?’
    ‘He decided to go out for dinner. With his friends.’
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘His name is Seth.’
    ‘And what’s your name?’
    ‘My name is Eleanor.’
    ‘You been taking aspirin, Eleanor?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Because Seth does this a lot?’
    She paused a long, long time, and then she shook her head.
    ‘I tripped,’ she said. ‘On the edge of the rug.’
    ‘More than once, all in a few days? The same rug?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’d change that rug, if I were you.’
    ‘I’m sure it won’t happen again.’
    They waited ten minutes in the kitchen while she went upstairs to take a shower and change. They heard the water run and stop and heard her call down that