Winter Territory_A Get Jack Reacher Novel

by Scott Blade

  Red Cloud leered at him, which made Reacher think that the anger was mutual. He must’ve interrupted something more complicated than simply two street clothes agents harassing her. Still it smelled fishy to him, but he no longer cared about the details.

  She said, “All in good time. By reservation law, I can detain anyone for any reason for up to 48 hours. I’ll get back to you on the charges. For now you just sit tight.”

  Reacher asked, “Aren’t you going to ask for my ID? My name?”

  She stopped. Upset and turned to him.

  “Give me your ID.”

  Reacher went into his pocket and pulled out a Mississippi driver’s license and handed it to her through the bars. She stared at it and stuffed it into her right front pocket. Maybe she’d insert him into the system. Maybe not.

  Reacher said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”

  Officer Red Cloud shrugged and said, “Don’t care. Tell it to the walls.”

  And then she turned and snapped her gun holster button shut and walked off and turned down the corridor. A moment later, Reacher heard the back door open again and her voice came echoing down the hall.

  She said, “I’ll be back.”

  The door slammed shut behind her and then Reacher heard it lock.

  He stared into the station and didn’t know how to react or what to think. He’d never seen such unprofessional police work in his life. She’d left him locked in a holding cell all by himself. No guards. No other prisoners. Life on the reservation was certainly a lot different than he’d thought.

  Reacher liked to find the good in every situation and he thought about how he had a room for the night if she kept him locked up overnight, which he’d bet all of his money that she would. So at least he had a warm place to sleep. Better than riding or hiking 30 miles to Tower Junction and spending money on a room.

  Never in his life had he ever met a cop like her, but then again never in his life had he ever met a woman like her.

  He thought, Officer Red Cloud.

  Chapter 9

  Back in the darkness over at Tower Junction, 30 miles away, the local hospital was a four-story building with off-white paint and hunter green trim which was dulled by harsh winters of blasting snow.

  In the parking lot were parked one emergency vehicle and one police cruiser, the employees’ cars and one Ford King Ranch painted gray with thick black tires. The registration in the glove box said that the truck was owned by a Carlos George Roderigo III, a Mexican name, but the guy who had been driving Mr. Roderigo’s truck hadn’t been Mexican. Not by blood. Not by birth. Not even by distant cousins.

  The guy who had commandeered the truck and had therefore parked it in the hospital’s parking lot was a tall man with one fierce blue eye and one grayed-out eye. The guy had a jagged scar that ran down his face and replaced part of his nose with a tiny pyramid-shaped hole.

  The man with the scar stood next to the two federal agents in a hospital room. One was bandaged across his face with a nose splint from a severely broken nose and the second one was awake, but stared blankly at his surroundings like one minute he had been standing facing Amita Red Cloud, the cop from the reservation, and the next minute he was waking up in a hospital with no memory of the seconds and minutes in between.

  The guy with the jagged scar scowled at the two agents in a look that they had seen before and feared greatly.

  The guy with the scar asked, “How many guys attacked the two of you?”

  The guy with the broken nose said in a nasal voice, “It was one...one guy.”

  The guy with the jagged scar said, “One. One.”

  “Yes.”

  The man with the jagged scar turned and looked at the other agent and asked, “Did you see him?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  The man with the jagged scar stayed quiet for a long minute. He looked back over his shoulder at the door to the room. No one entered the room and there was little noise from the outer hallway. No nurses or patients or doctors walking up and down the halls. Then he turned back to the two agents and said, “Get up.”

  “Why?” asked the one with the broken nose.

  The guy with the jagged scar pulled out a Kimber Custom Model 1911, a standard .45 ACP and let his hand fall to his side with the weapon obvious to both agents.

  They jumped up out of their beds and the guy with the broken nose said, “Hold on a second. We’re sorry, sir.”

  The guy with the jagged scar asked, “You said that one guy attacked the two of you. One guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was this guy armed?”

  The two agents were standing in the middle of the room staring at the gun in his hand and then they stared at each other. They didn’t know what to think. They didn’t know what their boss was going to do. Fear and confusion flashed across both of their faces.

  The guy with the jagged scar said, “Relax. Now answer the question. Was the guy armed?”

  “No,” said the guy with the broken nose.

  “I don’t believe it,” said the guy with the jagged scar. “No way did an unarmed man attack the two of you and get the best of you. Two trained agents of the very best agency and military in the world.”

  The two agents nodded and stared blankly at each other like each was asking the other what do we do?

  The guy with the jagged scar took his gun and tossed it onto the nearest bed and then he turned his body to show the two agents that now he was unarmed.

  He moved in closer to the one with the broken nose and he said, “Now I’m unarmed, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” the guy responded.

  Then in a sudden flurry of powerful and skilled blows the guy with the jagged scar punched the guy with the broken nose. Once. Twice. In the gut. Once. Twice. Three times in the left side of the rib cage. The agent spilled forward and onto his knees and started to scream but then the guy with the jagged scar kneed him straight in the face—a brutal blow. The agent’s nose splint snapped and shards of metal pierced through the tape on his face and blood erupted from his wound like a geyser.

  Then the guy with the scar looked back at the other agent and said, “Remember that? Did you get that?”

  The agent started to hold up his hands in the universally known defensive position.

  He said, “No. I’m sorry. We’re sorry. The guy must’ve been some kind of specially trained military to get the drop on us like that. I swear it was over very fast.”

  “The GUY that you’re talking about. The one who got the drop on you. The one with the special military training that you’re pointing out isn’t a guy at all. That cop looked him up after you two left.

  “He’s a kid! He is an eighteen-year-old,” the guy with the jagged scar said and he walked closer to the other agent. He clenched his fists like he was ready to pound on him as well.

  Then he said, “I don’t know what you consider to be a man. I know that in this country you can vote, buy a pack of cigarettes, hell you can even die for your country at the age of 18. But when you get to be my age and you have fought for your country as long as I have then you change your mind as to what age a man is a man. And to me 18 is not a man. He was taking some young thing to a prom only a year ago, I’m sure.”

  The guy with the jagged scar dropped his fists and relaxed. He didn’t pound on the other agent. Instead he turned and bent down and popped the other guy twice more in the face. Once right in the broken nose again and then a second time in the forehead and the guy fell back and was knocked completely unconscious.

  The guy rose back up and glanced over his shoulder back at the other agent and said, “Now he’s been knocked out too. Like you. If you mess up again then next time I’ll have to even you out with him. I don’t think that you want a broken nose, not like the one he’s got. Now turn him over so that he doesn’t drown in his own blood. I’ll send the nurse in to reset his nose.”

  The guy with the jagged scar stopped at the bed and pic
ked up his Kimber Custom 1911 and holstered it and walked out of the hospital room. The door shut slowly behind him, hissing the whole way of the arc back to a closed position.

  Chapter 10

  Jack Reacher was his father and Elizabeth Deveraux had been his mother. Both were ex-military cops. His mother had made a life out of being a professional cop back in Mississippi and his father had made a life of being a drifter, but according to his mother’s investigations into Jack’s past, he still held onto the cop habits. Two parents. One on the right side of the law and the other on the wrong side of the law, but both always trying to do the right thing. The difference was that his mother never approved of unlawful means of getting the right results, but his father often used unlawful means in order to see justice done. Although, his mother may have understood vigilantism. Sometimes it might have been the only way.

  Now that Cameron Reacher sat in a jail cell in the freezing temperatures of northern Wyoming, he wondered to himself which parent he took after more. No way would his mother approve, but he wondered if his father would’ve.

  The stationhouse was completely empty. Reacher heard the wind howl and the office machines hum and the low ambient sounds of hibernating computer systems. Officer Red Cloud had been nice enough to leave the lights on for him, another silver lining that he thought about.

  She must like me, he joked to himself.

  Reacher had spent the last hour or so lying back on the cot in his cell and staring at the ceiling. He let his mind drift in thought. At one point he analyzed the different routes that he could take once he got out of this cell. He had thought of five different routes, all of which branched off from a long stint on Interstate 212 and headed east.

  East was the heading that he had come in to Wyoming on and he didn’t plan on changing his course just because of a police officer and her inability to stand up to some federal agents, although he did think that the best thing to do was to take off the very first chance that he got. Then his mind started to think about how he was going to get out of the situation. If the cops pressed charges he’d have to do something that he’d really rather not do, which was skip town. Skipping town on misdemeanors wasn’t really a big deal or even on some worse charges like petty theft or even assault, but skipping out on charges of assaulting a cop, and two federal agents at that, wasn’t something that would be easy because then Reacher would be a fugitive that the agency in question wouldn’t just let go. Even worse was that the two agents probably wouldn’t let it go and he was sure that they’d take it personally.

  In fact, he expected a visit from them as soon as they were out of the hospital. Reacher hoped that they’d accept his apology and perhaps he could convince them to give him a beating instead of charging him with assault on cops. He didn’t really want to get beaten up by a couple of big ex-military guys with a grudge, but it sounded better to have some bad wounds that’d heal in a matter of days over facing serious jail time that he’d have to run from.

  This dilemma set Reacher’s thoughts on every scenario that could come out of his getting his ass kicked and every one came back at him with the reality that he’d get his nose broken for sure. That one guy wasn’t going to forget about it.

  Then suddenly Reacher heard a noise from down the corridor beyond the small bullpen and he sat up on his cot and faced forward. He’d had an experience once while he was in jail before that made him suspicious of sounds coming from hallways.

  He heard a man making regular huffing and grunting sounds that men made, like someone who’d thought that he was alone. Perhaps walking into his own home and tossing off his shoes and laying his jacket over the back of the sofa. The guy who came down the hall was another police officer. If Reacher had to guess, it was the chief since he was so old. The way that he carried himself was with confidence that only a veteran officer walks with.

  The guy had sandpaper red skin and thick white hair that was growing out of a buzz cut. In the military they would have casually reminded him that it was time to get a cut because it was touching his ears. The sides and the top were of equal length. Reacher made special note of how thick that it was because usually in a man’s buzz cut, especially a man his age, there was visible scalp, but this guy’s head was all white hair.

  He had high cheek bones and deep-set eyes that almost looked hidden in darkness because of how brown they were and how far back they were set on his face.

  The guy stopped at the center of the bullpen and looked over at Reacher. He held a cup of coffee or hot tea in one hand. It was in a medium-sized paper to-go cup like from a coffee shop. Maybe he had gotten it from the general store. Maybe it was brewed from the coffee beans that he had ridden in with.

  The guy stayed where he was and then he said with a deep, crisp voice, “Who are you?”

  Reacher said, “I’m nobody. Just a guy at the wrong place at the wrong time and now I’m sitting in your jail.”

  The cop breathed in heavily and walked over to a desk that was set past the bullpen in the corner inside an office space with no door. Reacher couldn’t read the name on the door because of the distance, but he guessed that this guy was definitely the police chief or why else would he have his own office space?

  The chief set his coffee down on the desk and then he took off his heavy cropped jacket which had the same symbols on the sleeves as he had seen on the Lakota police badge on Officer Red Cloud’s shield. Then the guy walked out of his office, past the bullpen, and over to Reacher’s cell. He stopped three feet away and looked Reacher up and down.

  The guy was tall, about 5’10”, but he had a powerful stare, a cop stare, plus a strong Native American stare as if he was also descended from warriors of the old world.

  Then Reacher noticed the name on his nameplate that was set just above a pocket on his left breast and Reacher sighed. He felt that he might be in more trouble than he’d wanted to be in because the nameplate read: Red Cloud.

  The guy was Officer Red Cloud’s father.

  Chapter 11

  Officer Red Cloud, the father, said, “I asked you who you are.”

  Reacher said, “Reacher, sir.”

  “Reacher? What kind of name is that?”

  “A last one,” Reacher said.

  “What’s your first name, son?”

  “Cameron Reacher is my full name.”

  “Cameron. Why the hell are you in my jail?”

  “I was arrested.”

  The chief rolled his eyes and then he said, “I meant why are you in there? What did you do?”

  “I was arrested by a female officer. I wasn’t told what my charges were. Actually I haven’t even been booked or read my rights.”

  The chief rolled his eyes again and then gave Reacher a hard stare and looked him up and down again.

  “I guess that I’m in here for assaulting a police officer.”

  The guy said, “That’s my daughter for you. Did you try to hit on her or something?”

  “Not exactly. Although she is a beautiful woman. But she didn’t arrest me for that. She wasn’t the officer that I assaulted.”

  Then Reacher paused a beat and said, “Allegedly assaulted.”

  A confused look came over Chief Red Cloud’s face. He broke his stare at Reacher and stepped away and walked over to a random desk that appeared to be empty. He sat down on top of it and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. He stared at it and dialed.

  A moment later someone must’ve answered because he looked up and listened.

  “Okay. So why is he here in my cell?”

  He listened some more and then he said, “Amita, this guy is a kid and a citizen. You can’t just leave him here.”

  Another pause and another moment of listening to her and then Chief Red Cloud asked, “What federal agents?”

  He paused a beat and then he asked, “Where are they from?”

  He listened some more and then he said, “Amita, they don’t have any jurisdiction here. They should’ve cleared any operations with us f
irst. So explain to me why this kid assaulted them and why they aren’t here right now filing a grievance.”

  He listened some more this time, much longer as Reacher guessed that she was explaining the situation to him. Apparently it was a long story because the guy listened for a long time and said nothing.

  Reacher couldn’t really make out what the details were because it sounded complicated. The only thing that he could put together was that these two federal agents weren’t supposed to be on the reservation in the first place and that was all that he was interested in. The fact that they weren’t supposed to be there meant that they were wither running a secret operation or that they were off the books. Suddenly, Reacher felt better about his situation because if they were off the books then they couldn’t charge him for anything and he’d be out of there within 48 hours. If they were running a secret operation then they still couldn’t hold him without charging him. So either way he was going to be a free man and back on the road, which was where he wanted to be. Which was where Jack Reacher was.

  The chief said, “Amita. Amita. Stop. Stop. Listen to me. Calm down. Stop looking for those guys and get your ass back here. I don’t care about who they work for. They can’t operate here without my knowledge. Okay.”

  Then he switched the phone off.

  Chief Red Cloud looked back up at Reacher and walked over to the cell again.

  Reacher said, “Trouble?”

  “It appears that you are a lucky young man. My daughter tells me that you beat up two guys who were pushing and shoving her?”

  Reacher nodded.

  “For that I thank you for being a gentleman and trying to help her out, but you can’t go around beating up guys. Not on my land. Do you understand me?”

  Reacher nodded.

  “It turns out that these two guys are federal agents and that’s why she arrested you. Now perhaps she overreacted, but she is a good cop. A very good cop. She loves her people and I think that she reacted out of shock and surprise since you did sneak up on them. And maybe you terrified her. No offense, but you are a scary customer.”

  Reacher nodded again. He wasn’t offended. He was used to people being scared of him and a beautiful woman like Amita Red Cloud was usually the type who was afraid of him. That thought dug into him like a little shrill dart.