Gone Forever_A Get Jack Reacher Novel

by Scott Blade

  Why did the guy try to get me to hang myself if he had just shot Gemson? I had no idea.

  Best I could figure was that it was a message or some kind of sick turn-on that the guy had. Like he got off on making his victims kill themselves. A lot of hired killers in history had their own signature styles; suicide was the Mexican’s.

  Since Gemson was an armed deputy, I guessed that the guy didn’t want to take a chance with him, so he put a bullet in his head.

  I lowered the gun and swung the car door open.

  I leaned in and checked Gemson’s pulse.

  Suddenly, his left hand grabbed my wrist. He was still alive.

  Chapter 28

  Gemson breathed irregularly, but he was breathing. He grabbed my wrist and then passed out. I examined his wound. He’d been shot in the head, but it turned out to be just a grazing—deep, but not fatal. He was lucky that the Mexican guy hadn’t double-tapped him.

  Careless, but lucky for Gemson.

  Blood loss was a different story. He had lost a lot of blood. I couldn’t tell how much, but his skin color had faded, not quite blue like a corpse, but not far from it.

  Most police cruisers were equipped with a first aid kit in the trunk. So I popped the trunk and scrambled back to it. I looked inside and found the kit. It was a small green case with a white cross on the lid. I grabbed it and closed the trunk. Then I returned to Gemson and opened the case.

  I pulled out a long strand of gauze and medical tape. I wrapped his head several times—tight; then I taped it off. I tilted his head to one side. Gravity should slow the bleeding.

  I grabbed the radio and clicked the button and put the receiver to my mouth.

  Pressing down on the call button, I asked, “Is anyone out there? Officer in need of urgent medical assistance!”

  I released the button and waited. Listened hard. Static and then I said, “Respond!”

  Static again.

  I said, “Respond! Officer down!”

  No response. Gemson was on his own tonight.

  I guessed that if he had needed backup, he was supposed to call for it on his cell phone. So I dug through his pockets and found his phone and searched through his contact list and found Grady’s information. I hit the call button and waited.

  Dial tone and then a ring.

  Two rings in and the sheriff answered.

  He was groggy. Probably asleep.

  He said, “It is late. This had better be an emergency.”

  “Gemson has been shot.”

  Silence on the other end.

  Grady asked, “Who is this?!”

  I said, “You need to come! He’s dying! He’s been shot!”

  Grady asked, “Reacher? How’d you get out of your cell?”

  I said, “There’s no time! He’s been shot in the head. He’s lost a lot of blood. Get over here! Now!”

  Then there was silence on the line. I imagine that Grady’s brain was still half asleep and trying to process the information.

  Grady said, “Take him to the clinic. It’s only two blocks south of the station. I’ll be there.”

  He hung up.

  I looked around. I looked at the car keys hanging in the ignition of Gemson’s cruiser.

  I could’ve left him in the clinic parking lot and driven away. I could’ve been miles away in their police car before I’d have to dump it.

  With the cover of darkness I might’ve passed the state line. One of three states. I could’ve driven straight north and crossed over into Tennessee.

  Tennessee had a lot of back roads. Plenty of places to dump a car.

  I could’ve been back on the road and moving on from this nightmare, but a voice in my head said, “You must do the right thing.”

  It echoed over and over like some kind of predetermined destiny, some kind of instinctual voice that was set deep in my bones as if it had started with my ancestors and cursed my line for all time.

  I looked down at Gemson’s dying body in my arms and then I reached across him and slammed the passenger door closed. I turned the key and fired up the car and hit the gas.

  In a finely tuned police cruiser I was there in seconds. Seven of them to be precise.

  Chapter 29

  I waited on the street in front of the Eckhart Medical Center, the clinic side.

  The building was two stories with thick windows tinted black. I imagined that was to protect the occupants from sunlight.

  The clinic was attached to the largest building and the rest of the complex was surrounded by the barbed wire fence. The back of it faced the lake. At the end of the street were a boat launch and a shabby little pier with one boat tied to it. It rocked slowly on the water.

  I waited outside of the squad car, my back planted against the rear on the driver’s side. The P30L rested on the trunk lid next to me.

  I had switched the light bar on so that the red and blue lights lit up the night sky. The colors reflected off storefront windows and parked cars as the lights spun in a clockwise rotation and then a long extension of the lights fell across the lake like a lighthouse beacon and rotated back across the street.

  A low fog rolled across the top of the water. The red and blue lights magnified in the mist.

  Seven minutes later, I heard distant police sirens blaring through the quiet town like a banshee on the moors. The wailing noise was deafening in the silence.

  Eight and a half minutes after that Sheriff Grady pulled up in an old department-issued Chevy Tahoe. The light bar on the roof wailed and flashed in sync with a set of smaller lights buried deep in the front grill and then the tires squealed as he braked to a stop. They died off in a quick hiss as they screeched across the road in front of the Eckhart Medical Center.

  Two seconds later, his deputies rolled up in their patrol cars. Both had one driver and no passengers. The two cops jumped out of their vehicles. The only one who wore a shred of his uniform was Sheriff Grady. His deputies wore department-issued jackets with the sheriff badges patched on the right arms, but none of them wore the proper uniform. I guessed that they hadn’t had time to change. They were probably in their pajamas when Grady called them.

  Sheriff Grady jumped out of the Tahoe with his Glock drawn. He stretched his arms out across his hood and pointed the gun at me from about thirty yards away.

  His deputies followed suit. The sirens had stopped the moment all three vehicles stopped.

  Grady yelled, “Stand up with your hands up and walk toward us.”

  I said, “Sorry Sheriff. I’m not doing that.”

  Grady said, “Reacher. This isn’t a game. Now follow my directions.”

  He waited a moment and then repeated his orders.

  I stayed behind the cover of the police car. I looked at him and shook my head.

  I said, “Not going to happen.”

  Silence and then I said, “Grady. Your man is dying. I didn’t shoot him. Another guy attacked me in my cell. He had Gemson’s keys. He tried to kill me. He must’ve shot Gemson first.

  “You’re wasting time. He’s losing blood.”

  Grady looked at Gemson. The guy wasn’t moving, but he was pressed up against the closed passenger door.

  I peeked in on him. His coloring wasn’t good.

  I said, “Tick tock, Sheriff. You can try to come and get me, a course of action that none of you will survive. That I can promise. That I can pretty much damn guarantee.

  “Or you can holster your weapons and help me get Gemson inside the clinic before he bleeds to death.”

  Grady remained where he was.

  One of his deputies looked at him. The guy said, “Gemson looks bad.”

  I said, “I’m telling you the truth. Faye Matlind is missing. And now someone just tried to kill me. You need to believe me or this is going to turn bad for you, Gemson, and a whole lot of other people.”

  At that exact moment, in the silence of a standoff, I heard the most recognizable sound in modern police combat. It was the ultimate conversation sto
pper. The last word.

  A pump-action shotgun had cocked not far from us. We all froze as we heard CRUNCH! CRUNCH!

  The four of us looked over toward the clinic’s entrance.

  Grady said, “Doctor, go back inside.”

  I saw a pair of small hands on a muscular, female physique holding a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip and a collapsible stock. One of the best shotguns ever made.

  Beyond the barrel of the shotgun was a beautiful woman with long blond hair and a muscular frame like a fitness model.

  Sheldon.

  She said, “Reacher. Grady. You boys stop all this nonsense and bring Gemson inside before he bleeds to death. Before I shoot all of you.”

  Grady said, “Dr. Eckhart. Now don’t do anything stupid.”

  Sheldon was a doctor? And an Eckhart? She had said that she worked at the clinic. What she should have said was that it was her clinic. Her last name was on the sign.

  Sheldon said, “Ty, I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

  Chapter 30

  One of the deputies helped me carry Gemson into the clinic.

  Gemson wasn’t particularly heavy for either of us, but he had completely passed out. Dead weight was harder to move than a half-conscious person.

  We half-carried, half-dragged Gemson into the clinic.

  Sheldon pointed to a room opposite the waiting room at the same time she leaned the shotgun back somewhere out of sight behind a shelf filled with boxes of feminine hygiene products.

  We carried Gemson past a reception area that sat two people behind a long countertop, past a public water fountain, bathrooms, and into an examination room.

  We laid him on an examining table.

  Sheldon unwrapped the gauze that I had wrapped around his head and began inspecting his wound. She told the sheriff that he should call Oxford and ask for a medical chopper. Gemson needed hospital attention, which was not the kind of attention that Sheldon could provide in a small-town clinic.

  Grady left the room to make the call.

  Sheldon looked business-like. She reached up with a scrunchy around her wrist and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She wore a pair of blue scrubs.

  She finished looking over Gemson and then she wrapped his head tight and tilted it in a way that reduced the bleeding. She injected him with something and he was conscious.

  He started to babble on and on about nonsense.

  She looked at me and said, “He needs to stay conscious.

  “You saved his life.”

  I nodded and stayed quiet. I figured he wouldn’t have done the same for me. But that hadn’t mattered because it didn’t matter what he would have done. It only mattered what I did.

  Chapter 31

  We waited for the helicopter for 25 minutes. It came from Oxford General Hospital.

  The chopper was an MD 520N, a fairly decent chopper used for police and rescue operations all over the world. This one was painted white with a dark blue stripe right across the middle. A red light blinked from the bottom of the canopy.

  We stood outside and watched as the chopper flew over the trees. The rush of wind from the rotors blew the treetops in calm, firm gusts like the oncoming winds from a tropical storm. The chopper pilot maneuvered the helicopter over power lines and streetlights.

  The chopper yawed as it descended at a steady pace. The skids landed on the street with a low thump sound.

  The pilot was good.

  The main rotor and tail blades kept turning. Debris from the road flew up into the air, drifted away behind the chopper, and was swept up into the night.

  The deputies picked Gemson up and helped a pair of paramedics strap him to a gurney. They strapped him in tight and loaded him onto the helicopter.

  We stood outside and watched as the chopper lifted off the ground and flew away.

  Grady looked at me and scratched his nose and at the same time he said, “Reacher, would you wait inside for a moment. Doctor, is that okay?”

  Sheldon smiled at me and said, “Of course.”

  Grady pointed at one of his deputies and said, “Take that boy inside and watch him for a moment.”

  I put my hand up and said, “That won’t be necessary. If I wanted to run, I would have.”

  Sheldon said, “Ty, I think that Reacher has proven himself.”

  Grady leaned forward and put his hand on her shoulder like he was trying to say something out of my earshot, but I heard him fine. He said, “I don’t trust him.”

  Sheldon said, “If it weren’t for him, Gemson would be dead.”

  Grady shrugged and made a kind of retreat. He backed away about a foot and stared at the ground for a moment like he wanted to phrase his next statement right.

  Sheldon never gave him the chance to speak. She said, “The bullet did more than graze his head. I think it fractured his skull. At the very least! And Reacher could’ve walked away and left him to die.”

  Grady thought for a moment, conflict on his face. Finally, he faced me and said, “For now, you’re no longer under arrest. I appreciate your helping my deputy. But don’t you be leaving just yet. I need to know what the hell is going on.”

  I said, “All I know is that I was asleep in my cell. I woke up and some Mexican guy was waving a gun in my face.”

  A confused look fell across Grady’s face.

  He asked, “Mexican guy?”

  I nodded and said, “A dead Mexican guy now.”

  Grady cocked his head and looked at me. He asked, “So there’s a dead guy in my jail?”

  I said, “Dead as can get.”

  Then I paused a beat, reached into my pocket, and pulled out the P30L. I handed it to him, butt first. He stared at the gun; his brow wrinkled and created several distinguished slopes across his forehead.

  I said, “The Mexican was armed with this.”

  Grady inspected it and sighed and nodded. He slipped the gun into the back of his waistband.

  He said, “Okay. For now you stay here with Dr. Eckhart.”

  He looked over at his deputy again and said, “Stay with them.”

  His deputy nodded. I shrugged and followed Sheldon and the deputy into the clinic.

  Grady and the other deputy left their vehicles on the street with the light bars on and went on foot back to the Public Safety Building. I guessed they wanted to block the street from any traffic, or more importantly, from me getting away in a vehicle.

  The road that they were parked on was the only way out. Not that it mattered, because I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter 32

  Sheldon stood at the reception counter. Even in her scrubs, her muscular frame stuck out at me. She called to me like a siren. I tried to look away, but she was like a vortex and I was being sucked in.

  She caught me staring. She grabbed the countertop and heaved herself up on it and casually sat down. Her legs waved back and forth like a teenage girl’s.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “I was remembering my mother.”

  She tilted her head and then she asked, “What? I remind you of your mother? Like I’m old enough to be your mother?”

  I smiled and said, “No. Nothing like that. I was thinking that when I was a kid, my mom was beautiful. Everyone wanted her. I used to beat up the kids at school because of it.”

  She looked perplexed. Strands of blond hair from her ponytail fell across her left shoulder.

  She asked, “I don’t understand what that has to do with you staring at me?”

  “I was thinking that I would hate it if you were mine.”

  Her smile diminished. She asked, “What?”

  I said, “I’d hate for you to be mine. Like my girlfriend.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because of all the fights I’d get in over you.”

  She smiled even wider.

  I was serious. It wasn’t a line. I meant it. I had just met Sheldon and already I was fighting over her.

  I said, “A beautiful
woman can be a deadly thing. Look at Cleopatra or Helen of Troy. A beautiful woman can destroy a nation.”

  “So I’m like Cleopatra?”

  I smiled. Then I said, “Cleopatra ain’t got shit on you. That’s for damn sure.”

  She paused and smiled and looked away like some far-off realization slapped her across the face.

  I asked, “What is it?”

  She turned back and smiled again.

  “I like you. I think.”

  “You think?”

  She said, “I mean we just met, but you’re different. A lot different than these small-town people.”

  “Aren’t you from here?”

  At first she shook her head and then she nodded.

  I was confused.

  She said, “I’ve only lived here for five years. I got a special grant to open this Medical Center and it had to be here so I came here.”

  “So where are you from?”

  She hesitated for a second then she said, “Here.”

  “Really?”

  She said, “I moved away for a while. I actually went to school abroad. Fell in with the wrong crowd and then I got my medical degree and came back.”

  I looked around, starting on the walls, full of medical posters and plaques. Boxes of unused medical supplies were piled like there wasn’t enough room for them in a storage closet. There were boxes of female medical supplies and hygiene products. There were skin products and boxes of birth control pills, Plan B tablets, and female contraceptives.

  I said, “Wow. Lots of female stuff here.”

  She cracked a smile and then said, “Country women have a lot of needs.”

  I looked down at the computer screens behind the counter. I guessed that this was the nurses’ station. The screensavers danced around on the monitors like flickering candlelight. A low humming came from down the hall.

  I saw several open doorways. Probably examination rooms. All were dark.

  I said, “Looks like you’ve done pretty well for yourself.”

  She stayed quiet and then said, “Wasn’t always like that. Believe me, there was a dark time in my life. But sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do in order to do good things too.”