by Scott Blade
I was never one for meditation. However, walking from place to place was what I imagined surfing would be to surfers. The sun beating down. The wind blowing. The trees. The desert sand. The mountain terrain. It had a way of cleaning the mind, of making everything clear.
I approached the rear of the car. The engine idled, and the exhaust pooled behind it and rose up into the brake lights, creating a dark red smoke.
The night sky was clear and starry. No moon that I could see. Probably somewhere hiding in the dark among the stars.
I walked up to the rear of the car, staying in the rearview so I could be seen by the driver. I didn’t want to scare her. I figured it was a woman because of the type of car. No kind of statistics told me that. It was just a guess based on presumptions, and of course, they ended up being wrong.
I walked up to the rear and stood near the trunk. I bent down and peeked in through the window. The interior was dark, and the backseat was empty. No passengers. The only person inside was the driver. I couldn’t make out any details from this angle.
I knocked on the trunk because I didn’t want to alarm the driver.
No response.
I knocked again.
No response.
I walked around the passenger side and over to the driver side window. I bent down and peered in. The dash lights were a low ambient blue that reflected across the driver’s body and face.
He was knocked out but alive. I saw his chest expand as he inhaled—slow but there.
A gun lay in the footwell near his feet, jammed underneath the accelerator and the brake. It looked like a Glock 22, a .40 caliber pistol. I didn’t touch it. Didn’t want any confusion from a driver with a possible head wound in case he woke up.
The passenger door was ajar. The open door light blinked, and an annoying ding sound emitted from the dash.
Had there been a passenger?
The engine didn’t seem to be at any risk of catching fire, but I didn’t want to take a chance. So I reached in and turned the key in the ignition. The engine noise died down to an echo of nothing.
I moved my hand up and grabbed the guy’s suit jacket and shook him. I said, “Hey. You with me?”
The guy grunted and twisted like he was in a deep sleep, but he didn’t wake up. To be safe, I popped the lock on his door and quickly backed up, giving the door room as it swung open. I reached down and grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out.
He wasn’t very tall, not compared to me. He was probably five feet nine inches. Nothing special about his height, but his weight was a much different story and belonged in an entirely different part of the library. He must’ve weighed two hundred and fifty pounds—more than me. For a guy that height, he was much heavier than what would be considered healthy. Of course, I tried not to judge others on their lifestyle choices. Live and let live had become my unsung credo. The world out there was a much more interesting place without worrying about what someone else did, and I believed that variety was the spice that made life so interesting. However, in that moment and in that situation where I needed to move this guy in order to keep him safe, I wished that he might’ve taken more stairs and eaten less fast food.
On top of that, I was tired. I struggled a little getting him out of the car. I had to set him down and drag him from behind his shoulders to get him a decent distance away from the car. Once I had dragged him far enough away, I laid him down on the shoulder of the road with his head in what paramedics called the recovery position. He breathed normally.
I said, “Hey. Hey.”
No response.
I felt his pulse. It was weak—weaker than it should’ve been but strong enough to be alive. Probably, it was weak enough to need a hospital.
I looked around. Nothing in the distance but darkness. No oncoming headlights. No sign of nearby houses. Nowhere to go for help.
I shook the guy, soft at first then a little harder—and harder still.
No response.
I shook him again a little harder. Nothing.
I repeated the process and still nothing.
I looked down at the guy. His face was bloated and had turned a slight shade of blue. He needed an ambulance. I reached down and searched his coat. It was a tweed thing. He looked like he might’ve been an underpaid college professor. He wore stonewashed blue jeans and the tweed jacket with a whitish, possibly grayish tint. I couldn’t tell in the dark. He didn’t wear a tie.
I searched his jacket pockets for a cell phone. I found one in his inside right pocket, slipped it out. It was an iPhone with a cover with a sports logo on it—Dallas, maybe. I didn’t really follow sports since that required having a TV. And I didn’t own a thing except for a toothbrush, my bank card, and my driver’s license. And the clothes on my back, but even they were temporary.
I touched the screen, and a lock screen popped up with a wallpaper of Mickey Mouse. It read slide to unlock. I swiped across the screen, and a new screen popped up asking for a passcode.
“What’s your code?” I asked.
Of course, the guy made no sound.
I remembered reading something about a month ago in a magazine I had found on a park bench in Nashville. It was a tech magazine, and it had piqued my interest because of the cover. It was a picture of a woman running for president, and she used to be the CEO of a major tech company. Hewlett Packard, I think.
As the son of a strong woman, I was always interested in stories of women getting ahead in a male-dominated world. I don’t know why. Maybe the man in me liked women in charge of things in the same way that I was attracted to women with a badge.
In that same magazine, there was an article showcasing Apple’s new fall lineup. And one thing I read about—which wasn’t really new, just promoted—was that the iPhone 6 had fingerprint recognition. I didn’t recall what it was actually called until I read it on this guy’s iPhone.
It said Touch ID.
I grabbed the guy’s left hand and put his index finger on the phone’s only button at the bottom center. I thought it was called a home button. The phone shook like a scolding parent saying, “No. No. Try again.”
Then I saw the word emergency written at the bottom of the screen. I pressed it, and a call screen came up. I dialed 911.
A voice said, “911. What’s your emergency?”
Before I could answer, a cold hand grabbed my wrist. I looked down and saw the guy was awake.
He said, “No. No. Help.”
I looked at him and said, “You need an ambulance, mister.”
He shook his head and said, “Have to stop them.”
I stayed quiet.
He said, “Have to save her.”
The guy started to reach into his other inside jacket pocket, but his head plopped back down onto the hard ground below, and his eyes rolled back before he could get out whatever it was he was trying to find.
I put the mouthpiece near my lips and said, “Better send paramedics. Now! There’s been a car accident, and this guy is in bad shape.”
The voice on the phone asked, “Where are you?”
I looked around even though I knew there were no landmarks to see. It was more out of habit. The kind of thing a man does in an emergency. But I might as well have been lost at sea and looking around at nothing but ocean for miles around.
I said, “No landmarks around. I’m on Route 66 somewhere east of Albuquerque.”
The voice said, “No problem. I’m sending help based on the GPS on your phone. So leave it on.”
I stayed quiet.
Then the voice said, “Sir, I see here that this phone is registered with Homeland Security. Can you tell me your badge number?”
I paused, looked down at the guy, and then I said, “It’s not my phone. I found it on this guy who ran his car into a tree.”
The voice said, “I see. Is the guy conscious?”
“No. He’s out cold.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anyon
e else in the vehicle with him?”
“No.”
“Are you injured?”
“No.”
The voice paused a long beat.
I stayed quiet.
The voice came back and said, “Sir, can you identify yourself?”
I asked, “Why?”
The voice said nothing, and then a new voice came on the line. A male voice.
He said, “Sir, this is Lt. Daniel Moreno. I’m the night watch CO here in Encino. Which is about forty miles southwest of your position. That phone’s GPS shows us that you’re near Cedar Corner. My nearest ambulance is from there. They’ll be with you shortly. But the nearest sheriff’s deputy is coming from here, and he’s leaving now.”
I stayed quiet, still wondering why this guy’s phone was registered with Homeland Security. So I asked.
“Lieutenant, why’s this guy’s phone listed with Homeland Security?”
Moreno said, “The phone you’re using is registered with the United States Marshals Service.”
“Marshal?” I asked.
I reached down and searched the guy’s other jacket pockets and found his wallet, opened it. A US Marshals Service business card identified him as John Martin, retired.
Chapter 3
THE CEDAR CORNER PARAMEDICS ARRIVED in about twenty minutes.
Which was better than I expected but not much. A small town with limited resources that was a good distance away from my location wouldn’t be the best imaginable savior in a rescue situation. However, a couple of paramedics on-call all night with nothing to do might be inclined to respond fast. They probably waited with a combination of coma-inducing boredom and eagerness for action—kind of like the military. So they got the call—and not just from anyone but from the night watch commander at the nearest sheriff’s office—and the subject of the call was more than just an automobile accident. It involved a retired US marshal and a tree and an unknown, middle-of-the-night passerby.
The paramedics jumped out of the square blue van with medical emblems displayed all over the sides and the back, and they leaped into action like power tools that had been neglected and were eager for jobs.
They went right to John Martin and lifted his head slightly and checked his pulse and started to talk to him. One looked at his watch while counting Martin’s heartbeat, and the other guy did something else. I wasn’t sure what.
I looked around. No sheriff’s cruisers coming at us. Not yet.
I said, “Where are the sheriff’s deputies? I was told they’d come out for this guy.”
One paramedic ignored me. The other didn’t look back but spoke over his shoulder. He said, “They told us you should wait here for them.”
I stayed quiet.
“They told us you should stay and wait,” he repeated.
I said, “Where are you takin’ him?”
The paramedic said, “First, we’ll take him to Cedar Corner and let the ER doctor look at him. If he says he’s fine, then we keep him there.”
“You’ve got an ER in Cedar Corner?”
“It’s small. Just one floor of a federal building. But as long as this guy doesn’t have major internal bleeding or extensive head injuries that’re critical, then we’ll keep him and care for him there.”
“Can I ride with you guys into town?”
The paramedics began lifting the guy onto a stretcher. The one said, “We don’t care what you do.”
The other finally spoke. He said, “The cop wanted him to stay behind.”
Then the same guy hushed his voice to a lower octave but not low enough to where I couldn’t hear him, and he said, “He could be dangerous. He could’ve attacked this guy.”
The first paramedic looked at me and shrugged. He said to me, “Help us put him in the back.”
I went to the ambulance and held the back doors open wide, preventing them from swinging. I didn’t need to move too far back because my arm span allowed me to hold both doors open through the whole procedure.
They lifted and rolled the guy and the stretcher onto the floorboards of the ambulance and wheeled him all the way forward. The first paramedic hopped in after Martin and tapped his foot on a mechanism at the base of the back wheels, and I heard a rusty snick which I guessed signaled that the wheels were locked in place, preventing the stretcher from rolling.
He said, “Hop in if you want to ride with us.”
I jumped in the back and sat across from the first paramedic, and the second one shut the doors behind us.
I heard the second one scramble around the outside of the ambulance and open the driver door and hop in. He fired up the engine and hit the gas, and we were on the blacktop, headed for some part of Route 66 called Cedar Corner.
Chapter 4
RETIRED UNITED STATES MARSHAL JOHN MARTIN woke up and repeated his early concerns.
He looked at me with weak eyes and said, “You’ve got to get to her first.”
I said, “Who? Get to who? Who’s she?”
The first paramedic said, “He needs to be silent.” And he started to put an oxygen mask over Martin’s mouth, but Martin reached up with a shaky arm and grabbed the guy’s hand. He shook his head. The paramedic said, “Sir, it appears as if you’ve had a mild cardiac event.”
I looked up at the paramedic, realizing that must’ve been why Martin had been swerving all over the road. He’d probably been speeding to help whoever this girl was that he kept mentioning, and then he’d seen me on the road and was struck with a mild heart attack. It had caused him to drive recklessly, and he’d crashed into a tree.
In a way, it made me feel a little guilty, like what if it had all happened because he had unexpectedly seen me, a hulking stranger, standing in the road in the middle of the night? What if that had been the trigger for his heart attack?
I shrugged it off. Couldn’t help it now if that was the case.
He was both a lucky and an unlucky guy. Unlucky because of the heart attack. Lucky because the tree had been there to save his life. It had stopped the car and stopped him from ramming into another vehicle or hitting a ditch and flipping his car. Either way, he could’ve been dead, and in my book, any guy who survives a career in law enforcement, a heart attack, and a car accident to boot was a pretty lucky guy. No matter which way you cut it.
Martin said, “Wait. Wait.”
He breathed heavy like it was his first breath after being submerged deep underwater for months. He reached out toward me with his left hand like he wanted to grab me but couldn’t reach. He said, “You. I need your. Help.”
I moved down the bench past some medical equipment, some of which was foreign to me and some I had seen in movies or in my limited experiences in medical settings. I neared the side of his stretcher. He relaxed his hand.
The ambulance sirens were off because there was no traffic, not even a car on the highway, but the lights swirled through the air, ricocheting red beams through the front windshield and into the rear of the vehicle.
The red lights flashed across the paramedics face as he listened.
John Martin said, “Help her.”
I asked, “Who? Help who?”
He said, “Kara. Kara. She’s in danger. They know. They know.”
He paused and swallowed hard and then he said, “They know where she is. They’re coming tonight. Right now.”
I said, “Who is?”
“Them. The bad guys. Carter.”
I said, “Who is she?”
He said, “Kara. Kara’s witness. Protection.”
I said, “Where?”
John Martin said, “Twenty years. She’s been off the books for twenty years. I promised her she’d be safe. Her and her little girl.”
I said, “Martin, where are they?”
John Martin’s eyes faded in and out, his pupils dilated.
The paramedic said, “He needs to breathe now.”
I said, “Where’s Kara? Tell me!”
He looked at me once more and said, “Diner
. Waitress. Please.”
Then he was gone—out cold—and from the look of him, he wasn’t coming back anytime soon. Not soon enough for Kara, the waitress.
The paramedic hovered over him and put two fingers on his neck. Then he forced a clear oxygen breather over Martin’s face and watched as Martin took slow breaths.
The paramedic said, “What the hell is he talkin’ about?”
I said, “His duty, I guess.”
I was no expert on US Marshals, but I knew they were law enforcement officials, and like all law enforcement officials and soldiers, they lived in a brotherhood. And a brotherhood carried with it a code of honor.
I was unknown to my father—a guy named Jack Reacher, an Army man. My mother had known me, however. She had been a Marine and a cop, so I was all too familiar with the brotherhoods and the codes of honor among them.
I was on the road with no particular place to go, looking for a man I might never find, but I figured one thing I could find was this woman and her daughter. I could find them for John Martin and warn them to get out.
Chapter 5
TWENTY YEARS WAS A LONG TIME. And that was what John Martin had said. Therefore, I assumed he was talking about Kara and her daughter. In which case, Kara would be over forty, probably, and her daughter would be older than me or my age at a minimum, and maybe well into adulthood.
I couldn’t be sure because I knew nothing about the case John Martin was talking about, and I knew nothing about the good guys and nothing about the bad guys. All I knew for sure was that something had forced him to drive all night down Route 66, alone and not in the best of health. My guess was that he had known about his heart condition but that he was obsessed with Kara’s protection for some unknown reason. Perhaps she was that one case that had haunted him even after he retired, or perhaps he had become personally involved with her and her daughter. Perhaps he felt a sense of responsibility for their well-being. Perhaps it was more than professional to him. In some way, it was personal.
I could only guess because at that moment there were only two certainties about John Martin. One was that he wasn’t going to be able to help anybody, not tonight, and not for a while. The second was that John Martin had no idea who to trust.