Worth Dying For Read Online Free PDF

balls and then kicked him in the head. Just left him lying there.’
    ‘Is he OK?’
    ‘He’s got a concussion. Doesn’t know what day it is. Useless piece of shit. I want him replaced.’
    ‘Plenty more where he came from,’ Jonas said.
    Jasper asked, ‘So who was this guy?’
    ‘He was a big man in a brown coat. With a watch cap on his head. That’s all I saw. That’s all I remember. He just came in and hit me.’
    ‘Why would he?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Didn’t he say anything?’
    ‘Just some bullshit. But Brett said he was driving the doctor’s car.’
    ‘He doesn’t know what day it is but he remembers what car the guy was in?’
    ‘I guess concussions are unpredictable.’
    ‘And you’re sure it wasn’t the doctor who hit you?’
    ‘I told you, I never saw the guy before. I know the doctor. And the damn doctor wouldn’t hit me, anyway. He wouldn’t dare.’
    Jacob Duncan said, ‘What aren’t you telling us, son?’
    ‘I have a bad headache.’
    ‘I’m sure you do. But you know that’s not what I mean.’
    ‘I don’t want to talk.’
    ‘But you know you have to. We can’t let a thing like this go by.’
    Seth Duncan looked left, looked right. He said, ‘OK, I had a dispute with Eleanor tonight. Before I went out. No big deal. But I had to slap her.’
    ‘How hard?’
    ‘I might have made her nose bleed.’
    ‘How bad?’
    ‘You know she’s delicate.’
    The kitchen went quiet for a moment. Jonas Duncan said, ‘So let’s try to piece it together. Your wife called the doctor.’
    ‘She’s been told not to do that.’
    ‘But maybe she did anyway. Because she’s delicate. And maybe the doctor wasn’t home. Maybe he was in the motel lounge, like he usually is, halfway through a bottle of Jim Beam, like he usually is. Maybe Eleanor reached him there.’
    ‘He’s been told to stay away from her.’
    ‘But maybe he didn’t obey. Sometimes doctors have strange notions. And perhaps he was too drunk to drive. He usually is. Because of the bourbon. So perhaps he asked someone else to drive him. Because of his level of concern.’
    ‘Who else?’
    ‘Another guy in the lounge.’
    ‘Nobody would dare do that.’
    ‘Nobody who lives here, I agree. Nobody who knows not to. But a stranger might do it. And it’s a motel, after all. That’s what motels are for. Strangers, passing through.’
    ‘OK, so then what?’
    ‘Maybe the stranger didn’t like what he saw at your house, and he came to find you.’
    ‘Eleanor gave me up?’
    ‘She must have. How else would the guy have known where to look? He can’t know his way around, if he’s a stranger.’
    Jacob Duncan asked, ‘What exactly did he say to you?’
    ‘Some bullshit about marriage counselling.’
    Jonas Duncan nodded and said, ‘There you go. That’s how it played out. We’ve got a passer-by full of moral outrage. A guest in the motel.’
    Seth Duncan said, ‘I want him hurt bad.’
    His father said, ‘He will be, son. He’ll be hurt bad and sent on his way. Who have we got?’
    Jasper said, ‘Not Brett, I guess.’
    Jonas said, ‘Plenty more where he came from.’
    Jacob Duncan said, ‘Send two of them. Have them call me for orders before they deploy.’

SEVEN
    R EACHER DRESSED AGAIN AFTER HIS SHOWER, COAT AND ALL because the room was cold, and then he turned the lights off and sat in the tub armchair and waited. He didn’t expect Seth Duncan to call the cops. Apparently the cops were a county department, sixty miles away. No local ties. No local loyalties. And calling the cops would require a story, and a story would unravel straight to a confession about beating his wife. No smug guy would head down that route.
    But a smug guy who had just lost a bodyguard might have access to a replacement, or two or three. And whereas body-guarding was generally a reactive profession, those two or three substitutes might be persuaded to go proactive for one night only, especially if they were Brett’s friends. And