The world detonated.
The impact came from the side, violent and absolute. Steel slammed into steel with a concussive crack that punched the air out of his lungs. The truck lurched hard, yanked sideways as if grabbed by something enormous and angry.
The sound was catastrophic. Joe heard the sound of metal tearing, glass shattering, the shriek of physics asserting itself.
Reacher's head snapped back, then forward. The seat belt locked and bit deep into his chest. Light burst behind his eyes. The steering wheel jerked out of his hands as the truck spun.
The world became a blur of white and black, spinning, tumbling, the horizon gone.
In the midst of the chaos, Joe recognized what had flashed: a huge snowplow, silver and steel.
The road disappeared.
The truck plowed into something dense and unforgiving and stopped dead. The impact was a second explosion, whiplashing him forward against the belt, his ribs screaming, his neck wrenched.
Silence rushed in, thick and stunned.
Reacher sucked in air that tasted like copper and burned all the way down. His ears rang, a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else. His neck screamed.
His chest felt like it had been hit with a bat.
His body tried to catalogue damage and came back with too much information at once. Ribs, head, hands.
The lights were out.
The engine was dead.
Steam hissed from somewhere under the hood, a sound like something dying.
Cold hit him like a slap. Wind and snow and the smell of gasoline.
Hands grabbed his jacket and hauled him out of the truck. He tried to brace, tried to bring his right arm across his body to block, to strike.
It didn't respond fast enough.
His legs folded as he was dragged out of the vehicle and dumped onto frozen ground.
Stars burst across his vision again. The impact drove what little air he had left out of his lungs. Snow pressed against his face, cold and wet.
He rolled, trying to get a knee under himself, trying to push up.
A blow landed hard against his ribs, sharp and controlled. Someone who knew where to hit and how hard.
Air left him in a grunt.
He felt his wrists being yanked behind his back. Pressure. Plastic biting into skin. Zip cuffs. Tight. The plastic cut into his wrists, sharp and unforgiving.
He twisted, trying to rise through it, trying to get his legs under him.
Another hit caught him high, near the base of the skull. Not enough to knock him out. Enough to make the night tilt and smear. His vision went white, then gray, then came back in fragments.
Something was pressed against his face.
Cloth. Rough fabric, damp with something chemical.
A smell cut through the cold—sweet, sickly, wrong. Ether or chloroform or something close. His brain recognized it half a second too late.
He tried to turn his head away. He managed half an inch before strong hands locked it in place, one hand on the back of his skull, the other pressing the cloth tight over his nose and mouth.
