The Midnight Line Read Online Free PDF

Nakamura went home. She decided she would swing by Scorpio’s laundromat in the morning. On her way back to work. Thirty minutes or an hour. Just to take a look. It was possible Bigfoot might have arrived by then.
    Reacher had no reason to doubt the county cop when he said western Wisconsin was populated by friendly folks. The problem was quantity, not quality. It was a lonely rural road, in the middle of nowhere, and by that point it was late in the evening. There was no traffic. Or almost none, to be exact. A Dodge pick-up truck had blasted by in a howl of warm wind, and five minutes after that a Ford F-150 had slowed down to take a look, before speeding up again and driving on without stopping. Now the eastern horizon was stubbornly dark and silent. But Reacher remained optimistic. It only took one. And there was plenty of time. There was no big strategic hurry. The ring had been in the pawn shop for a month. There was no red-hot trail to follow.
    A buck gets ten there’s no story at all .
    Reacher waited, and eventually he saw distant headlights in the east, just dim twinkles like faraway stars. For a whole minute they seemed to get no closer, because of the head-on perspective, but then the picture sharpened. A pick-up truck, he thought, or an SUV. Because of the height and the spacing of the lights. He stood a yard inside the traffic lane and stuck out his thumb. He turned half sideways, like a Hollywood pose, so his profile was presented at an angle, so visually his bulk was minimized. Nothing he could do about his height. But the less threatening the better. He was an experienced hitchhiker. He knew he was subject to snap decisions.
    It was a pick-up truck. A big one. A crew cab. Japanese. Lots of chrome and lots of shiny paint. It slowed down. Came close. The driver’s face was lit up red, from the instrument panel. Not going to happen, Reacher thought. The driver was a woman. She’d have to be nuts.
    The truck stopped.
    It was a Honda. Dark red metallic. The window buzzed down. There was a dog on the back seat. Like a German Shepherd, but bigger. About the size of a pony. Maybe a freak mutation. It had teeth the size of rifle ammunition. The woman leaned across the console. She had dark hair up in a knot. She was wearing a dark red shirt. She was about forty-five years old.
    She said, “Where are you headed?”
    Reacher said, “I need to get on I-90.”
    â€œHop right in. That’s near where I’m going.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œAbout where I’m going?”
    â€œAbout me hopping in. From the safety point of view. You don’t know me. As a matter of fact I’m not a threat, but I would say that anyway, right?”
    â€œI have a savage dog in here.”
    â€œI might be armed. The obvious play would be shoot the dog first. Or cut its throat. And then start on you. That’s what I would be worried about. Professionally speaking, I mean.”
    â€œYou a cop?”
    â€œI was in the military police.”
    â€œYou armed?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen hop in.”
    She was a farmer, she said, with a lot of dairy cattle on a lot of acres. Doing well, Reacher figured, judging by her car. It felt about as wide as a Humvee inside. It was upholstered in quilted leather. It was as silent as a limousine. They talked. He asked if she had always been a farmer, and she said yes, four generations. She asked him what he did for a living, and he said he was between jobs. The giant dog followed the conversation from the back seat, turning its wicked head one way, and then the other.
    An hour later she stopped and let him out at the I-90 cloverleaf. He thanked her and waved her away. She was a nice person. One of the random encounters that made his life what it was.
    Then he walked to the westbound ramp and started over, standing at an angle, one foot on the rumble strip, the other in the traffic lane, with his thumb out wide.
    Nearly seven hundred miles