by Diane Capri
“And another thing,” he said coldly, “You work for me. Not Lamont Finlay. If your project needs to be run up the chain of command, I’ll do it myself. Are we clear?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Wednesday, May 11
Washington, DC
9:55 a.m.
His complaints were so outrageous that she could barely hold her wrath. Lips pursed into a hard line, she simply nodded. For more than a full second, she considered throwing her badge at his head.
But raging and throwing tantrums was not her style.
Nor would expressing her anger have solved the core issue.
The problem was that he didn’t like her going off his book to follow the leads she dug up on Reacher, sometimes getting help from Finlay or Gaspar or a third party to do it.
She wouldn’t change her methods. She was the agent in charge of this mission. He was The Boss. Those facts didn’t make her his toady.
So if he wanted one of his buttoned-up boys who did nothing but follow his orders, he could get someone else. And she might have tossed restraint out the window and said so.
But she could tell by the expression on his face that she didn’t need to.
He already understood.
She could get the job done. And she would. And she’d do it her way.
And if she didn’t make it back?
Well, too bad. He’d chosen her because she was expendable. They both knew the score.
He was just blowing off steam.
He wasn’t about to destroy her.
Not yet, anyway.
She held his gaze and her tongue and waited.
After more glaring, nostrils flared, he said, “You’re going to Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi. The file contains all you need to know about the last case Reacher worked there before the army kicked him out.”
“Kicked him out? They didn’t actually do that.” She cocked her head, puzzled. “He was honorably discharged. No court-martial. Not even a dishonorable. The files don’t contain anything suggesting he was expelled, not for any reason. That means they didn’t have enough on him to do anything, let alone kick him out.”
He gave her a curt nod, barely more than a quick jerk of the chin. “There’s official records available for posterity, and then there’s true facts. You should know the difference.”
She did know. Certain types of files were always sanitized, one way or another. And Reacher’s army files were exceptionally thin. Someone had surgically removed everything remotely embarrassing. Or useful.
Which wasn’t unusual for sensitive employment files. Especially when it came to decorated officers who had been allowed to slip away quietly when they should have been canned.
Reacher had been a hero. He’d collected more than his share of medals for bravery in combat.
Of course, no written record explained why he’d had to leave the army. Because senior officers would have had things to answer for. Maybe even a few high-ranking civilians, too.
Guaranteed mutual destruction if such things were ever committed to reports and the right people came looking.
But they’d made him leave the army.
For sure.
Otherwise, he’d still be a soldier.
He was that kind of guy. Do or die.
To him, leaving the army would have been the same as dying. He’d never have resigned voluntarily without pressure. She’d learned that and much more about Reacher over the past few weeks.
So what the Boss meant was that someone higher up persuaded Reacher it was time to go and he agreed. For reasons of his own.
“I see,” she said between gritted teeth. “What’s in Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi?”
“An army base. Slated for closure soon. They’ve started drawing down personnel. Kelham won’t exist much longer.”
“Why?”
“Outlived its usefulness. The world has changed. We don’t need all that real estate anymore. We don’t need to staff it, either,” he said.
“Why did Reacher go there?” Kim asked.
“Back then, it was a dead woman that called Reacher down. He was still in the 110th Special Investigative Unit, but he went in undercover.”
“Why?”
“Because his CO thought a person or persons attached to the local army base might have had something to do with the murder.”
“They thought Army Rangers killed a female civilian?” she shuddered, head cocked. “Were they? Responsible?”
“Final reports are a little fuzzy,” he said with a scowl. “Her throat had been cut. The way Army Rangers are taught to do it. One cut. Straight and deep. Does the job fairly quickly. Rangers know that. Which meant the suggestion that a Ranger did the deed was…plausible.”
“How many dead at the end of Reacher’s investigation? Total,” she asked. With Reacher, death and mayhem were as common as dust in the aftermath of a sandstorm.
“The final numbers aren’t in the files,” the Boss said.
“There’s a shock,” she quipped, earning a deeper scowl in response.
Reacher was probably responsible for the increased body count, one way or another. He’d likely found the killer and did what Reacher always did. Dispensed his own brand of justice.
No doubt in Reacher’s mind that the guy deserved it.
Maybe the guy had deserved everything he got and more.
He continued, still stern, still angry, “There’s trouble in Carter’s Crossing again. Another dead woman. A similar cause of death to the old case. If we’re lucky, Reacher may feel like he needs to fix the situation like he thought he did before. He’s not one of ours anymore. We won’t be able to run interference for him this time.”
“Got it,” she replied, because a response seemed to be expected, even as he refused to be straight with her. He never showed his hole cards.
He didn’t expect Reacher to show up in Carter’s Crossing simply to find out who killed a woman he didn’t even know.
Reacher lived totally off-the-grid, wandering around according to his whims. He wouldn’t even hear about a single murder in such a small town in the middle of the country. Her death wouldn’t make the national news. It’s not like someone could call him up and tell him, even if they’d wanted to.
If Reacher were that easy to find, Kim wouldn’t have been given this job at all.
Which meant the Boss wasn’t telling her the whole story, either. He never did. He didn’t flat out lie. Nothing that obvious.
So sure. There might be another dead woman. Same method. Maybe even the same killer, although it wasn’t like Reacher to have left the first scumbag alive.
But none of that was the reason the Boss thought Reacher might show up in Carter’s Crossing.
Whatever his intel was on that score, he wouldn’t share it with her. He never did that, either.
“So the current CO at Kelham, does he know I’m coming?” Kim asked.
“Let me be clear,” the Boss said, leaning forward again. “You’re already off-the-books. Stay that way. There will be authorized personnel looking into this thing. Including a guy named Major Lincoln Perry. You can work with him and liaise with the locals, too, if you want. But that’s all.”
“So the answer is no. You’re not running interference for me at Kelham,” she replied cheekily. Which earned her another glare. “So I’m using my cover story. Doing a classified background check on Reacher. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“See that it isn’t,” the Boss said, poking the blue folder again, making her wonder what was inside it. “Your job is to be on the scene if Reacher shows up. Look for him. You know where he’s likely to hang out by now. You see him, you call me. I’ll deal with him myself. I don’t need a dead agent to explain at the moment.”
“Yes, sir,” she said again, trying not to smirk.
The Boss didn’t care if she died. He just didn’t want to be the one on the hot seat when it happened.
Plausible deniability, they called it.
She und
erstood the desire.
Sooner or later, if she survived, she’d be required to testify somewhere about hunting Reacher. She’d need plausible deniability, too. Many things about her Reacher assignment should be concealed from investigative spotlights.
But the last thing she intended to do was simply observe what happened in Carter’s Crossing and report back to him. She’d come way too far down the road for that. If the Boss didn’t understand that much, he was dumber than she gave him credit for.
“Details in the file.” He picked up a padded manila envelope like all the others he’d sent her over the past few weeks and tossed it to her.
She didn’t need to open it to know an encrypted cell phone and a jump drive rested inside.
“Car’s waiting downstairs. Your flight to Memphis leaves in two hours.”
“Memphis?”
“Closest major airport. About a ninety-minute drive from there. You’ll have a vehicle.”
“Got it.” She stood and walked toward the door.
She stopped with her hand on the knob and turned to look at him, backlit by the big windows behind him so that she couldn’t see his features clearly. Which was how he always seemed these days. Shadowed. Menacing.
“What about my new partner? Gaspar’s been retired a while now. FBI field agents travel in pairs. Safer that way,” she said.
“I’m still working on that,” he said smoothly. “Gaspar was perfect for the job. Hard to find a replacement.”
She believed him. He’d had plenty of time to replace Gaspar if he intended to do so. Gaspar had said they were both expendable. Finding another expendable agent might not be easy.
“I guess that leaves me on my own until I locate myself a partner, then,” she said, stuffing the manila envelope into the pocket of her trench coat. Which pissed him off, as she’d intended.
“Just follow orders for a change, and you’ll be fine,” he said wearily as if tired of dealing with her. He probably was. The feeling was mutual. “There’s a local sheriff. Rumor is that he’s more than competent. You’re not jumping out of a jet into an active volcano.”
She walked through the door and left him glaring at her back.
On the way to the car, she turned up her collar against the blowing rain and hunched into her coat.
She wondered what the hell had happened in Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi, fifteen years ago to get Reacher kicked out of the army and send him living so far off the grid no one could find him.
More to the point, what impending disaster might draw him back to Carter’s Crossing after all this time?
CHAPTER FIVE
Wednesday, May 11
Kelham Army Base, Mississippi
11:30 a.m.
General Alec Murphy had a long list of tasks to complete before Friday. He kept his head down, his reading glasses on his nose, and his mind on the work at hand.
Most of the work had been done and the soldiers redeployed. The remaining base personnel were similarly occupied with final duties.
Best-case scenario was that everything would go smoothly from this point until he turned the lights out Friday morning. Which wouldn’t happen. He sighed. Things rarely went smoothly with so many moving parts to be coordinated.
He’d left the most tedious work for last. Paperwork. The amount of paper the army could generate when closing a facility like Kelham would have been overwhelming to any normal civilian.
But not to Murphy.
He’d seen it all before.
In triplicate.
The work was somewhat mindless, which left him free to ponder. Damned shame he was ending his army career in a place like Kelham, and he was more than a little peeved about it.
There’d been a time when a guy like him would have been sitting at the Joint Chief’s table instead of being shoved out of the way.
Murphy was a man’s man. He got things done. The old-fashioned way.
Time was, his results alone would have been more than enough to satisfy the brass. These days, they all wanted to focus on the methods and motives more than results. Can’t do this. Don’t do that. Pure crap, that’s what it was.
The army had changed, like everything else in the world. Passed him by. This man’s army wasn’t the army Murphy had signed up for. Not even close.
If they hadn’t pushed him to retire, he’d have done it anyway. He had no desire to be a part of whatever the army was becoming.
Murphy drained his coffee mug, reviewed and signed and set aside inventory forms and transfer forms and forms for every other damned thing. His sergeant had carried them into his office by the armload and then collected them again after Murphy finished.
He shrugged. Kelham was slated for closure. Somebody had to do the grunt work. That’s what soldiers were for. Always had been grunts. Always would be. No way to change the army’s role in the scheme of things, and no one had the desire to change it anyway.
Which didn’t mean he’d miss Kelham when he closed up shop and bugged out on Friday at dawn.
Not that it mattered how he felt about the base or this Podunk town or the rubes who lived here. He’d been a soldier more than half his life. He served where he was sent and did what he was told and he was damned good at it. Simple as that.
He wasn’t leaving the army. The army had left him high and dry long ago. He just hadn’t noticed until it was too late.
Again, the sergeant came in without knocking, carrying another armload, and the cup of black coffee he’d requested, and said, “General, you have a call on line three.”
Murphy looked up from the mass of closure papers, “What?”
“Major Eugene Hammer on line three,” the sergeant repeated.
“Who is he and what does he want?” Murphy demanded.
“I don’t know, Sir. I asked. He said he outranks me and to put the call through, and that was an order,” the sergeant replied as if he was more than happy to comply. He had plenty of work to do, too.
The skeleton crew still left on base was working almost around the clock to get the place closed and move on to more interesting work. Murphy, too.
The sergeant walked to the desk, picked up the completed paperwork and deposited the new batch, collected the empty coffee cup, and walked out, closing the door behind him.
Murphy looked at the blinking light on his phone, a signal that Major Hammer was still there. He’d wait until hell froze over if he had to.
“Damn straight.” Murphy nodded.
Majors waited for generals. That’s the way the system worked. Murphy grinned. He enjoyed that part of the army. He liked being at the top of the food chain. He’d miss the privilege of status when he retired.
He left Hammer waiting and drank the coffee while it was hot. He thumbed through the current stack of paperwork, scribbling his initials where required.
When he reached the end of the pile and swallowed the last of the coffee, he glanced at the phone. Hammer was still there.
Fifteen minutes.
That was nothing.
Murphy had waited hours for a superior officer many times.
Briefly, he considered going to lunch before he took the call. Nah. No point in jerking this guy around.
Hammer was probably calling about equipment or personnel or some such. Might as well get it handled.
Murphy picked up the handset and pushed the button. Gruffly, he stated, “General Murphy.”
“Major Eugene Hammer, MP, sir. 110th Special Investigative Unit. This is a courtesy call to let you know that I’ll be arriving at Kelham today at eighteen-hundred hours,” Hammer said firmly, without inquiry or apology.
Which meant he was following orders. No more, no less. Straight up.
Murphy appreciated the style. Old school. Just the way he liked it.
As if Hammer’s words were nothing out of the ordinary, Murphy said, “What’s this about, Major?”
“I’ll brief you when I arrive, Sir.” Hammer paused. “It’s a little sensitive.”
&
nbsp; Which meant he’d been ordered to deliver his message in person.
“You know we’re closing down here Friday at oh-five-hundred. Cupboards are bare. None of the comforts of home. Might want to bring your own pillow,” Murphy replied.
“Yes, Sir. I understand. Thank you, Sir.” Hammer said, like a new recruit, before he hung up.
Which made Murphy both curious and suspicious.
A special investigator’s arrival was strange enough at any time. Particularly when he hadn’t been invited. Kelham had its own MPs.
What sensitive thing could be going on here to justify the disruption at this point?
Murphy didn’t spend any more time guessing about Hammer’s assignment. He had more important things to do.
CHAPTER SIX
Wednesday, May 11
Memphis, TN
3:00 p.m.
On the way to Memphis, Kim had read the contents of the jump drive the Boss had included in the manila envelope. The dead woman was a difficult case. The autopsy was hot off the coroner’s desk, still stamped classified, and the results were anything but straight forward.
She’d also spent half-an-hour online during the flight checking out the town and its public persona. Carter’s Crossing had a long and convoluted history, even in the official versions.
It was an old town near the northeastern corner of Mississippi, close to the Alabama and Tennessee state lines. It grew up during the nineteenth century and almost died in the next. But for government spending, it probably would have. The fate of Carter’s Crossing seemed tied to the whims of transportation.
Like a lot of towns in Middle America, Carter’s Crossing thrived when the railroads ruled the country. It was a stop on the route for locomotives to take on water and where the passengers could get a meal.
The town had its expansion and contraction along with the fate of the railroads until about 1950 when the Federal Government put an army base there. That worked out well for Carter’s Crossing until the interstate highway system was built.
At that point, the base was too far east of I-55 and too far west of I-65 to thrive. Economies were fed by trucking and motor vehicle travel on the interstates instead of railroads. Carter’s Crossing dwindled until it might have become a ghost town, like so many others.
