Read 17 A Wanted Man for Free Online Page B

preceded by three blue boards, spaced out in sequence hundreds of feet apart, detailing first gas, and then food, and then accommodations, in a style that was half information and half advertisement. Some boards were blank. Some places had food but no gas, or gas but no motel, or an inn but no diner. Reacher knew the grammar. He had travelled most of the Interstate system. Some boards would be deceptive, leading drivers fifteen or twenty miles down dark rural roads to places that would be shut when they got there. Others would be ahead of tight knots of establishments where a driver would be spoiled for choice, Exxon or Texaco or Sunoco, Subway or McDonald’s or Cracker Barrel, Marriott or Red Roof or the Comfort Inn. It was all about lights in the distance. The deceptive exits would be dark, and the promising ones would have a red and yellow glow on the horizon.
    They drove on, numb and silent and patient, and eventually Alan King chose a no-name turn not long after Des Moines.
    He said, ‘This one will be fine, Don.’
    There was a single brand on each of the blue boards ahead of the exit, all different. Reacher recognized none of them specifically, but all of them generically. He knew the grammar. There would be a no-name gas station, and a microwave oven and an urn of stewed coffee in a dismal hut across the street, and a faded mom-and-pop motel a mile down the road. He could see the gas station lights a mile away, blue and white in the night-time mist. A big place, probably, set up for trucks as well as cars.
    Don McQueen slowed well ahead of the turn, like a jumbo jet on approach. He checked his mirror and used his signal, even though he must have known there was no one closer than a mile behind him. The asphalt on the ramp was coarse and loud. The ramp led to a two-lane county road, and then the gas station was a hundred feet away to the right, to the south, on the far shoulder, to the east. It was a big place in terms of area, but sketchy in terms of facilities. Six pumps and an air hose and an interior vacuum for regular sized vehicles, and a separate area with truck pumps and puddles of spilled diesel. No canopy. A small pay hut, and a bathroom block standing alone and distant on the edge of the lot. No food.
    But sure enough, directly across the street from the gas station was a long low ramshackle barn-shaped building, with
Food And Drink All Day All Night
hand-painted in white on the slope of its roof, in shaky letters close to six feet high. Beyond the barn was a smaller version of the blue accommodation sign, with a discreet arrow pointing onward into the darkness towards the motel. There was knee-high night mist above the roadway, with the glitter of ice crystals in it.
    McQueen drove the hundred feet on the two-lane and turned in at the gas station and eased to a stop, facing the way he had come, with the flank of the car next to a pump. He shut the motor down and dropped his hands off the wheel and sat still in the sudden silence.
    Alan King said, ‘Mr Reacher, you go get us all coffee, and we’ll fill the car.’
    Reacher said, ‘No, I’ll get the gas. Seems only fair.’
    King smiled. ‘Gas, ass, or grass, right? The price of hitchhiking?’
    ‘I’m willing to pay my way.’
    ‘And I’d let you,’ King said. ‘But I don’t buy the gas. Not for a trip like this. This is company business, so we spend company money. I couldn’t let you subsidize the corporation I work for.’
    ‘Then at least let me pump it. You shouldn’t have to do all the work.’
    ‘You’re about to drive three hundred miles. That’s work enough.’
    ‘It’s cold out there.’
    King said, ‘I think you want to see how much gas goes in the car. Am I right? You don’t believe my gauge is busted?’
    Reacher said nothing.
    King said, ‘I believe it would be minimally courteous to trust a simple factual statement made by the guy who has offered to get you a considerable part of the way to your destination.’
    Reacher