THE JACK REACHER FILES: THE GIRL FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF CORDIAL (with Bonus Thriller THE BLOOD NOTEBOOKS)

by Jude Hardin

  Diana was starting to get some feeling back into her extremities, but she still didn’t have full control of her hands, and she still couldn’t speak. Just a few more minutes, she thought. Then she could make some sort of effort to defend herself.

  But it didn’t look like she was going to have a few more minutes.

  Terrence lifted Ryan into the chair and started pushing him toward the front of the lounge, toward the left side, toward the man Diana had shot in the head. When they got close to him—and the big splatter on the wall above him—Terrence said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Try to hold it together,” Ryan said. “I can’t do this without your help.”

  But Terrence didn’t hold it together. He cupped his hand over his mouth, ran to the stainless steel sink on the other side of the vending machines and started retching. He was there for a minute or so, and then he splashed some water on his face and rinsed his mouth out and walked back to the front of the lounge.

  “All right,” he said. “I feel better now.”

  “Give me the gun,” Ryan said.

  “It has blood all over it.”

  “Use a paper towel or something to pick it up. We don’t want our fingerprints on it, anyway.”

  Terrence walked back to the sink and tore off some paper towels from a roll mounted to the wall. While he was there he splashed his face some more and rinsed his mouth out some more. By the time he made it back to the front left corner of the room and picked up the gun and handed it to Ryan, Diana had regained the use of her motor functions. Not one hundred percent. More like eighty or ninety. But it was enough. She turned onto her belly and reached around and pulled the pistol from the back of her waistband and aimed and pulled the trigger twice. Now there were three corpses on the left side of the room and three big splatters on the wall above them. No need to call 911 now. All the men were dead.

  Diana rose and staggered to the door and swiped her keycard to exit the lounge, but the lock didn’t click open. There was a short electronic beep, and the little digital display window next to the scanner said NO ACCESS. Diana looked at her watch. It had been fifty-two minutes since Pam in HR activated the card. Diana should have had eight more minutes left. She tried a second time and a third time, but the door still wouldn’t open. Maybe someone had heard the gunshots. Maybe the whole facility was on lockdown now. Or maybe someone had disabled Diana’s card remotely. If that was the case, then there were probably more hostiles on the way. There was no way for Diana to know how many Ryan had sent the text to, so there was no way for her to know how many would eventually be showing up.

  She walked over to the first man she’d shot, the man they called Kevin. She went through his pockets and found his keycard and saw that he was a member of the security team there at the factory.

  And, he was carrying a badge.

  He was an officer with the Cordial Police Department. Same as Goffner. Diana had wondered how these men moved freely throughout the production areas. Now she knew. They were off-duty police officers working security at the plant. They could go anywhere they wanted to. The other dead men—with the exception of Ryan Casibler—probably had badges from the CPD as well, but Diana didn’t take the time to verify that. She ran to the scanner and swiped Kevin’s keycard and the door clicked open and she exited the lounge.

  As she headed back down the hallway, she started thinking that something still didn’t make sense. If the men who’d entered Rae Derlin’s house on the night of the murder had used a key, it seemed that Rae—and the six-foot five-inch two hundred and forty pound man posing as Jack Reacher—would have had time to react. They were right there on the couch. Five or six feet away from the door. They were playing chess, which requires a great deal of concentration. No talking, no music, no TV. They would have heard the key sliding into the lock, and they would have heard the bolt sliding across the plate. They would have had time to do something. Not as much time as they would have had if the lock had been picked, but probably enough time to put up some kind of a fight. They wouldn’t have just sat there and watched the men mosey on in and take control.

  Diana considered all this as she raced across the pedestrian bridge toward the office complex.

  There was no sign of forced entry at Rae Derlin’s house, which could possibly indicate that a key had been used, but there was also no sign that the faux Jack Reacher had put up any kind of struggle, which could possibly indicate that the intruders had entered by some other means.

  Maybe the bad guys had used a key, but maybe not.

  Maybe Rae Derlin had opened the door and let them in.

  8

  Diana made it out to the parking lot without further incident. She didn’t know why her keycard had expired early, but it didn’t matter now. She climbed into her car and buckled her seatbelt and jammed the key into the ignition and sped away from Wakeman’s, back toward the east side of Cordial. The train had finally moved on, so she took the Stewart Avenue crossing, made it back to the central business district in less than ten minutes.

  It was after five o’clock, and the bank was closed. Diana pulled into the parking area and found a spot where she had a good view of the police station, and then she called The Director from her car.

  It took her a few minutes to explain everything that had happened.

  “I still don’t know exactly what’s going on here,” she said. “And I still don’t know how many people are involved.”

  “We need to get you out of there,” The Director said. “I want you to drive on back to the airport immediately. We’ll have a private jet there waiting for you.”

  “Then what?”

  “There’s going to be a lot of cleaning up to do. But let me worry about that.”

  “What about the investigation?”

  “We can talk about how we’re going to proceed when you get back. Right now I want you on that plane.”

  Diana didn’t particularly want to leave Cordial right away. After everything that had happened, she felt as though this was her investigation, her puzzle to solve. She wanted to know what was going on at Wakeman’s, and she wanted to know if Rae Derlin and the man posing as Jack Reacher were involved in the conspiracy.

  She looked at her watch.

  5:51.

  It was a two hour drive to the airport in Louisville, so The Director would be expecting her to board the plane no later than eight o’clock. And she needed to be on time. There were no rebels in The Circle. On the first infraction, insubordinates tended to pull assignments in the tundra in January and in the desert in August. On the second infraction, they tended to disappear. Not that either scenario occurred very often. When you received an order from The Director, you followed it. No questions asked.

  “I’ll get there as fast as I can,” Diana said.

  “Good. Kelly will meet you in Conference Room B for the debriefing.”

  He disconnected.

  Kelly Goodall was one of the assistant directors. She probably wasn’t going to be very happy about the late night meeting, but it was the kind of thing that went with the territory.

  Diana looked across the street. She wanted to talk to Rae Derlin again, at least for a few minutes, but she wasn’t sure if she could trust Chief Kearning —or anyone else employed by the Cordial Police Department, for that matter. There were probably half a dozen armed officers there at the station right now, maybe more, too many for Diana to handle at once. Best to just leave it alone, she thought. If The Director wanted her on the airplane in two hours, then that was where she needed to be.

  She put the car in reverse, but before she started backing out of the parking place, three cruisers with blue lights flashing fishtailed out of the alley beside the station and headed west on Main.

  Chief Kearning was in the lead car. Diana had seen his face clearly as he rounded the corner. Someone at Wakeman’s must have reported the horrific scene in the employee lounge, which meant that every police officer on duty would be headed that way. Ev
eryone except the desk sergeant and the dispatcher and the officer currently in charge of the lockup. The dispatcher probably wasn’t carrying. The other two definitely were.

  Five minutes, Diana thought. Five minutes with Rae Derlin, and then she would head for the airport.

  She loaded her pistol, slid an extra magazine into her pocket. If either of the two armed officers still inside the police station made a move, she would be ready. If both of them made a move, she would still be ready. Two was no problem.

  She climbed out of her car and walked across the street and entered the station. There had been a change of shifts since she left earlier. There was a female officer at the desk now. Her nametag said McGowen.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Diana Dawkins, SIU. I was here earlier. I need to speak with a suspect named Rae Derlin.”

  “May I see your badge, please?”

  “Sure.”

  Diana showed McGowen her army credentials.

  “You can wait in the interview room,” McGowen said. “I’ll have the corrections officer bring her up in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Diana walked to the interview room and sat at the table. She kept her hands in the pockets of her jacket in case she needed to clear her weapon in a hurry. Five minutes passed, and then ten. She hadn’t planned on having to wait around like this. She didn’t have time. She needed to wrap things up with Rae Derlin and get out of the police station before any of the other officers returned, and then she needed to get to the airport. Fast. As it was, she was going to have to do ninety to get there by eight.

  She pulled out her cell phone and punched in the number for the front desk to see what was taking so long.

  No answer.

  She got up and exited the interview room and walked toward the front of the station. Before she rounded the corner that led to the reception area, she saw that Officer McGowen was on the floor. An instant later—a spilt second before she could pull her pistol out of her pocket—a very powerful forearm closed around her upper body and the cold steel edge of a knife blade pressed against her throat.

  “Let’s go on back to the interview room,” a male voice said, tightening his grip around her chest and arms, pressing the blade even harder against her neck.

  There were several ways of breaking the hold, but each of them required the full use of both arms and both legs, and Diana was still a little weak in her right hamstring, where the barbs of the Taser had pierced the muscle. She might have been able to get away, but there was a good chance that the blade would slide across her left jugular in the process. Then it would be a race to stop the bleeding in time.

  Espionage 101, Lesson Four: In a crisis situation, first weigh the odds, and then choose an appropriate course of action.

  Right now the appropriate course of action was to follow the assailant’s instructions and wait for a better opportunity to take him out.

  “What do you want?” Diana said.

  “I already told you what I want. Move.”

  “If you stay right behind me like that, you’re going to cut me. Give me some space.”

  “No. We’ll walk slowly. If you get cut, too bad.”

  They turned around together and walked slowly together toward the interview room. When they got to the doorway, Diana could see that Rae Derlin was already sitting at the table. Gone were the orange coveralls, and gone were the shackles. Rae was dressed in jeans and a tank top and a short red leather jacket.

  “Take your gun out of your pocket and put it on the table,” the man holding the knife to Diana’s throat said.

  Diana complied.

  Rae picked up the pistol, and then the man forced Diana into the chair across from Rae. The man stayed behind Diana and kept the knife blade resting on her right shoulder while Rae pointed the gun at her chest.

  “I guess you think you have it all figured out now, huh?” Rae said, her hand trembling nervously, her finger twitching against the trigger.

  “Maybe some of it,” Diana said. “You set me up by telling me that Ryan Casibler had a key to your house. You figured I would go over to Wakeman’s to talk to him, and you figured he would send out a message to the others while I was there. It was a trap. There never was a key, was there? You opened the door and let those men come into your house the night of the murder.”

  Rae laughed. “Of course there was a key,” she said. “But those guys were in the house before Jack and I got home from work. They used the key and came in and hid in the closet. Ryan and Gil. We had it all planned out. They were supposed to shoot Jack, and then they were supposed to go outside and kick the door in, to make it look like some kind of robbery or something. They came in the house before we got home to minimize the chances of anything going wrong. But they double crossed me. Gil hit me and knocked me out, and then they left me there to take the blame.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police all that?” Diana said.

  “Because I was in on it. Don’t you see? If I’d told the police about Ryan and Gil, then Ryan and Gil would have told the police about me. Then everything would have started coming out, and we all would have been going away for a long time. Well, they would have been going away for a long time. I probably would have been dead by now. Anyway, I knew that Tad would help me as soon as he got a chance. Right, Tad?”

  “We need to go,” the man with the knife said.

  “I’m not sure I can do this,” Rae said.

  “You can do it.”

  “How did all this get started?” Diana said, trying to regain Rae’s attention. “Why did you need to kill the man posing as Jack Reacher?”

  “He found out what me and Ryan and those others guys were up to over at Wakeman’s. He was blackmailing me.”

  “And just what were you and Ryan and those other guys up to over at Wakeman’s?” Diana said.

  “Should I tell her?” Rae said.

  She looked up at the man standing behind Diana.

  The man with the knife.

  Tad.

  Diana hadn’t seen his face yet, or what he was wearing, but she figured it had to be the corrections officer. He was the only one currently present at the police station who could have smuggled fresh clothes in for Rae, and he was the only one who could have released her from the lockup. He’d probably used the knife to kill McGowen, and he’d probably used it to kill the dispatcher as well. Nice and quiet, no gunshots for anyone passing by outside the station to hear.

  Not as much of an issue now that they were in the soundproofed interview room.

  “You’ve wasted too much time already,” Tad said. “Shoot her. We need to get out of here.”

  Espionage 101, Lesson Five: when the time is right, kick some serious ass.

  The time was right.

  Rae’s finger was still twitching on the trigger, and now her whole body was trembling. She obviously wasn’t used to pointing a gun at another human being. Diana figured this was some sort of test for Rae, some sort of initiation. Otherwise, Tad would have just slid the knife across the front of Diana’s throat, and that would have been the end of it.

  But Tad didn’t slide the knife across the front of Diana’s throat. He kept it resting on her right shoulder, close enough to Diana’s neck to do what needed to be done if Rae couldn’t pull the trigger, but far enough away to allow Diana to do what she did next.

  Diana gripped the chair seat and shifted her weight and toppled to the left, the sudden startling movement causing the muscles in Rae’s nervous index finger to contract and squeeze the trigger. If Diana hadn’t moved, the bullet would have bored straight into her heart. As it was, the bullet bored straight into the corrections officer’s groin. Dead center, right between his legs. He dropped the knife and fell to the floor and grabbed the wounded area with his hands and started screaming out in agony. Before Rae could even think about getting another round off, Diana rose and clubbed the back of her neck with a closed fist.

  Rae’s eyes went back in
her head and she collapsed to the floor, but only momentarily. The blow hadn’t been solid enough to knock her unconscious. She was still alert enough to keep the gun in her hand, and now she was amped on adrenaline. She scooted over to the wall and raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger again and again and again, firing wildly in every direction. Diana could see that her eyes weren’t tracking correctly, that the blow to the back of her neck had affected her vision.

  Diana stayed low and crept over toward Tad, who was still writhing around in circles on the floor, smearing the white vinyl tiles with his own dark red blood.

  Maybe Rae Derlin would keep shooting at nothing until she ran out of bullets, Diana thought. But that’s not what happened. Suddenly, as though someone had flipped a switch, Rae was back. Her eyes locked with Diana’s, and she raised the pistol, but before she could pull the trigger again, Diana snatched the knife from the floor and whizzed it overhand and watched—partly in terror and regret, and partly in a strong sense of relief—as the blade thudded deep into Rae’s chest.

  Diana called 911 before she left the police station, but she couldn’t wait around to see if the ambulance made it there in time. She had a plane to catch, and even if she drove a hundred miles an hour, she wasn’t going to make to Louisville by eight.

  9

  By the time the plane was in the air, security camera photographs of Diana Dawkins were being shown on all the news channels. They were high-quality digital images, but the woman the authorities were looking for had curly brown hair and eyeglasses and an extensive makeup job. After washing her face and ditching the wig and the glasses and the conservative slacks and the jacket and the sensible SIU officer shoes, Diana looked like a totally different person.

  Two days after flying back to Colorado, she was called to The Director’s office for a one-on-one meeting. Not one of the assistants this time. The Director.

  Diana walked into the office and stood at the front of his desk.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  “Thanks, but I think I should remain standing for this.”