by Scott Blade
She nodded again.
Reacher said, “How many guys do you know went into the military, got a law degree, and then joined the FBI?”
The Red Clouds stared at him and didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “It’s possible. There’s the JAG Corps, but the military requires that they serve a while after graduating. The odds of both of these guys having gone that route aren’t very high.”
“Maybe they only served four years and then went to law school after?” Amita asked.
“Possible, but I don’t think so. These guys were lifers. They bled military in their stances and the way they dressed. Everything about them was military.”
Red Cloud said, “What’re you saying?”
Reacher said, “These guys might’ve been feds, but they weren’t FBI.”
Chapter 13
At that moment a silence fell over the stationhouse. It was broken after a minute by the whir of a heater kicking on and the vents above exhaling warm air. Tiny thin ribbons of thread hung from the scattered vents and whipped around from the sudden rush of air.
Reacher gazed up at the ceiling on some natural impulse and then back down at Amita Red Cloud who was thumbing her lip as if she were trying to keep herself from chewing on her nails. She inserted the thumb and then withdrew it. Inserted it again and then withdrew it.
Finally, Chief Red Cloud asked, “So what agency are they?”
Reacher stayed quiet.
Red Cloud looked at his daughter and asked, “Did you see their badges?”
Amita nodded and then she said, “They had FBI badges. No doubt about it. I inspected the seal myself, but...”
She trailed off and didn’t continue her sentence.
Red Cloud asked, “But what?”
Amita said, “Mr. Reacher is right. They weren’t FBI.”
“You saw their badges. What do you mean that they weren’t FBI?”
“Their badges were real.”
“So how were they not FBI?”
Amita paused a beat and then she said, “He’s right. There was something off about them. They had real badges. They certainly acted like feds. But they weren’t right. Something about them didn’t fit.”
“So why did you agree to take these guys out on the reservation? Alone? Why didn’t you radio me?”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I know. I should’ve radioed you. It was a mistake. I just thought… I just thought…”
Then he interrupted her, “You just thought that you could impress them. And you were distracted about Michael Jacobs.”
Amita said, “I’m sorry. Yes. I was so excited that the FBI were here. I thought that they were real. I didn’t think about protocols. You know a couple of agents could’ve just walked in, chasing a fugitive. I didn’t think to confirm their identities with the office. And they said that there was no time. They said that they had just chased the guy onto the reservation.”
“That was stupid of you, Amita. You were distracted by Mike Jacobs. And you let these two strangers into our community. They could’ve hurt you. Mr. Reacher did the right thing.”
Amita looked at Reacher. He stayed quiet.
She said, “They said it was urgent. I’m sorry, Dad.”
Reacher said, “They were lying.”
“How the hell would you know?”
Reacher said, “The FBI doesn’t have a field office in Wyoming.”
Amita asked, “So what?”
“The closest one is in Salt Lake City. Which I was just in yesterday.”
“So?”
“Salt Lake City is a long way away from here.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that these guys had plenty of time to tell you that they were in the area. Two FBI agents drive all the way from Salt Lake City? I buy that. But two guys claiming to be FBI and they just show up out of the blue without calling ahead and confirming with local law enforcement that they were coming through. That’s harder to swallow. Their office could’ve easily called ahead while they were on the road. Plenty of time with that distance.
“Also, FBI badges are available on the Internet. Anyone can get a fake badge that looks pretty real online. These guys know that. They wouldn’t just pop up unannounced unless they had something to hide.”
Red Cloud said, “So if these guys weren’t FBI then who were they? And they aren’t federal agents. We need to find them and arrest them. Posing as a federal agent is illegal.”
Reacher said, “I didn’t say that they weren’t federal agents. They were definitely agents.”
Amita asked, “If they aren’t FBI then who do they work for?”
Reacher said, “That’s a good question.”
Red Cloud said, “We should find out. We’ll call the FBI office in the morning.”
Reacher stayed quiet.
Amita said, “What about him?”
Red Cloud said, “Mr. Reacher, as of now you are free. We apologize for the misunderstanding.”
Red Cloud looked at his watch and then he said, “It’s late. I’m afraid that you missed the shuttle to Tower Junction. Do you have a place to stay for the night?”
Reacher shook his head.
“You can stay here. You were going to have to stay the night in a cell anyway. We can leave the doors open for you. Just don’t leave until the morning. The temperatures are going to drop to the low teens tonight. We don’t want you out there freezing to death.”
Amita smiled for the first time and Reacher took note of it like she was smiling at the thought of him freezing to death.
Amita said, “I can drive him now. There’s no reason to hold him up if we’re going to let him go.”
Red Cloud said, “No. He’d better stay the night. In the morning you can drive him and then you can coordinate with the police in Tower Junction and check the hospital there for any sign of these guys. They might’ve checked themselves in since one of them was unconscious.”
A blank expression fell over her face. It said nothing to Reacher, but he recognized that her father knew it. It must’ve meant that she was disappointed. Reacher let go of his contempt for Amita’s actions. He wasn’t the kind of guy to hold a grudge.
Life is too short for grudges.
They talked a little more, but said nothing else about the two guys. After a while Chief Red Cloud called it a night. At the same time Amita agreed and they said their good nights to Reacher and left him alone. The stationhouse lights dimmed to a tolerable shade so that Reacher could sleep.
He returned the chairs to their original places and walked back into his cell. The stationhouse was plenty warm. So Reacher pulled off the gray fleece and then the shirt and folded them neatly and tucked them underneath the cot on the floor. Then he sat on the bed. The springs bounced and squeaked under his weight, but they weren’t uncomfortable. He had slept outside a couple of nights when he was going through West Texas the first time several months earlier. That was when he learned a valuable lesson about West Texas—always take a bus through there. West Texas is long and at one point there is no gas station or any sign of people for 200 plus miles of desert.
Reacher smiled because he thought that it was funny that he was back in a jail cell and it was his own choice.
I could leave, he thought. Later he would wonder if he should have.
Chapter 14
The daylight seeped in through several thick casement windows with crisscross metal layers like mini-bars developed right in the glass. Reacher woke up bright and early, 6:15 a.m. according to the time in his brain. But it wasn’t his internal clock that woke him up so early. It was the rustling noises of Amita Red Cloud as she entered the stationhouse.
She came in and carried a to-go cup with coffee in it. Reacher sat upright and smiled. He thought that maybe Amita had gone home and thought about the talk they had the night before. He imagined that she and her father went outside and talked some more in the parking lot. He probably calmed her down. Maybe now she was warmer toward Reacher. So on her
way to the jail she had stopped and grabbed him a cup of coffee, which was the way to his heart like he imagined it was the way to his father’s heart. Somehow coffee had become a way of communicating with the man who was still out there somewhere for him to find. Like a portal between them.
Then he realized that he was mistaken about her warming up to him because she took a sip of the coffee and placed it on a desk. She had bought one for herself and nothing for him.
She walked over to his cell and forced a smile and then she asked, “Ready?”
Reacher stood up and stretched. She stared.
Amita saw that he had caught her gazing at him and for a second she just stared at him and then made eye contact. She said, “Where are your clothes?”
Reacher bent down and picked them up and showed them to her. He stayed quiet. Then he shuffled his fingers through his shirt and straightened out the sleeves and slipped the shirt on. Next he picked up the fleece and slipped it on.
Amita stepped back and said, “Let’s go.”
Reacher asked, “Where are we going?”
“You are leaving the reservation.”
“Why? Did you find the guys?”
“No. You aren’t going to court or anything like that. Like my dad said, you’re a free man, but I want you to leave the reservation. So I’m taking you to Tower Junction.”
Reacher paused a beat and then he said, “So I’m not under arrest or detainment any longer?”
Amita nodded.
He asked, “So why do I have to leave? Maybe I want to stay.”
Amita froze in front of him and stopped and turned and faced him.
She asked, “Do you want to stay?”
Reacher shook his head and said, “Not particularly. I just don’t like being told where I can’t go.”
“Well you CAN’T stay on Red Rain Reservation,” she said.
He stayed quiet.
She pointed to the door. She asked, “You have all of your belongings, right?”
“Not to criticize you, but that’s another thing that you didn’t do that you should’ve.”
“What?”
“Last night you patted me down. But not very thoroughly. I could’ve still been armed.”
“Are you armed?”
“No. But I could’ve been.”
Amita pointed toward the door again and cleared her throat like it was a command. Like Move on, prisoner.
They reached the door and Reacher opened it. He walked out and she followed and closed it behind her. Reacher noticed that she had left her coffee and thought that it would be cold by the time she came back to it, but he said nothing about it. Why should he help her when she acted so aggressive toward him?
The cold hit him like a gale force. It was cold. Like winters in Wyoming could be. Cold he had expected, but this was very cold. He had no idea what the temperature was, but it was low.
The ground outside was moist like the sunrise had melted some of the snow, but not all of it. Not by a long shot. Reacher didn’t even remember hearing it snow the night before, but then again he wasn’t used to snow. He guessed that most snow fell silently.
As he approached the only police cruiser in the lot, he turned and looked up at the sky. It was hazy, but sunlight stabbed through, making holes in the gloom.
Reacher walked to the passenger door of the police car and waited. Amita stopped at the driver side and looked up at him over the top of the car and past the light bar.
She said, “Nope. No way. You sit in the back.”
Reacher didn’t argue. The truth was he was done trying to figure her out. And he realized that in a way it was best for him to leave. What if those guys returned and wanted payback? This way he didn’t have to endure that or jail time or any more of Amita Red Cloud’s wonderful hospitality.
He opened the door, dumped himself down on the rear bench, and slammed the door shut.
At least this time he wasn’t in handcuffs. That thought gave him some relief.
Amita got in after him and she fired up the cruiser. She let the engine warm up for a few minutes. It was cold.
After about five minutes of silence, except for the low humming from the engine and the blast from the air vents as the heater struggled to heat the interior of the car, Amita slipped the gear into park and backed up and pulled away from the lot.
On the way out of the lot, Reacher saw a yellow Jeep Wrangler with a hardtop. He wasn’t sure about the model or year. He figured that it must’ve been Amita’s personal vehicle since she had to wait for the police cruiser to warm up.
They drove on to the main road, which was also covered in snow. She drove slowly over the thick white snow. The snow kicked up gently under the tires. It felt like they were driving on sand. Reacher was good at driving cars. He had grown up in the South and one thing that his mother had done was challenge him to learn not just how to drive defensively like other kids. She had set up obstacle courses for him to drive through out in the mud and woods in Mississippi. She used a winding, muddy track that locals used for mud riding. She required her officers to train on it sometimes in order to make them better drivers. Reacher was never really sure why she trained him or them in it so hard because as far back as he could remember there had never been a high-speed pursuit in their small county that required expert drivers. But that was her. She was always preparing him for a life of high-speed chases and gun battles and hand-to-hand combat.
Maybe she knew that he would one day be living the life that he had lived so far. Because it had certainly come in handy in the past. Either way, he didn’t want to reflect on it too much.
They drove past the signs to the reservation and out back onto Grand Loop Road.
Suddenly, Amita said, “I didn’t search you because I didn’t want to be within your reach. That’s why I left the cuffs on you until you were in the cage.”
Reacher nodded and stayed quiet. He thought: I could’ve had a gun.
But he hadn’t had a gun and nothing happened anyway. As of now he was getting off after having beaten up two federal agents from some agency that he still hadn’t figured out yet.
He ignored her and turned his head and stared out the window. He thought: It’s none of your business. And then he thought about the open road again.
The rest of the drive was silent until Amita turned on the radio. The channel was tuned to a morning show from somewhere else in the county. The guy on the radio gave the weather report and said that the hard blizzard that they were tracking had moved to the north last night and was on a trajectory to head away from the territory, but it had dramatically turned around and now was headed dead at the reservation and Tower Junction. The radio predicted that it would be a full blown blizzard by nightfall.
Amita shook her head at the radio and said, “You don’t want to be stuck here when that thing hits us anyway. Snowstorms here are no joke. You don’t even have the right clothes on. You’d hate it. Storms kill tourists all the time because they come up here and venture into the mountains and don’t plan for them.”
Reacher looked at her eyes in the rearview mirror. He started to speak, but then he thought the better of it. No point in being nice to her now. He stayed quiet.
Chapter 15
Grand Loop Road wasn’t nearly as snowed over as the reservation had been, probably because there was an adequate amount of traffic. The long winding stretch of road had diverse scenery. That was for damn sure. One second Reacher was looking out the window at snow-covered rock formations and then he was seeing snow-covered plains and trees. He thought that at one point he’d seen a snow-covered caribou or deer or moose. He wasn’t certain what kind of animal it was. He knew it was big and had antlers. The creature stopped at a nearby stream that was half-frozen from the freezing temperatures of the night before and it dipped its head down and took a drink.
Reacher looked forward and saw the road wind some more and finally they came up on the outskirts of a settlement that must’ve been Tower Junction.
> The first buildings were houses and small subdivisions. Then there was a service drive that turned off and paralleled the road and then jutted north. On the corner there was a gas station. Amita turned off the road and headed toward the gas station. She looped around and pulled into one of the bays and parked the car.
She said, “Mr. Reacher, this is your stop.”
Reacher started to open the door and get out, but he stopped. He looked forward at her and he said, “Officer Red Cloud, I’m not a bad guy. My mom was a cop. I grew up around cops. I know the trade. I was only trying to help you. I wish that we could start over, but I guess it doesn’t matter now. But for what it’s worth I don’t think that you’re a bad cop. Everyone makes mistakes.”
Amita Red Cloud turned and looked back at him. She breathed a heavy sigh and then she said, “Are you hungry?”
Reacher said, “I could eat. I can always eat.”
She said, “There’s a diner around the corner. Sometimes I’ll drive here and go there just to get away. Do you want to have breakfast?”
Reacher nodded.
Amita turned to face the nose of the car and shifted the car back to drive. Reacher sat back and they drove back out of the gas station and turned onto another snow-covered road.
The weather began to turn on them and snow began trickling out of the sky. Clouds hung overhead shading over the town and the roads.
Reacher looked at a street sign and took note that this was now Main Street.
They drove only a couple of blocks. Amita pulled the car into the parking lot of a restaurant called Terry’s Diner.
She got out and Reacher got out the rear door. He immediately noticed the thick snow on the ground and he stepped cautiously. He had never been in snow like this. He was only now wondering if he needed snowshoes. Then he wondered: What the hell are snowshoes?
Amita walked around the front of the car and looked at him standing there peering down at his feet like a big dumb ape, which was pretty much what she thought of him. Then she couldn’t help but smile.
She asked, “Never seen snow before?”
Reacher nodded.
“It was snowing yesterday at the res and you walked through it all afternoon?”
