Nothing to Lose

It arrived exactly two hours into the trip, a lumpy two-lane crossing their path at an exact right angle. It had stop signs, and the main north-south drag didn’t. By the time Reacher called it and the minister reacted and the U-Haul’s overmatched brakes did their job they were two hundred yards past it. Reacher got out and waved the truck away and waited until its lights and its noise were gone. Then he walked back through the dark empty vastness. Predawn was happening way to the east, over Kansas or Missouri. Colorado was still pitch black. There was no cell phone signal.

No traffic, either.

Reacher took up station on the west side of the junction, standing on the shoulder close to the traffic lane. East-west drivers would have to pause at the stop sign opposite, and they would get a good look at him twenty yards ahead. But there were no east-west drivers. Not for the first ten minutes. Then the first fifteen, then the first twenty. A lone car came north, trailing the U-Haul by twenty miles, but it didn’t turn off. It just blasted onward. An SUV came south, and slowed, ready to turn, but it turned east, away from Hope. Its lights grew small and faint and then they disappeared.

It was cold. There was a wind coming out of the east, and it was moving rain clouds into the sky. Reacher turned his collar up and crossed his arms over his chest and trapped his hands under his biceps for warmth. Cloudy diffused streaks of pink and purple lit up the far horizon. A new day, empty, innocent, as yet unsullied. Maybe a good day. Maybe a bad day. Maybe the last day.The end is near, Thurman’s church had promised. Maybe a meteorite the size of a moon was hurtling closer. Maybe governments had suppressed the news. Maybe rebels were right then forcing the locks on an old Ukrainian silo. Maybe in a research lab somewhere a flask had cracked or a glove had torn or a mask had leaked.

Or maybe not. Reacher stamped his feet and ducked his face into his shoulder. His nose was cold. When he looked up again he saw headlights in the east. Bright, widely spaced, far enough away that they seemed to be static. A large vehicle. A truck. Possibly a semi trailer. Coming straight toward him, with the new dawn behind it.

Four possibilities. One, it would arrive at the junction and turn right and head north. Two, it would arrive at the junction and turn left and head south. Three, it would pause at the stop sign and then continue west without picking him up. Four, it would pause and cross the main drag and then pause again to let him climb aboard.

Chances of a happy ending, twenty-five percent. Or less, if it was a corporate vehicle with a no-passenger policy because of insurance hassles.

Reacher waited.

When the truck was a quarter-mile away he saw that it was a big rigid panel van, painted white. When it was three hundred yards away he saw that it had a refrigerator unit mounted on top. Fresh food delivery, which would have reduced the odds of a happy outcome if it hadn’t been for the stop signs. Food drivers usually didn’t like to stop. They had schedules to keep, and stopping a big truck and then getting it back up to speed could rob a guy of measurable minutes. But the stop signs meant he had to slow anyway.

Reacher waited.

He heard the guy lift off two hundred yards short of the junction. Heard the hiss of brakes. He raised his hand high, thumb extended.I need a ride. Then he raised both arms and waved. The distress semaphore.I reallyneed a ride.

The truck stopped at the line on the east side of the junction. Neither one of its direction indicators was flashing. A good sign. There was no traffic north or south, so it moved on again immediately, diesel roaring, gears grinding, heading west across the main drag, straight toward Reacher. It accelerated. The driver looked down. The truck kept on moving.

Then it slowed again.

The air brakes hissed loud and the springs squealed and the truck came to a stop with the cab forty feet west of the junction and the rear fender a yard out of the north-south traffic lane. Reacher turned and jogged back and climbed up on the step. The window came down and the driver peered out from seven feet south. He was a short, wiry man, incongruously small in the huge cab. He said, “It’s going to rain.”

Reacher said, “That’s the least of my problems. My car broke down.”

The guy at the wheel said, “My first stop is Hope.”

Reacher said, “You’re the supermarket guy. From Topeka.”

“I left there at four this morning. You want to ride along?”

“Hope is where I’m headed.”

“So quit stalling and climb aboard.”