“In this case, pretty damn well,” the new guy said. “What are our apples worth if people think our water is poisoned?”
“That all was eight years ago,” Reacher said. “It came to nothing anyway. The top scientists in the world said your water is OK. So get over it. With a little humility. Probably you said some dumb thing eight years ago. Should I twist your arm today?”
The old guy with the ponytail said, “Technically they have a contract with the corporation in Colorado. There was a rider on the restraining order. It said they get paid if they can prove I was here. I hoped they had forgotten the arrangement. Apparently they hadn’t. They saw my car.”
“How do they prove it?”
“They just did. They texted a picture. That’s where he went. No cell signal, except up on the rise.”
“Law and order,” the daddy said. “It’s what this country needs.”
“Except for the part about stealing the county road to grow more apples.”
“I’m getting sick of hearing you say that, over and over.”
“It’s the sound of reality, rolling along.”
“Why were you in the woods anyway?”
“None of your business,” Reacher said.
“Maybe it is our business. We have a relationship with the landowner.”
“You can’t text a picture of me.”
“Why not?”
“You would have to take your phone out of your pocket. Whereupon I would take it away from you and break it. I guess that’s why you can’t.”
“There are two of us. Two phones.”
“Still not enough. You should call for reinforcements. But oh dear, you can’t. No cell signal, except up on the rise.”
“You’re a cocky son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“I prefer realistic,” Reacher said.
“Want to put it to the test?”
“I would have an ethical dilemma. It might scar the boy for life to see his daddy laid out in front of him. Equally it might scar you to see your boy laid out. After being unable to protect him, I mean. You might feel bad about that. I believe it’s a parenting thing. I wouldn’t know for sure. I’m not a father myself. But I can imagine.”
The guy didn’t reply.
Reacher said, “Wait.”
He looked south, between the two lines of trees, where the orchard came down the slope.
“You were on your way back,” he said. “The text was already sent, from the top of the hill. The photograph must have been taken some moments before that. So why was our mutual friend still here, with his arms behind his back?”
No answer.
The guy with the ponytail said, “I was to get a beating. So I would learn my lesson. Just as soon as the text was sent and their money was guaranteed. At that point they didn’t know you were in the woods, too.”
“That shouldn’t really make a difference,” Reacher said. “Should it? Not to men of conviction, surely.”
He looked at the daddy, and then at the son, full in the eye.
He said, “Time is wasting, guys. Go ahead and give him his beating.”
No one moved.
Reacher looked at the young guy.
He said, “It’s OK. He won’t hurt you. He’s seventy years old. You could push him over with a feather. He’s nothing to be scared of.”
The guy moved his head, like a dog sniffing the air.
“It’s a binary choice now,” Reacher said. “Either you hit him, or you’re scared of him.”
No response.
“Or maybe it’s conscience trouble. Maybe that’s it. You don’t want to hit an old guy. You really don’t. But hey, think about the apples. You have a job to do. I get it. In fact I could help you out. You could give me a beating first. That way you would feel you had earned it, when you start in on the old guy. It might make you feel less troubled.”
No response.
“Why not?” Reacher said. “You scared of me, too? Scared I’m going to hurt you? I have to tell you, it’s a possibility. Full disclosure. You need to make an informed decision. Because now it really is a binary choice. Either you hit me, or you’re scared of me.”
No answer.
Reacher stepped in close. The opposite of risky. Better to crowd him. If the kid was dumb enough to throw a punch, it was better to smother it early, before it had speed and development and direction. Which would be easy enough. If the kid was dumb enough. Reacher was thirty pounds heavier and three inches taller and probably five inches longer in the arm. That much was visible.
The kid was dumb enough.
His shoulder jerked back in what Reacher took to be the early-warning stages of what was no doubt intended to be a short clubbing right to his face. Which gave him a choice. Either instantaneous reaction, involving a wide outward-sweeping gesture with his left forearm, designed to deflect the incoming short right, while his own short right crashed home. Which would be in any realistic sense the best move to make. It would be fast, hard, and elegantly abrupt. But it wouldn’t be forensic. Reacher felt like he was in front of a jury. Like he was giving evidence. Or being asked to explain it, like an expert witness. He felt in order to be effective he should let the narrative unspool a little longer than an instant. A crime required both intent and action, and he felt he should let both components become plainly visible, all the way to where they were provable beyond a reasonable doubt.
So he jerked his head sideways and let the short right fizz past his ear, in all its glory, a big punch now, right there for every eye to see, unmistakable, obvious in its intent, and then he waited for the kid to drag his fist back unrequited, and then he waited again, for what felt to him like a very long interval, purely to allow adequate time for jury-room deliberations, and then he hit the kid under the chin with a solid right-hand uppercut. The kid went up weightless in his boots, and then collapsed backward on the grass, with a bristly thump, with all kinds of dust and pollen puffing up in the sunshine. The kid’s limbs went slack and his head lolled to the side.
Reacher gave the guy with the ponytail a let’s-go nod.
Then he looked at the kid’s daddy.
“Parenting tip,” he said. “Don’t leave him lying in the road. He could get run over.”
“I won’t forget this.”
“That’s the difference between us,” Reacher said. “I already have.”