They were good at it too. Crime was minimal, and the streets were safe. The toxic air and polluted waters were what got you in Blackwater, not murder, not violence. These were people used to a hard struggle; they were used to looking out for each other—after all, they had only managed to prosper together. And the loss of one of their own had hit them hard.
The sheriff's daughter had been a troubled teenager. Her mother was a casualty of the chemicals running through the town's water supply, and her father had mollycoddled her to deal with his grief. She became wild—harmless to everyone but herself. Sex, drugs, petty theft—these were easy charges for her father to repair, but they were just a prelude to her fate.
Now her bloated body rested on a makeshift mortuary slab in the room beside her father's office. The sweltering heat from outside was permeating the stone walls, and decomposition was taking her fast. She had washed up downriver some thirty miles away and would have been disregarded if the local farmer hadn't recognised her. He reported the discovery and added that he'd found another body two days earlier in the same stretch of water. The first girl hadn't been so familiar or worth troubling the authorities over.
Someone had redressed the girl. She was now wearing an unblemished white gown, her partially eaten face covered in a matching shroud. The room was lit with candles and incense in a feeble attempt to hide the smell. Adams inspected the body, seemingly undisturbed by the pungent rot. Mark couldn't bring himself to get too close. His stomach was already churning, and he didn't want to disrespect the sheriff by throwing up.
The sheriff was maintaining a distance too. The man was in his early fifties, and his mannerisms reminded Mark of Adams. These were two old-school policemen, intent on solving crime rather than fattening their own pockets and using the positions for power. Unlike Adams, the sheriff seemed to be built of muscle and steel. He was big, towering over them both, with arms like pistons, and he carried himself with certainty even as he stood over his daughter's body.
“The dogs found Ginny,” he said, his voice cracking as he spoke his daughter's name. As tough as he was, he couldn't bear to look at the bloated body before them. “The farmer, Hoyle, had been avoiding the banks. The last girl that washed up there had shaken him, and if it weren't for the dogs, he wouldn't have gone to investigate.”
“He didn't report the first girl?”
The sheriff squared his legs, bracing himself for an argument. “Death isn't a stranger to these parts, Agent. There are folks departing all the time, and a man doesn't just stop his day without good cause. She wasn't a girl he knew. And people here are careful. If business isn't their own, they stay out of it. Blackwater is a safe place, but there are close neighbours who aren't so respectful. We share water, and what they do with their women is their business.”
Mark understood. There was only so much a good man could do in this world. He'd been in a similar position when he worked the beat. Sure, he wanted to bring every killer to justice, but that just wasn't possible. Sometimes all you could do was look after those you loved. He caught the eye of the sheriff and saw the man was starting to tremble.
“He recognised Ginny, though. She was troubled, but she was loved too. Her mother had been a favourite here, and people looked out for Ginny, especially when she wouldn't look out for herself. Isn't a soul in the county that would have wanted to see her harmed.”
“What was she doing out there on her own?” Adams managed to ask the question without accusation or judgement.
“Every couple of months she'd throw a tantrum and pretend to make her way to London. She never made it as far as the county line. Not once. And it's been years since I chased after her. Like I said. She's known. I'm known. Nobody would hurt her.”
Adams moved away from the body. “Nobody that knew her, at least.” He gave Mark a quick glance, confirmation this was another victim of their Reacher.
“I called around. PCU is part of the Institute.” The sheriff folded his arms as if to steady himself.
“We're affiliated,” Adams said. “But I wouldn't say we're bosom buddies.”
“Did a Reacher do this?”
“We believe so. We've got several girls back home. Same MO.” Adams fished a picture of Janus Curtis from his notebook.
“This him?”
“Have you seen him around here?”
The sheriff shook his head. “No, he hasn't been in town. Least not as far as I know.”
“More likely he's lying low nearby.”
“There are houses, places folks rent out to travellers, all over the place, and they've been filling up with the trouble down in London. I'll ask around. If he's out there, I'll find him.”
“Sheriff, this man is extremely dangerous. He shouldn't be approached.”
The sheriff clenched his jaw. He wanted revenge, and Mark couldn't blame him.
“Sheriff,” Mark said. “You don't stand a chance against him. He's a Reacher. If you try to go after him, he will kill you and anyone you take with you.”
The lawman conceded. “So how do you plan to bring him in?”
Adams gave the man a weak smile. “It's what we do. Trust me. I will get justice for your girl. Is there anywhere we can stay in town for tonight?”
“Head over to the Black Lion, they've got good rooms there. Decent food too. I'll put the word out about this guy and let you know if I find anything.”
* * *
The Black Lion boasted a traditional bar and several modest-sized rooms. The building was one of the few structures built before the civil war, in fact before more than one civil war. Its outside was adorned with sheets of metal and reclaimed wood patching up areas of disrepair, but it had managed to keep many original features too, and the room Mark and Adams took still had original beams and floorboards dating back nearly four hundred years.
How something so basic could survive so much was beyond Mark's understanding. In S'aven everything was broken and new, and even London had abandoned much of her history to keep up with modernisation. What was old in the south was culturally important and preserved, like pointless beauty spots on scarred, ruined skin. But here, this building and others like it were maintained through years of practicality. This was Blackwater's community at work, and despite the lingering smell of old beer and smoke, despite the damp creeping up the corners, despite the noise pollution from the nearby machinery, it was magnificent.
Mark took the bed nearest the window. It creaked as he sat down, but it was clean and comfier than his own back in the London office. He watched his boss kick off his shoes and fall back on his own bed. It had been a long day for them both.
“How do you like Blackwater?” Adams asked. He rolled over to face Mark, his gut spilling over the side of the bed.
“It's different to what I was expecting. I thought it would be more lawless.”
“Some places out here are. But there are places like this too. They make out like it's harder out this way. Harder to get food, work, medicine.”
“Is it?”
“In some respects it is. But they have community here. There's more supplies in S'aven for sure, more chances for a clever man to do well. But bread is shared here. There's no real divide. Those that work are looked after. You know, I thought about coming out here. After Piccadilly I got wind of a case up this way and needed to get away from the city for a while. It was mighty tempting to stay here, away from the shitstorm down south.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Reachers up here aren't so much of a problem. People don't report them, they don't feel the threat in the same way. You saw it with the sheriff when we told him what he was facing. If he'd been in London it would have been chaos. I guess they're not pressed so much by the Institute propaganda here.” Adams patted his stomach. “What about you, Bellamy, reckon you could make a life for yourself somewhere like this?”
A part of Mark liked the idea. He liked to think there was somewhere he belonged. But he knew, deep down, he wouldn't belong anywhere without Rac
hel. She had been so much of him, he was nothing without her. Whether it was London, S'aven, Blackwater, he would always be empty, always alone.
“I don't think so,” he said quietly.
Adams regarded him for a few moments and rolled back over. “I'm gonna get some sleep before the sheriff gets back to us. Why don't you take the day off? Go get a drink, talk to some of the locals. Try to enjoy yourself.”
Normally Mark would have been too afraid to leave. He didn't take trips around London, and he rarely walked around S'aven when he'd been living there. Yet this was an opportunity to clear his head, and he couldn't hide forever. He rose, shoving his hands in his pockets, and decided to embrace some alone time.
22
The arguing was getting out of hand. Rachel closed her eyes and tried to block out the latest heated debate, something about the best way to configure a weapons interface system in a VW camper van. She didn't even know what half the words meant, or why they needed to be screamed so loudly. Hannah had switched off her hearing, yet Jay seemed to think yelling in her face would make her see reason. And Hannah seemed to think violently slapping Jay—a man considerably smaller and weaker than she was—every time he tried to interfere was helping make her point.
Rachel felt a headache coming on. She needed air and some time to think where the residuals of S'aven's riots weren't ringing in her ears. As subtly as she could, she edged away from the workshop, but subtle wasn't enough to get past Roxy. He was waiting by the gate to the yard, cigarette perched between his lips, accusation rich in his green eyes.
“Going somewhere, pet?”
She squared her shoulders, knowing full well she could slap just as hard as Hannah if it was required. “Yes. You got a problem with that?” She put her hands on her hips, ready for him to pull some more male-chauvinist crap on her.
Instead he grabbed her arm. “Please don't leave me here with them,” he said. “I'll do anything. Anything. Just take me with you.”
She broke into a smile, she could always rely on Roxy to be selfish. “Okay. Then let's go get drunk.”
Roxy's face brightened.
* * *
Despite looking like they'd all climbed down from the mountains for fresh meat, the locals of Blackwater were relatively harmless. They didn't take kindly to strangers out to cause trouble, but those willing to share a little wealth were welcome and sometimes even encouraged. Roxy had been to Blackwater enough times to know where to go and took Rachel directly to a small dive bar in the centre of town. It turned out to be a lot better than its tin-plated exterior professed.
He ordered a round of dark, dubiously cloudy ale and whiskey chasers while Rachel took a table at the back of the bar, watching the local nightlife crammed around her in impenetrable cliques. Roxy weaved his way through them to reach her, like a disciple with a medicinal offering. The first hit of liquor helped to ease her anxiety and clear her head. She was already missing the brothers. This was her first time being separated from them both and she didn't like it.
“So, pet, what do you fancy? A couple of hours recounting tales from the old days. You tell me what the nuns did for a good time, I'll show you some pictures of what John looks like with a beard. Maybe a couple of idle, flirtatious, but generally harmless propositions. A drinking competition or two. Or, if you like, we could skip all that nonsense and you could tell me what's got your knickers in such a twist.”
She downed a shot. There was no point hiding from him, he'd only pester her until she caved or lost her temper. Instead she looked him in the eye and dared herself to tell him.
“Do you think I'm a bad person?”
He laughed so loud the locals started glaring. “A bad person? You? Sweetheart, I don't think you've got a bad bone in your tiny body. You're not a doormat, and you're in no way stupid. But believe me—as a man who has danced the line between sinner and saint his whole life—there's nothing bad about you.”
“Even though I betrayed a person that trusted me? That loved me?”
His face scrunched up in confusion.
“Mark.”
“Mark?”
“My boyfriend. From S'aven. From before I met Charlie and John. He was in the van with Charlie when we rescued him.”
Roxy snorted and waved his hand. “He's the enemy, sweetheart, I wouldn't worry yourself about him.”
But she did worry. You couldn't spend four years living with someone and not care at all. “He went down for murdering his partner,” she said. This was what really bothered her. Mark had suffered for her crimes.
“Well, that's on him, pet. You can't help him if he's going around murdering people.”
“Roxy, he didn't kill his partner. I did!”
“Oh.” He dipped his finger into the head of his pint and frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Jesus Christ, how can you not remember? You even helped get rid of the body.”
He scoffed and took a deep drink. “If I tried to remember every body I disposed of, we'd be here all night.”
She regarded him for a moment and then shook her head. “Mark went to a work camp because of what I did. He hates me.”
Roxy pursed his lips, then drained the last of the alcohol from his tankard. He wiped away the beer still clinging to his beard and gave her a look that was unusually worldly for him. “Do you still love him?”
It was a good question. “I never loved him. Not like that. But he's not a bad guy, and he doesn't deserve what happened to him.”
“I could say that about a lot of us. Sounds to me like you might miss him.”
“I don't.” Although she wasn't sure she was being honest with herself.
“You sure, pet? You don't miss him at all? Not even a little bit?”
“No.” But she was lying and not very well. “Okay, maybe a little. It's not exactly easy living on the road all the time. And I miss the sex, of course I do. I mean, it's been a year. A year! And Mark was… well, what he lacked in common sense and conversation, he more than made up for elsewhere.”
“Well, sweetheart, if you just need to get laid, all you have to do is ask.”
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks. I'll bear that in mind.”
He took her hand and his playfulness faded. “Look, for what it's worth, I value you beyond words, and I'm as fickle as they come. Without you I'd be a dead man. And God knows what those brothers would do if you hadn't come along. There is no survivor here that hasn't got their fair share of darkness to carry with them. This world is hard, and we carry our burdens with us. We can't change the past, so there's very little point worrying about it.”
“Do you think Charlie made me stay here because he thinks I'm a weak link?”
“I think he asked you to stay because he cares about you. They both do. They love you. And they both have already lost too much. Losing you would break them. Might even break me.”
She gave him a sad smile and stood up. “I'm going to take a walk.”
“I'll come with you, could do with some air.”
“No.” She pressed her hand against his shoulder. Stay there. “It's okay. I just want a few minutes to clear my head. I'll see you back at the yard.”
He remained fixed in his seat. It was wrong to use her powers against him, but she didn't need a babysitter. She wasn't sure what she did need.
Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she braved the outdoors, the alcohol already loosening its grip on her sensibilities. As rough as Blackwater seemed on the outside, she felt comfortable slipping through the grimy streets. Fear had changed for her, morphing from the self-consuming concept that one day she'd be captured. Now it was transferred to the people she held dear, and her own moral compass. John and Charlie were as much a part of her now as her own father and sister had been. Her journey as a small child through the snow-covered forest was beginning again, and she felt a determination that the fate of her new family would not follow the path of the first. But her own fate troubled her too. She was different from her original family, stronger
than both her sister and her father. Even at a young age she'd understood this. Although she doubted her strength matched Charlie's or even threatened John's, she remained apart from them too. Her gender, her minimal history with them so far, left her once again on the sidelines.
There was an overwhelming pressure inside her to show her strength, to prove to them and others that she was more than a young woman on the wrong side of the law. She could be dangerous. She could be powerful and ruthless. And her powers were nothing compared to her determination, she just needed the opportunity to show it. To prove that she could transport herself from the frightened S'aven girl who hid behind a clueless lawman. To prove that she could be as reliable as the dubious heroes that liberated her. To feel herself in her new skin.
* * *
The Black Lion regulars kept an eye on the newcomers in the bar. One of their own showing up dead had shaken the community, and their guard was up. The town had welcomed travellers, pocketing their money and waving them off on their journeys, but now they treated strangers with suspicion. When the mousy woman left the bar, their focus fell in full on the long-haired vagabond with the heavily inked skin. He had an air of trouble about him, but that wasn't uncommon for folk passing through Blackwater. For a while his attention seemed lost, and some might have suspected he was drunker than he was. But the girl in the corner who nobody had seen understood the man had succumbed to a hidden force. The glassiness to his eyes after his friend had touched him was the sign of a man enchanted by Reacher powers. He was susceptible. He was knowledgeable. And he was exposed.
The invisible girl sidled up to the table, and as she drew closer, her concealment became contagious. With her powers she created a haze between the regulars in the bar and the lonely man at the table. With their attention elsewhere, they didn't see her take his hand. They didn't see her lead him outside. They didn't look down the side alley, catching her dropping to her knees, taking him in her mouth, and stealing all of his secrets.
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Every Storm Breaks (Reachers Book 3) Page 13