Die Trying

Former military policeman Jack Reacher is helping a stranger with a dropped bag of dry cleaning outside a Chicago laundromat when three armed men force them both into a van. The woman, Holly Johnson, is an FBI agent — though she doesn't reveal she is also the daughter of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Driven across the country to a remote compound, Reacher and Holly are held by an armed separatist militia with its own plans for the Fourth of July. While the FBI hunts for a suspect who is, in fact, one of the two victims, Reacher has to work his way free, figure out what the militia is building, and get himself and Holly out before their deadline arrives.

The second Reacher novel, following Killing Floor, moves the character out of small-town trouble and into a cross-country abduction with federal and paramilitary stakes.