by Scott Blade
Reacher didn’t give them a second thought. He walked past Amita and disappeared behind the partition. He walked several paces back to the spot where they had all sat the night before and waited for her to join him.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” Amita asked.
She never indicated which desk was hers so Reacher remained standing.
“We need to talk. Your dad should know about this too.”
“He’ll be in shortly. What’s going on?”
“Let’s go into his office,” Reacher said and walked to the chief’s office. He didn’t wait for permission. He needed to have a private conversation with Amita and didn’t want Martha to overhear.
They walked into the empty office. Reacher turned to Amita and said, “This guy. Jacobs. Is he here?”
Amita turned pale like she was completely knocked off guard about why they were talking about this. Then she said, “We went over that. What does this have to do with your being here?”
Reacher stayed quiet. He studied her expression.
She was lying. He knew it. He didn’t know what she was lying about. Did she know that he was here? Or did she know that he wasn’t here, but she knew where he was?
Reacher concluded that it was better to keep some of the truth to himself. For one thing, the CIA so desperate that they recruited a total stranger to help them locate a missing agent sounded crazy. For another thing, Shepard had asked him not to tell anyone. That didn’t really matter to Reacher since he didn’t owe allegiance to Shepard, the CIA, or anyone else. But he liked Amita Red Cloud and her father. And he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to this community. The threat of bombing the reservation was preposterous. Reacher knew that. But something about Shepard told him that he wasn’t lying about that as an option.
“Reacher! What the hell is going on?”
Reacher decided to trust her. Sometimes the best way to earn trust is to take a leap of faith and garner it.
He said, “The two guys who were up here. They aren’t feds. Not technically. They’re CIA agents.”
Amita did a double take. She looked at Reacher sideways. Then she asked, “Are you high?”
“I know it sounds crazy. But it explains how they got FBI badges.”
“Why the hell would the CIA be here?”
Reacher smiled. He said, “I can’t tell you the details.”
“Don’t even say that you’ll have to kill me!” She said and for the first time a smile crept across her face like she forgot who she was talking to.
Reacher said, “Smiling looks much better on you than scowling.”
“You’re the reason that I’ve been scowling, you and those CIA agents.”
Reacher stayed quiet.
“You’re serious about the CIA, aren’t you?”
“That’s what the guy told me.”
“What guy?”
Then Reacher explained to her about the diner and the guy with the scar. Before he could finish, her father walked into the stationhouse with questions in his eyes, but a hearty smile to greet his returning guest. Reacher, Amita, and Chief Red Cloud talked in his office. Reacher explained to both of them the whole story, except the part about the Ebola virus. He figured that it was best to leave that detail out. They had enough of an unbelievable story to swallow without the doomsday virus scenario tacked onto it. And he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone anything, but Reacher didn’t work for the CIA. He was pretty sure that neither of the Red Clouds would be involved in some crazy terrorist plot.
Amita said, “That’s unbelievable.”
Reacher stayed quiet.
“Well it’s what’s happening. It explains why those two agents were here. Why they passed themselves off as feds.”
“So what do we do now?”
“They want me to find him. I need your help. We don’t have much time.”
Outside the winds howled and the sky clattered and rolled with the echo of a vengeful God. The way that only Mother Nature could sound. The storm was coming and now was the time.
Chapter 20
Reacher stood 6’6” tall—a height that he had inherited from his father. It was a family thing, like many of his attributes and desires and the need to help the helpless.
Cameron Reacher knew nothing of his father in most senses of the phrase. However, he knew that things weren’t always what they seemed. Jack Reacher’s FBI files and case files that his mother had compiled over a lifetime hadn’t said that Jack Reacher was a good man. By all accounts his civilian record showed him to be a man who was followed by danger and crime. His Army record was different. Jack had been a man who upheld the law and got the job done. A decorated officer turned criminal drifter—that was the way he was seen on paper.
Reacher knew different. His father was something much more than a man on paper.
Standing in the middle of the police station on Red Rain Indian Reservation, Reacher towered over Amita Red Cloud. But somehow he felt in his bones that she was the one towering over him. Reacher knew what it was like to be in the presence of a strong woman; his mother had been one. He didn’t flinch or back down or feel intimidated by anyone—man or otherwise, but Amita was the first woman to make him blink for an instant. He thought that if she commanded him to jump then he’d jump.
And suddenly, in the distance, an alarm sounded. Not an alarm from a car or a bank, but something different, something ominous and loud and booming. It was a siren.
Amita asked, “What is that? Wait, it’s the tornado siren!”
Reacher stayed quiet.
Amita looked past Reacher’s arms and at her father whose face had turned blue like he had been out in the freezing temperatures far too long.
He said, “Tornado.”
Reacher asked, “In a snowstorm? Is that possible?”
Amita said, “It’s unusual, but it happens.”
“What do we do?”
Right then Amita Red Cloud said something profound. She said, “Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.”
And Reacher followed her with a renewed sense of purpose because according to the notes that his mother had made about Jack Reacher, notes that he had placed in memory, his motto was those very same words. Once again, Cameron Reacher felt that he was in the right place, that his hand wasn’t being forced; it was being guided.
They ran outside and took a look at the skyline, searching for a twister.
At first there was nothing.
Well, not nothing, Reacher thought.
There was the sky filled with icy clouds and gusting wind blowing toward them from the blizzard that was just over the horizon. Then there were the giant black clouds circling around them like a flanking army. The mountain peaks were blurred and hidden behind a blanket of white. The trees from the forests faded from nearly the front all the way into the background and merged into a landscape of white and darkness creating a cold gray color.
Reacher stepped out not far behind Amita. She ran to her police cruiser, jacked open the door as fast as she could, and dumped down into her seat. She grabbed at the dashboard and pulled up the radio. She turned the ignition key to power the cruiser and began to call out across the radio channel.
Reacher couldn’t hear her from where he stood because of the distance and the gusts of wind. They started moderate at first and then gradually built up in speed and power and force. Within minutes the flag high up on a thick metal flagpole in front of the community center was whipping and flapping like the flag on a sailboat far out at sea. The winds were changing and foretelling of the approaching storm.
Chief Red Cloud walked out near Reacher, craned his head, and used his left hand as a visor protecting his eyes from the flakes and dust from the snow that blew across the terrain in the wind. He looked across the sky in the opposite direction of his daughter and Reacher.
Reacher veered his eyesight left, covering the skyline, then to the right scanning the rest of the sky. That’s when he saw it, a small, but fast-moving twister
. It zipped north and south, like a creature that couldn’t make up its mind. He watched as snow lifted up off the ground underneath it and filled the upper body with dark bursts of snow and ice. The funnel twisted out like a snake that had just eaten, with its meal digested down in its lower belly.
The twister looked small, but Reacher could tell that it wasn’t. It was an optical illusion, a trick of the sky. When he looked down at the base of the funnel, he saw that in comparison to the trees, the thing wasn’t small at all.
Reacher wasn’t an expert on snowy climates. Unlike his father, he had grown up in just one place, a deprived past that he was currently changing. He had grown up in rural Mississippi and had seen snow. Tennessee had real mountains and snow and skiing, and Tennessee was a neighbor to his state, but he had never ventured into Tennessee except once with his friends when he was 13. His mother had been against his going to the concert so he had snuck away with his friends to see the show. Reacher’s mom was the county sheriff, so when he had gotten caught by one of her deputies trying to cross back into the county, she was very upset to say the least. Reacher had been grounded for two months and wasn’t allowed to associate with those friends anymore. This hadn’t bothered him that much, except for one friend. He had met a girl that night at the concert, a good-looking red-headed girl. She had pursed pink lips and long legs like the stems of a gazelle. She had had a tongue piercing, which was new to Reacher. Girls in his town didn’t do such things.
One extra feature about her that was new to Reacher was that she had talked to him. He hadn’t been used to girls talking to him. Not like this girl. She was close to him, talking to him in loud, concert whispers in his ear. She had held onto his arm and run her nails gently across his inner bicep, an act that he had never known before but he would really enjoy throughout his life.
The girl was smart too. She was smarter than most of the girls that he had known. She talked different than the girls that he had known. It took him a while to figure it out, but she was different because she was older, much older. She had told him that she was a freshman and she was—in college. She had assumed that he was too.
Reacher remembered thinking that even though he had never seen that girl again, it had been worth every second of the two-month grounding just to have that one memory of her.
Suddenly, he found himself smiling and then he heard Amita’s voice.
“There! To the west!” She was screaming and pointing at the twister. Right in front of Reacher, who shook off his nostalgia and glared at the monstrous twister that carved a path toward him.
At the base, Reacher could see and hear trees cracking and wind howling and swirling.
“Inside!” Amita shouted. “Take cover!”
They headed back into the police station. Reacher waited until the rest went back in first and then he turned and took one last look at the twister that barreled in a direction right toward them.
The sky was turning darker as the twister approached. The clouds above it swirled and formed a whirlpool shape. Reacher thought of a bathtub drain only he was looking at it from the opposite side than the top. Then he turned and headed through the police station door and slammed it behind him.
“Do you have a basement?” he asked.
Amita said, “No. We aren’t used to this kind of thing. Twisters are generally much farther south. In fact, I think that there used to be a shelter, but I can’t remember what happened to it.”
Chief Red Cloud signaled to everyone to head to the back hallway.
“Let’s stay in here for now. It’s probably the safest place because there is no loose furniture.”
Reacher was the last to follow them. The assistant, the civilians that were still there, Amita, and her father all crammed together in the hallway with little space between them, mostly because the hallway wasn’t very long.
Amita crowded close to Reacher. Closer than he had expected, but he didn’t react. He didn’t want to scare her or signal to her that he was uncomfortable with her being so close. Then he remembered that was how he had met that college girl so many years ago. They were in crowded quarters and ended up close together and ended up touching and then talking until finally they were kissing. Reacher wondered if he would kiss Amita. He wondered what that would be like.
And then he thought, Snap out of it! Twister! Remember the twister!
Reacher shook off the urge to grab Amita and kiss her. Instead he looked on with an overwhelming concern for their safety. Somewhere deep inside of his being was a guardian, a cop by genetics.
Then suddenly three things happened simultaneously. First a loud, thunderous roar sounded outside and the wail of the siren was gone. Second the power in the police station cracked like a short circuit and blacked out. And the third thing that happened was that Amita Red Cloud shivered and reached out and grabbed hold of Reacher’s right hand—tight.
Chapter 21
The twister reverberated and rumbled on the rooftop of the community center. The echo rippled through every chamber of the structure. Outside, the wind howled. Limbs and loose shingles clattered across the walls and the roof and banged into the police cruisers and the cars in the lot.
The lights were out and the station was black as night. There were no windows in the hall.
Reacher felt Amita Red Cloud’s hand squeeze his own and he heard her breathing like an engine humming in wait to accelerate.
The twister lived for all of ten minutes, but in that small amount of time it caused a lot of cosmetic damage at the very least. Reacher knew that for sure. They all did. No way was all of the sound and fury of the thing capable of doing anything less.
After the sounds died down to just the howl of the wind, Amita let go of his hand and moved down the hall to check out the station. Reacher stayed a step behind, but followed after her.
Before they made it to the door of the station, they saw the beam of light that shone into the station. It was faded, but lit up the room. The light came from where the door used to be. The heavy, orange door to the stationhouse had been ripped off at the hinges. The sound had probably been loud, but was masked by the volume of the twister.
From where they stood, there was no sign of the door, only the broken metal hinges that swiveled and dangled from the doorframe.
Amita said, “Shit.”
Reacher nodded and stayed quiet.
He walked past her and out the doorway. He gazed out upon the scene in front of him. He wasn’t familiar with cold weather systems, but he had lived through some tornadoes before. Mississippi was a state that had some experience with them, but mostly he had lived through hurricanes. That was a storm system that he had known very, very well.
When it came to tornadoes, he wasn’t sure of the normal lifespan of one, but this one had seemed short.
The scene outside wasn’t as bad as it had sounded. Part of the reason for that was that the whole community had already expected a snowstorm that would last overnight to sweep through. So they had already prepared. Many of the people had already closed their shutters and moved in with their relatives who had houses and basements and generators.
“We have to open the community center as a shelter for people who need it,” Chief Red Cloud said from behind Reacher.
Reacher turned and saw the man standing just outside the doorway.
Amita was off to the south a bit, looking over the horizon. Reacher assumed that she was looking for the twister. But it had died away. Reacher knew it. There was no sign of it anywhere. One minute it had been a beast of destruction and the next it evaporated into thin air.
“Let’s start now. We won’t get a better chance. The snowstorm will get worse,” Chief Red Cloud said.
Reacher nodded. He looked at the sky again and saw that the white grayness was less than a mile away. It was a slow-moving thing. This gave Reacher some hope because Shepard had said that after the blizzard had passed they needed results.
Reacher walked over to Amita and said, “We had better t
ake this time to go and look for Jacobs. It’ll be impossible when the storm hits harder.”
Amita nodded in agreement and said, “Okay.”
Then she went over to her father and explained. Reacher couldn’t hear them. But he saw Chief Red Cloud shake his head in disagreement.
Amita came back and said, “My dad wants us to help with the shelter first. He said that our priority is the community center. I told him how important it is. He’s calling a town meeting. Half of the community will head this way and stay in the community center anyway. So after we get them in we’ll let you ask about Jacobs. Okay?”
“That’ll have to do,” Reacher said. Then he added, “What do I have to do to help?”
Amita sensed his disappointment. Then she said, “How about this? We need to clear the road from falling debris as fast as possible. You and I can go out in the cruiser and do that.”
She stopped talking and looked up at the skyline again.
Then she said, “Looks like we have less than an hour. Let’s get moving and while we’re out, we’ll look for any sign of Michael. Deal?”
“You won’t mind?”
“It’s true that we used to date. He hurt me. But I have a job to do. I tried to help those federal agents or CIA or whatever. And I will help you. Sounds like if we don’t then they’ll only return and cause more problems.”
Reacher stayed quiet.
He headed for the car. He didn’t wait for her.
Amita didn’t read anything into it as he knew that she wouldn’t. She was a hard woman, hard as they come. She followed suit and headed toward the police cruiser.
The door was open and the car’s seatbelt warning beeped as Reacher opened the door and sat down. Amita’s key was still in the ignition, but not turned all the way. She opened her door, plopped down in the seat, and shut the door. She fired up the engine and hit the gas. The car swerved around in a circle and moved forward as she released the gas a little. The tires dug up some snow and dragged a small tree limb behind it for four or five feet and then released it back into the parking lot.
