Foreign and Domestic_A Get Reacher Novel

by Scott Blade

  The skin underneath her eyes and above her nose was caked in dried eyeliner. It ran down her face like war paint. She looked like she had been captured and tortured by the enemy, and there was no escape. No future.

  Cameron smiled at her, ignoring the makeup, and said, “Good morning, ma’am.”

  A third man came out of the kitchen. He appeared to be the same age as Lucas. He wore black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. The guy must’ve been close to being legally blind—maybe not right at the door but seriously in the neighborhood. He wore no jacket but sported a blue button-down shirt with a red tie and khakis. He had no gun holstered in his belt like Cord and Lucas had, but something about his poise made Cameron believe he was one of them.

  Lucas said, “Claire, this is Jack Cameron and Kelly Li.”

  The woman rose up from the couch, and a look of relief came across her face like a doctor had just come to tell her that her husband had survived a high-risk surgery.

  Cameron said, “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  “And this guy’s Detective Douglas Graine. He’s one of us. One of the Army us. Not the Secret Service.”

  Cameron nodded at him and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  They didn’t shake hands. Graine’s glasses must’ve helped because he looked in Cameron’s direction. Cameron wondered how blind the guy was without his glasses. The other two agents carried sidearms—even Lucas, who must’ve been retired. But Graine didn’t have one. Cameron suspected a big part of the reason for that was his bad sight.

  Li nodded and said to her boss, “What’s this about?”

  Cord said, “Claire is married to Gibson Rowley.”

  Li cocked her head for a fraction of a second and then said, “The director?”

  Cord nodded and said, “Cameron’s here to help us.”

  Claire walked over to Cameron and stared up into his eyes. Her purplish lips quivered, and she almost couldn’t speak. But then she said, “Please. Please help us.”

  Cameron nodded and said, “I’ll do whatever I can, ma’am. Soon as I know what’s going on.”

  The third man said, “Better show him, John.”

  Lucas said, “Come with me.”

  Cord said, “I’m going to call Gibson. Be right behind you.”

  Lucas nodded and said, “Follow me, Mr. Cameron.”

  Cameron felt confused being called “Mister” by an older guy, but he made no show of it and followed Lucas ahead. They climbed up a staircase, first one flight and then the next.

  As he walked, he heard the wooden floor creak under his weight.

  At the top of the stairs, Lucas turned right and headed down a carpeted hall. They walked by an open doorway. Cameron glanced in and saw a bathroom. It was immaculate. Spotless. No scuffs on the tile. No trace of lint on the rug. The toilet seat was down and wrapped in one of those fluffy lid covers. It was blue and matched the rug and the shower curtain—not even the slightest shade of difference in any of them. They must’ve come in a set that the family had bought at Lowe’s or Home Depot or one of those places.

  Cameron stopped at the doorway and looked into the bathroom, looked for toothbrushes. There was only one. It was a girlie pink color. This wasn’t a shared bathroom, but it was in the hallway. Must’ve been used by the Rowley’s daughter.

  Lucas led Cameron into a teenage girl’s bedroom. There were surfing posters on the walls and posters of young guys on the beach with shirts off. But none of it was sexual, not like the rock star and celebrity posters marketed toward teenage girls. These posters were of real surfers. The Rowley’s daughter was into surfing. That was apparent not only from the posters but also from the broken surfboard that hung over the perfectly made bed.

  The bed was full-sized, and the surfboard might’ve been full-sized as well, but Cameron knew nothing about surfboards or surfers or surf for that matter. The board had been torn into more than one piece, but the Rowley’s daughter had only one of the pieces on display. It was yellow with twin white stripes down the sides. The broken piece looked like it had barely survived a violent episode because the edges were jagged. What exactly had broken the board, Cameron had no idea.

  He studied the rest of the room and saw a table lamp that shined a dim light over a desk with a black chair. There was a closed laptop on the desk with stickers that looked like more surfer references covering the casing. And there were pictures littering the walls—pictures of girls laughing and hanging out, of girls making funny faces, and of girls with surfboards on different beaches. Ordinary teenage girl stuff.

  Cameron stayed quiet and touched nothing in the room.

  Lucas said, “Do you know anything about the Rowleys?”

  Cameron shook his head.

  “The Rowley’s aren’t a famous family unless you live here. They’re known in political circles because they have a long family tradition. Cord says you’re from a family with a similar tradition.”

  Cameron said, “What tradition’s that?”

  Lucas said, “Cops.”

  Cameron stayed quiet.

  Lucas took a deep breath and continued, “The Rowleys aren’t cops, but they’re law enforcement.” He put his hands on his hips in a kind of cop stance and then asked, “Did you tell anyone you were coming?”

  Cameron said, “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  “Did you?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  Lucas said, “That’s good because we need your help. And we can’t use it if you told anyone.”

  Cameron said, “I’m going to ask again the same question I’ve been asking. What the hell’s going on here?”

  Lucas turned to the right like an old turret rusty from a long-ago war—WWII, maybe. Then he swiveled from the hips and grabbed a picture from off of the desk. It was a six-by-nine-inch frame with bright blue edges. The picture inside showed two people in the foreground and a small crowd of people far in the background. It was another beach setting. Lucas reached out his short arm, watch turned upside down on his right wrist, not the left. He handed the picture to Cameron.

  He said, “Look at it.”

  Cameron took it from him and examined it. There was writing in permanent marker on the bottom edge of the picture. It looked like an autograph. The two people in the foreground of the picture were a man and a girl. The man was an attractive guy in good shape. He wore a red ball cap with a logo Cameron was not familiar with and a white T-shirt. Everything was wrinkle-free, and the cap looked brand new. The girl was a teenager. Probably fourteen years old. She had shoulder-length blond hair and a serious tan. Her hair was damp like she’d just been swimming. She had a huge smile, and her face glowed. Her features were young but very similar to Mrs. Rowley’s. She had the same kind of prominence about her, but the innocence of youth showed in her face and eyes.

  Blue eyes, blond hair, and a tan. Mr. Rowley must’ve had a lot of problems with boys coming around for his daughter. Cameron closed his eyes for a moment and imagined Rowley’s daughter coming home with her first boyfriend and Rowley waiting for her with his Secret Service agents, his department-issued SIG Sauer resting on a table in plain sight of the suitor.

  Cameron opened his eyes again and looked at the picture. Directly behind the pair was the yellow surfboard, but it was whole and not in pieces as it was now. Cameron wondered if she’d broken it purposely as some kind of statement or maybe just to make it a piece of art. He doubted that it had broken in an accident involving surfing. That scenario just didn’t seem realistic, but then again, Cameron knew nothing about surfing—and for three main reasons.

  First, he had grown up in the top corner of Mississippi and had never lived close enough to surf to be drawn to the sport. Second, although Cameron didn’t have a known fear of water, he wasn’t all that fond of it, either, because he wasn’t too good of a swimmer. And third, he was far too tall to surf. Nature had blessed him with a few advantages and talents, but balancing his height on a board in the water wasn’t one of th
em.

  Cameron looked at the girl in the picture and noticed something else—something he wasn’t expecting. Her right arm was missing. Not the entire thing, just from the elbow. Where her forearm should have run from where her elbow was and attached to a hand and then to fingers, there was nothing but emptiness.

  Cameron read the autograph. It read, “To Raggie. Keep On! Love, Kelly Slater.”

  He didn’t recognize the name Kelly Slater. He double checked through his memory but couldn’t recall hearing it before.

  Lucas said, “That’s Raggie and some surfer. One of her heroes. World Champion Surfer. Raggie’s a surfer, too. She’s pretty good.”

  Lucas choked up for an instant. It was the kind of choked-up feeling that only happened once or twice in the life of a hardened Secret Service agent, and it happened to Lucas at that moment. But he never lost composure. He never lost his cool. He just experienced a brief flash of humanity.

  He said, “Raggie is the Rowley’s daughter.”

  Cameron heard footsteps down the hall and on the stairs. They weren’t Li’s. She was too tiny to make audible steps. These were much heavier. Probably Cord’s or Graine’s, but Cameron wasn’t sure if Graine could find his way up the stairs with those Coke-bottle glasses. He figured it had to be Cord. And then he heard another set of footfalls on the stairs. They were lighter and probably belonged to Li as she followed her boss.

  Cameron said, “She’s a surfer?”

  Lucas said, “A damn good one. We three used to go watch her. I’ve seen her surf all over the world. I saw her in Australia, California, and South Africa.” He paused and then said, “We’ve all seen her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Cord reached the room with Li behind him. He said, “She’s been kidnapped.”

  Chapter 26

  CAMERON STARED AT RAGGIE’S PICTURE AGAIN. She was a young, beautiful girl with a bright future—no question. Any person with any kind of sense could see that just by looking at her face, her clean room, and her accomplishments. Cameron could feel the love in the house. Now Raggie was missing. Kidnapped was the word Cord had used.

  A cell phone rang somewhere in the house, tightening the silence between them as they waited for someone to answer it. The phone was somewhere out past Raggie’s bathroom and down the hall and down the stairs. The sound bounced off of the walls and carried throughout the house, coming into existence like a screaming newborn. First, it wasn’t there, and then it was.

  It rang twice before it was picked it up. Cameron doubted it was Mrs. Rowley who had answered since the information he’d just received let him know exactly why she looked as though she had been crying recently and explained why she hadn’t cleaned her face. Most likely every time she washed the eyeliner off of her face and reapplied it, she started crying again, causing more streaking makeup. So why continue to clean it?

  Cameron said, “So where’s the FBI?”

  Cord said, “We haven’t told them.”

  “But this is their bag. The FBI should’ve been your first phone call.”

  Cord nodded and clasped his hands together by his stomach. He looked at Lucas, whose hands were clamped together under his extended gut, fingers interlocked. Some kind of bodyguard stance, Cameron figured, and from the looks of Lucas, he’d had a lot of assignments standing sentry duty in his career. Cameron was a guy born into a life of law enforcement. He’d spent time discovering things and learning how to investigate crimes, but he’d never had much experience guarding people. He was sure he had inherited a gene somewhere from deep down in his family history and had the instincts to protect, but specific training in protection wasn’t something he had any experience in. He was only nineteen after all.

  Lucas said nothing, but Li said, “So why haven’t we called the FBI yet?”

  Cameron said, “Because there’s more to it. Something involving Jack Reacher.”

  “That’s right. Follow me. Rowley is going to call us in a minute,” said Cord.

  He stepped back and turned and led Cameron and Li back down the hall. They turned a wide corner and stepped onto a landing with a bedroom entrance. The door was open.

  The room was large. It was the master suite for sure. Cameron looked around. The ceilings in the space were higher than those on the rest of the floor, almost twice the height. Everything in the room was clean and polished and gleaming. The furniture was eclectic with a heavy emphasis on dark wood. A full-length mirror stood framed on the wall next to another doorway, which Cameron thought probably led to the master bath.

  Cord waited at the door for the others to enter and then closed it. He said, “I don’t want Claire to hear this. She can’t know what we know.”

  Cameron stayed quiet.

  Li waited, her eyes locked on her boss.

  Cord took out his smartphone and pushed a little button at the bottom. A small kickstand whipped out, and he set the phone down on the dresser. He said, “Open Skype.”

  The phone responded in a generic female voice and opened a blue application called Skype. Cameron had heard of it, but he’d never used it before. Li, Cord, and Lucas faced the phone screen and watched as the application came up.

  Cord said, “Call Gibson.”

  The phone made a notification sound, and Cameron waited.

  The Skype application rang for a moment and then the screen showed a face. It was Gibson Rowley. Two things about him were remarkable to Cameron. The first was how young he was, in years, to be the director of the United States Secret Service, and the second was how old his face was. It reminded Cameron of the current president. The guy had been one of the youngest presidents ever elected, but in the last seven years, the job had robbed him of his youth.

  Cameron wasn’t much on American politics. You vote here. You vote there. Election cycles came and went. Politicians said one thing and then did another. And still American life went on and on—nothing ever changed. None of that interested Cameron. In Cameron’s world, things were as they were. He went where he wanted, and he did what he wanted, and he bothered no one.

  Gibson Rowley was younger than Cord. Maybe a good amount, but less than ten years, he’d guess. The two men had exchanged only a couple of words to each other in front of Cameron, but already he sensed a camaraderie there—like brothers or soldiers.

  Rowley had a five o'clock shadow, and behind him was a slew of people. Some looked like Secret Service, but for the most part, all Cameron saw was office workers. They were all finely dressed and moving about in a slow hurry—like everything was important but not urgent. Cameron couldn’t figure out the layout of the office they were in, but it was unusual. They moved in tight quarters. And then Cameron noticed that one guy in the distance looked familiar. It was his profile. The guy didn’t look at the camera, but Cameron wouldn’t have expected he would because Rowley had been on his cellphone or computer screen or tablet, and it was considered rude to look in on someone else’s business when they were in the middle of a conversation. It’d be like listening in on someone's phone conversation in public. On the one hand, they were in a public place, and a finders keepers mentality seemed to hold a certain jurisdiction in public places nowadays. On the other hand, however, when someone was on a phone in public, whispering to someone on the other end, it was obviously a private conversation, and it was considered rude to eavesdrop.

  Rowley said, “Sean.”

  Cord said, “It’s me. I’m here with Cameron.”

  “Mr. Cameron?” Rowley asked.

  Cameron said, “Yeah. I’m here.”

  Rowley said, “I’m sorry to have to put you in this position. Has Cord explained to you what’s going on?”

  Cord said, “I told him about Raggie, but that’s all.”

  Cameron said, “I’m sorry about your daughter, but what does this have to do with me?”

  “You’ve gotta understand something,” Rowley said. “Five years ago, I joined the United States Secret Service, and two years ago, I became a special agent
in charge of the protection detail of the first family. And last year, I took over as director.” Rowley paused a beat. “But thirteen years ago, I had a different job. A job I now I wish I hadn’t had.”

  Cameron stayed quiet.

  Rowley said, “Sean?”

  Cord said, “Yep.”

  “Take everyone and leave the room. Leave Cameron and me to talk. Alone.”

  Cord started to voice an objection, but he stopped and looked at Li. She followed him, and they walked out of the room, leaving Cameron alone with the smartphone.

  “Are they gone?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “You’re young. A lot younger than I thought.”

  Cameron stayed quiet.

  Rowley said, “I’m going to tell you a story. And then you’ll understand why I need your help.”

  Cameron nodded.

  Rowley said, “Thirteen years ago, I was in the United States Army. Special ops. I was a Captain for the Third Special Forces Airborne in Africa.”

  Cameron said, “Green Berets.”

  Rowley nodded and said, “We were stationed in West Africa, operating in continuing training exercises.”

  “But?”

  “But we weren’t doing just that—that was our public face. We were trying to help the rebels of a small country fight a war. Of course, our efforts weren’t enough. Not really.”

  Rowley looked behind him to make sure no one was listening.

  He said, “I was in charge of an elite unit. We were supporting a CIA op. Or rather, they were supporting us because we were doing all of the dirty work. We were there to help the rebels eliminate a target named Julian Sowe. He was the president of a little country called West Ganbola. A real son of a bitch. This guy would spend the country’s tiny budget on weapons from Iraq and Syria. He tested them on his own people. Gassed a hundred people once just for the hell of it. Not to mention he isn’t a friend of the United States.