by Dan Ames
“Are you–”
“It doesn’t matter,” she glanced down at her hand. Tallon followed her gaze. Her ring finger was empty, but he knew that’s what she was looking at.
A rogue wave rose out of the ocean and crashed into the beach, followed by a low hissing sound as white foam crept up onto the sand.
“What happened to him?” she finally asked.
“He’s dead and I don’t know why. That’s why I’m here.”
He briefly outlined what had happened.
“They’re scum,” she said. “Absolutely scum.”
“Who is?”
“That’s why they killed him.” Monica’s voice had risen in pitch and she seemed determined not to cry. But her wide face was beginning to tremble. “They recognized an honorable man when they saw one and knew he wouldn’t go along with whatever bullshit they were trying to pull off. So they killed him. Of course they did. And I warned him!”
Tears came into her eyes. The man with the dog was now gone. The wind was picking up speed off the water and there was a fresh chill to the air.
“Warned him about who?” Tallon asked.
“The creeps he was hanging out with. I knew they were bad news.”
“Who were they?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. For the first time, Tallon recognized a lie. But he also understood why.
She was scared of them, whoever they were.
“Does this have anything to do with Operation Reacher?” he asked her.
Confusion appeared in Monica’s eyes. Honest confusion.
“What?” she asked.
“Never mind.”
“You’re Tallon?” she asked him. “Michael Tallon, right?”
He nodded.
“Carl spoke about you. Said when things got bad he might come out and see if you could help. Sounds like he almost made it.”
Tallon looked at her.
“Almost.”
25
Jack Reacher.
It seemed to Lauren Pauling as if a day didn’t go by that she wasn’t reminded of him.
Sometimes, it was just a fleeting memory of their time together, or a thought was provoked by a news story. Even worse, when she was on a date, or with someone of the opposite sex, sometimes she compared them to Reacher, which was a horrible idea.
No one compared to him, and the idea that anyone could was useless. Usually, when she made the comparison, she recognized that she was already mentally checking out of the relationship. It was a sign that she wasn’t interested.
Pauling had ended the session with Gina Brody a bit abruptly after she realized the woman had no more information for her. Just a vague sense her husband might want to kill her, and the phrase Operation Reacher heard over the phone.
Not much to go on. It had taken some effort but Pauling had begged off from the conversation, claiming she had another meeting but promised she would follow up, which she certainly intended to do. But she was going to follow up with a referral of three other private investigators she could recommend, and that was it.
That was one thing Pauling was certain of; she wanted nothing more to do with the Brody family. She fired off separate emails to both of them, with three suggestions for private investigators better suited to handle their case.
She wasn’t sure that would satisfy them, but she wanted to make her intentions clear.
When Logan Brody responded, which Pauling was one hundred percent sure he would, she planned to ask him point blank about Operation Reacher. There would be no answer, of that she was certain.
Still, she had to ask.
In the meantime, she went to her computer and ran several Internet searches, through both public and private databases for the term Operation Reacher.
There were no hits.
Pauling was about to put an end to her cyber sleuthing when she decided to try one last thing. She still had limited access to some of the FBI’s databases, thanks to a loophole she’d been very careful not to close.
She punched in Operation Reacher and waited.
As she watched the computer icon that represented a search was being processed, her thoughts returned to Jack Reacher. It had been a long time now since she’d seen him. Since then, his name had popped up here and there, even in a couple of cases, like the last one she’d worked on with Michael Tallon.
Since then, though, there had been no word.
And she occasionally wondered if he would ever drop in on her again. Probably not, she knew. He preferred new territory, not old.
Pauling winced inwardly.
As a woman, it was never a good idea to refer to yourself as old territory, she thought. Not good for morale.
Suddenly, the computer stopped searching and a single entry appeared.
There were no words, just a linked case number.
She clicked on it.
Two words appeared, in all caps:
ACCESS RESTRICTED.
26
Monica wanted Tallon to take her to his hotel. She was worried that someone at the bar had seen her slip out the back door and leave with him, so she wanted to be cautious and if someone was waiting for her at her condo, they would leave.
But Tallon wasn’t crazy about that.
For starters, it was a small town.
If Monica had been able to pick his rental car in the parking lot, then the local grapevine probably would have supplied Tallon’s location, even his room number, for that matter.
“I’d rather take you to your place, make sure you’re safe. After that, I’ll go to my hotel,” he said. What he left out was that if someone was waiting for him at his new digs, he wanted to be able to handle them on his own. An innocent bystander complicates the matter and could make that type of situation even more dangerous.
Better to knock off the obstacles one by one.
“Okay, I guess,” Monica said. She directed Tallon back toward the way they’d come, and had him turn into the complex of four condos across the street from the ocean.
“Pull around to the back,” Monica said. “There.” She pointed toward a single row of parking spaces set well back, behind a construction bin.
Tallon followed directions, parked the vehicle, and followed Monica to the back door of the second condo in from the street. The building was low and squat, but someone at some point had decided to add some charm to the structure with fake shingle siding, white trim, and nautical-themed door knockers.
They were too far from the ocean to hear waves, but Tallon could still taste the salt in the air. This was the kind of place that would bear the brunt of storms rolling in from the Atlantic. Whoever owned the place probably bitched about having to re-paint the exterior every three or four years.
Monica unlocked the door and Tallon followed her inside. He smelled coffee and Monica’s perfume. She shut the door behind them, threw the dead bolt that thudded with a surprisingly heavy thunk, and then flicked on the lights.
It was a basic condo – kitchen right off the back door, an open counter facing a small dining area and beyond that, a living room with a couch and a television. Everything was done in seashore pastels, faded and past their prime.
The space was bigger than Tallon expected. The kitchen had clean, white cupboards, gray granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. It was also immaculate.
The dining room table was rustic, with four chairs and a bowl of fruit in the middle. The walls held a mixture of art work, most of it original. Probably not expensive, but well-chosen. Like someone had put a fair amount of thought into their acquisition and arrangement.
“Let me check upstairs real quick,” she said.
Monica swept past him and bounded up the stairs that were on the left side of the room, where just beyond them Tallon saw a powder room.
“All clear,” Monica said, as she came back down the stairs. “I need a drink.”
She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of char
donnay. “Beer?” she asked, guessing correctly.
Tallon laughed. “Sure.”
They took their drinks into the living room and Tallon asked, “So exactly who were you afraid was following?”
“There’s no shortage of psychos around here,” Monica said. “Take your pick.”
“But you said Fackrell – Carl – was dealing with creeps.”
“He sure was.”
“Yeah, but are they dangerous?” Tallon asked. He was drinking a light beer and it tasted refreshing after the beach. Did anything go better with the beach than a beer?
“Well, they have guns and they know how to use them, if that’s what you mean,” Monica said. “And I don’t think they carry their weapons around for the good of society. Whatever their agenda is, I’m pretty sure it’s bad news.”
Tallon decided to switch his approach. “So were you and Carl engaged? In love?”
“For awhile,” she answered. Monica took a drink of her wine and didn’t add anything.
“What happened?”
She let out a long, slow breath.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” Tallon said.
She waved him off.
“I found out he’d changed. He wasn’t the man I loved anymore.”
“How so?”
Monica looked at one of the paintings. A sand dune with a shorebird running away from an ocean wave.
“I think he was planning on killing a whole bunch of people.”
27
Pauling awoke and immediately knew something was wrong.
Her new security system had done its job. The active light was still going strong, and Pauling didn’t feel there had been any attempted intrusions. She slipped out of bed, did a walkthrough of the entire condo, and was comforted by the fact that everything was in its place.
The coffeemaker, set on a timer, had done its job and a fresh pot was ready.
Pauling poured herself a cup, and went into the small library off the living room where she had her home office. She settled into the office chair and fired up the desktop computer. While it came to life, she sipped her coffee and thought more about Operation Reacher.
Such an odd name to come out of nowhere and under such strange circumstances.
Logan and Gina Brody were unusual, both individually and as a couple. It made no sense to Pauling why Logan Brody would name a plan to kill his wife and her lover Operation Reacher.
What did Reacher have to do with it? Nothing. Pauling was sure of it.
Still, how bizarre that a prospective client would come to her office and mention the name Reacher. Lauren Pauling’s interaction with Jack Reacher had made some news, albeit not huge headlines. In the underground world of ex-military and ex-FBI, it was well known, however.
Pauling wasn’t a big believer in coincidences, though, and something felt wrong.
Just like when she’d opened her eyes this morning.
It also wasn’t her habit to get in front of a computer first thing in the morning, but Pauling had that feeling she’d sometimes gotten with the Bureau, just before a big break in a case suddenly appeared.
She checked her email, and sure enough, there was a new message that must have come through overnight.
It was a response to a general query she’d submitted to the FBI’s database. Pauling had entered a variety of search terms related to Reacher and had set search parameters, namely anything that had come across the servers in the past month.
She’d done it carefully, using a cloaked identity, and routed through a series of anonymous servers.
The query had received one response.
The feeling she’d had was now verified because what she saw on her screen was a very familiar name.
Michael Tallon.
28
Charles June chuckled.
Years back he’d taken up fly fishing, had really gotten intense about the sport. He’d gone from buying flies, to tying them himself and had even begun to earn a reputation for his quality of craftsmanship.
Seeing Pauling click on the message he’d sent her, giving her the reason to contact Michael Tallon, was like seeing the swirl of water around a fly just before a trout took it into its hungry mouth.
June had grown up in Montana and now, he missed the mountains. It had been the only real home he’d known. As a kid who was different from the rest, he never really fit in. He’d been picked on, bullied, until an adult finally stepped in and made a difference in his life. It was the only time he’d felt anything resembling love.
And then that had been taken away from him, too. A senseless murder that ruined a good man’s legacy.
June had never been able to let it go and he wasn’t about to today.
His schedule for the day was full of strategic maneuvers and he had only just begun.
It was time to begin putting together the final pieces of the plan. He needed to bring his New York team down now that their work with Pauling was done.
It was time for Logan and Gina Brody to take their game to the next level.
29
“He said the plan was to kill a lot of innocent people.”
Monica repeated herself, and Tallon still couldn’t believe it.
The information simply didn’t square with the Carl Fackrell he’d worked briefly with in South America. And it certainly didn’t make sense with what Roy had told him. It hadn’t sounded like Fackrell was off the reservation. But so many special forces commandos had trouble readjusting to life on the outside. In fact, some of them never did because they just kept doing the same kind of work, except for private businesses. It was still the army, just a private one.
“How do you know that?” he finally asked.
“One night, we’d gone to a party and the guys were doing shots of tequila. Like, lots and lots of tequila,” Monica explained. “Carl got really drunk, as in fall-down-plastered.”
Monica took a sip of her wine, glanced at it, as if she felt guilty for talking about intoxication while sipping on a chardonnay.
“When we got home, he kept the party going with beers and he started talking about his new thing,” she said. “That’s what he called it. ‘This thing.’ As in, he was doing this thing, and it had to do with a new group of ex-military guys. Although he said they weren’t all ‘real’ military, some of them were amateurs, is what he said. I think he was really disturbed by some of them. Like, Carl wasn’t afraid of anybody, but the way he was talking about them that night, he just seemed really bothered by what they’d said or done.”
“Did he mention what branch the real military guys were from?”
“No. It sounded like they were from all over, and that it wasn’t the kind of organization where people talked about their past all that much. It seemed really secretive. In fact, it occurred to me…”
She hesitated.
“We’re just talking, it’s okay,” Tallon said.
“Well, I wondered if some of the secrets came out that night. The night they all drank too much. And maybe Carl heard something he wasn’t supposed to.”
“That can happen,” Tallon said. He’d known plenty of military guys with drinking problems who sometimes blabbed too much at the bar. Usually showing off for women.
Monica got up, and paced around the room. Rolled her shoulders forward and back.
“The next morning he was super weird about it,” she continued. “Really aggressive in questioning me about what he’d said. He’d been so drunk that he didn’t even remember what we were talking about. But I think he had a vague memory of maybe mentioning his new gig, and he wanted to make sure he hadn’t told me anything important. Which he hadn’t.”
“But he wasn’t scared,” Tallon said.
“No, maybe a little panicked,” Monica said. “Or stressed. But Carl wasn’t scared of anything.”
“Did you tell him what he’d said?”
“No, I felt sorry for him. But he kept asking if he’d said anything.”
“Like that he wa
s going to kill a bunch of innocent people?” Tallon asked. “That seems like kind of important information to just let slip out.”
“He never came out and said that,” Monica snapped at him. And then her face relaxed. “Not outright.”
“What did he say exactly?”
She faced Tallon, put her hands on her hips. Tallon had to admit, he couldn’t fault Fackrell for falling for Monica. She was a formidable young woman.
“Just that the plan was to carry on some important work that would change the world, and that there would be some sacrifices made. Like, a lot of sacrifices that some people would have no idea they were going to make. And that’s when he became really agitated. Like, it was news to him that was the plan.”
That sounded ominous. “And what did you say?”
“I asked him what he meant, but he sort of shut his mouth after that, and passed out a couple of minutes later.”
Tallon caught something in her voice, and he thought about what she’d just said.
“You said, ‘sort of shut his mouth.’ Did he say something else?”
Monica scooped up her glass of wine and drained it in one long gulp.
“He mentioned a name. Or at least that’s what I think it was.”
Tallon waited.
Finally, Monica looked directly at him.
“Borken.”
30
The name meant nothing to Tallon.
“Borken?” he asked. “What’s a Borken?”
Monica shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I intended to find out and then the next day, Carl was gone. His apartment was empty. And then you showed up asking about him, and now here we are.”
She spread her arms out and gestured around her apartment.
Tallon had some more questions, but Monica’s phone buzzed and she looked at it. “Oh great, it’s my Mom. I’ve been putting off talking to her ever since Carl disappeared. Do you want to meet for breakfast tomorrow?” she asked. “I’ve got to take this.”