A Hard Man To Forget

by Dan Ames

  “Yeah,” Cassady. “In his sleep.”

  41

  “Help you?”

  Tallon turned and saw two men watching him.

  They were both big in their own way. One was very tall, at least 6’6” with a pear-shaped body. The other was average height but twice as wide as his partner. His shoulders were massive, his arms were thick, but very short. A wrestler, not a puncher. The tall one would be the striker. He would fire from a distance allowing the other one to get in close.

  If it came to that.

  They wore jeans, hiking boots and t-shirts. The short, wide one had on a baseball cap. Tallon thought of the term ‘shit-kicker’ and how it was highly applicable here.

  The short, stocky guy was also the one who’d spoken.

  Tallon slid his phone into his front pocket, having just finished talking with Pauling. The men must have pulled up quietly and parked behind Tallon’s vehicle.

  “You deaf?”

  That was the tall one. He had a high-pitched voice. Not in the least intimidating. In fact, Tallon smiled at the sound of it.

  It was like being threatened by Pee-Wee Herman.

  The two men shifted slightly, putting more room between them.

  “So the camera works?” Tallon asked. He’d noticed the little dome of dark glass, that it was the only thing that looked like it survived. Which had been odd. Considering the general decrepit state of everything else. His suspicions had clearly been confirmed.

  Neither guy answered.

  “What do you guys do, sit together in some little office somewhere, keeping close tabs on the abandoned gas station?” Tallon said with a laugh. “That’s what your lives have come to? You must have been real stars in the classroom. Do you jerk each other off if someone shows up here?”

  His tone and attitude took them by surprise.

  The tall one glanced down at the stocky one. Clearly, he was looking for his shorter counterpart to take the lead.

  The stocky one pulled out an extendable baton and snapped it all the way open with a flick of his wrist.

  Tallon almost smiled.

  The gesture was meant to scare him. To fill him with terror. Maybe make him submissive and do what they asked.

  It had the opposite effect.

  For a couple of reasons.

  One, the extendable baton as a weapon was best used to disarm someone. Slashing strikes downward that connected with bone, wrist or fingers, designed to knock a weapon from someone’s grip was the best way to use it. That’s what it had been designed for. A lot of would-be toughs didn’t know that, of course. They tended to use it the incorrect way. Trying to clobber someone over the head, for instance. Something told Tallon that the man in front of him hadn’t done his homework. In fact, he’d probably never done any homework, ever.

  Tallon had yet to draw a weapon.

  Two, an extendable baton was a good way to keep distance from a potential threat. Again, that was the impetus for its creation in the first place. If the tall one had the baton, it would be even better. Very difficult for Tallon to strike the tall man with his long arms, extended even farther with the baton.

  Now, the instrument also had some disadvantages. It required a good amount of energy to wind up and unleash a strike. It could be used to jab, but that wasn’t the best move.

  The only way their current setup would work was if Tallon attacked the stocky man with a weapon extended in front of him.

  He wasn’t about to do that.

  However, getting in close first to the guy with the baton was the way to go.

  “This is going to be fun,” the baton-wielding man said.

  And then they made their move.

  The tall one came in first and the move revealed the plan. The tall one would attack with a long-distance punch, and the stocky guy would pound Tallon with the baton while he fought with the big guy.

  Tallon’s reaction was instantaneous.

  He launched himself at the stocky one who attempted to draw back the baton in a big sweeping strike.

  Wrong move and he was both way too slow and way too late.

  Tallon’s straight kick caught him in the solar plexus and the man seemed to momentarily hang in the air as the power and viciousness of the kick left him stunned, gasping for air.

  The baton’s backswing stopped and the stocky man’s upper body leaned forward. Tallon’s momentum carried him forward and he drove a straight right into the middle of the man’s face, squashing the nose and driving the cartilage back and upward, directly into the frontal lobe of the man’s brain.

  He flew backward, falling on his back and his skull made a loud cracking sound as it hit the asphalt.

  The baton flew from the man’s hand and Tallon caught it with his right hand, still on the follow through from the terrific blow he’d just delivered. He turned on his heel, pivoted his hips and swung the baton.

  The tall man was still coming, too late to adjust his course, and the baton hit him in the neck, just under the jaw line. Its knobbed end drove into the nerves of the tall man’s spine. His eyes rolled over to white, and his body jolted like he’d stepped on a live wire.

  Tallon brought the baton back, twisting the other way in a backhand with a short arc that connected with the tall man’s temple.

  It was a terrible blow and the man tottered, as if he was checking his shoelaces, and then he fell face-first into the blacktop.

  In some states, Tallon knew that an extendable baton used to strike the head area was considered lethal force in a court of law.

  Oh well.

  Self-defense was a beautiful thing.

  Tallon used his shirt to wipe off the handle of the baton, and he threw it into the distance of the parking lot where it rolled into a clump of weeds.

  The whole process had taken less than thirty seconds and in the meantime, no one else had driven by the area.

  Tallon approached the stocky man and put his fingers to the man’s throat.

  He was dead.

  Tallon relieved the man of his wallet and went to his partner, who was clearly still breathing. Tallon took his wallet, too. He went to his vehicle, noted his opponents had arrived in a Crown Vic.

  Wasn’t that what Pauling had said the men who tried to grab Cassady had been driving?

  Tallon climbed into his vehicle and drove away.

  42

  Cassady was no longer any help.

  Pauling recognized that.

  There always came a time when a witness or family member could no longer contribute anything meaningful to an investigation. They had been wrung for any and all information. Any new insights would only come with brand-new questions. But those would have to come later, when new information arrived that prompted new questions.

  So when the person was no longer a resource, and when that person was also in danger, there were two approaches.

  One, use them as bait.

  Two, get them to a safe house.

  Pauling had a hotel room. It would only be considered a safe room for Cassady if she or Tallon were there, too. It would provide no protection to stash Cassady there and leave her by herself. So, guarding her at the hotel was really no different than guarding her at the house. If the bad guys knew to come here, they could probably figure out where Pauling was.

  Using Cassady as bait, on the other hand, wasn’t a bad idea. A tried and true technique. Sometimes the bait was killed, however.

  Also, they had tried once to grab Cassady and failed. The odds of them trying again were slim. Sure, they could assemble a huge strike force but Pauling didn’t think that would be the case. Especially now that the bad guys knew Cassady was being guarded.

  The other thing Pauling hated about using her client as bait was that it was a passive approach. She hated taking a passive angle on an investigation. It was always, for her, the last resort. Only used after she’d exhausted every other avenue. Being active was the key. Pushing forward, always seeking progress.

  Sure, there wer
e times when you had to play a waiting game. But this wasn’t one of them. At least, not now.

  She, Pauling, was a very good investigator, if she thought so herself. So was Tallon. Using either one as a bodyguard was a misallocation of resources, in Bureau terminology.

  No, she needed to be actively solving the case.

  Having a third person was a luxury she couldn’t afford. It was always a possibility, Pauling had been in charge of teams numbering in the dozens. But this case, she was only here because of Reacher. Or his name, more accurately. If it hadn’t been splashed across the front of that envelope, she would have ignored Cassady Simmons and her plight.

  Instead, she came out here, hoping to see Reacher.

  And now, she was working a case pro bono. Which was a fancy way of saying she was working for free.

  Which meant she needed to wrap this thing up, but like everything else that was easier said than done.

  Tallon interrupted her train of thought with a text that he was here and about to enter the house. Letting her know so his arrival didn’t startle anyone. Namely, Cassady.

  Pauling went to the door and let him in.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “Sleeping,” Pauling said and nodded her head toward the closed door of Cassady’s bedroom.

  “So are these guys,” Tallon said, and handed her two wallets.

  Pauling took them, and glanced at the IDs.

  “What happened?” she said.

  Pauling listened as Tallon walked her through the scene at the abandoned gas station. She found it particularly interesting the location was under surveillance, and that the two men were driving a Crown Vic.

  “So not only did they publish a fake address for Rio Grande Trucking, they figured somebody would eventually come looking for it. Hence, the camera,” Pauling said.

  “Which means their plan wasn’t very long-term,” Tallon said.

  “Good point,” Pauling said. The long-term play would have been to make sure no one ever came looking. By putting up a camera, they had pretty much planned somebody would be investigating. Which meant they were working on a limited time frame.”

  “I killed one of them, just so you know,” Tallon said.

  He said it with about as much emotion as someone stating there were leftovers in the fridge.

  “Was the other one mobile?” Pauling asked.

  “Not right away,” he answered. “But he’s probably awake by now.”

  “They won’t go to the cops,” Pauling said. “They have the camera so they watched it all. Probably sent a clean-up team the minute you left.”

  She thought it interesting the lack of reaction on Tallon’s face. That was one thing he and Reacher had in common. They never went looking for trouble but if someone came at them, they didn’t mind levying a very high price.

  “Let’s see what I can find on these names,” Pauling said. She took the wallets to her computer and spent a few minutes accessing her databases remotely.

  “Whoever they were, they certainly weren’t the A-Team,” Tallon said. “More like the C-minus team.”

  “Local help, most likely,” Pauling said. “Hired cheap.”

  “Overconfident, too. Bringing your wallets to a beat down.”

  Pauling scanned the information her programs had recovered. “Yep,” she said. “Locals. Minor criminal histories. No signs of employment. Freelance thugs.”

  “You get what you pay for.”

  Pauling snapped her laptop shut and looked at Tallon.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You look like you have a plan,” he said.

  “I do,” she answered. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  43

  “Mr. Walker, I’m afraid Brooks is dead,” the tall man said.

  The bald man with the bulging veins kept his face impassive. They stood in the underground room, with a window looking into the chamber where the experiments took place. There was a person in restraints, most of his skin gone, and blood splattered around the floor.

  “I know Brooks is dead,” Walker said. “I watched him die.”

  Walker had made sure to put a surveillance camera on the gas station, just in case anyone started poking around about Rio Grande Trucking, after the disappearance of Rick Simmons. The world was full of people asking questions. The problem was, they were usually asking the wrong questions.

  “So you saw it all?” the tall man said, his high-pitched voice sounding squeaky to his boss. Walker thought the big man sounded like a mouse. An overgrown mouse.

  “Of course I did,” Walker said. “The joy of seeing you two morons getting your asses kicked was negated by the realization of how severely I’ve overpaid you.”

  A vein on the side of the bald man’s head was throbbing, and the tall man knew that was a bad sign.

  “I’ve got Brooks’ body in the car. Want me to throw it in the incinerator?”

  Walker shook his head.

  “Not yet. Go get that one first,” he said, nodding toward the dead test subject in the chamber. “Throw both of them in there together and then meet me up at the command center. We’ve got to make some moves and make them fast.”

  The tall man was buoyed by his boss’s forgiveness. He opened the door to the chamber and went to the chair. He wondered about putting on some protective gear but he was afraid to ask.

  Behind him, he heard the door slam shut and the heavy locking mechanism rammed into place.

  Above him, he heard a gurgle of liquid begin heading toward the shower head.

  “No!” he shouted.

  He ran back to the door and heaved on it, but he knew firsthand it was impregnable. He’d watched many unfortunate souls do what he was doing just then.

  The fluid erupted from the shower head and began spraying in a 360 degree pattern. It splashed onto his face and hands igniting a burning pain the kind he’d never experienced before.

  On the other side of the glass, Walker watched the tall man screaming at him.

  He smiled.

  “Another mouse dies in the name of science,” he said and laughed.

  44

  Chicago. That’s where Pauling’s plan started.

  She had a friend, a nurse, who specialized in obstetrics. Pauling knew she could stash Cassady there, safely.

  Pauling had a long history of investigation and over that time had developed a sixth sense for when it was time to get one’s hands dirty.

  Now was the time.

  Just to be sure, she booked a flight out of Phoenix for Cassady, instead of Albuquerque, just in case anyone was watching the airport. Who knew? Someone had put a camera at an abandoned gas station. Having a watcher at the airport wasn’t out of the question.

  Pauling was confident they wouldn’t be watching in Phoenix, though.

  “Why do I have to leave again?” Cassady said. She sat on the edge of her bed, her shoulders slumped.

  “It won’t be for long,” Pauling assured her. “Just a few days, probably, until we get this thing sorted out.”

  “What about my work?”

  “We’ll have you call in sick. Do you have sick time?”

  Cassady nodded.

  “Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Pauling hugged Cassady and handed her an envelope. “There’s three thousand dollars in here in cash. Keep it on you. It’s yours. Don’t worry about it.”

  “What about the police, though? They said I should tell them if I planned to travel anywhere.”

  “I have to talk to them anyway,” Pauling said. “I’ll let them know you stepped out for a bit but that you’ll be back in a few days. It won’t be a problem.”

  “Okay,” Cassady said.

  She looked around the house and Pauling knew what she was thinking. That this had been her home. Where she thought she was going to raise a family.

  Instead, she was left alone.

  “Make sure she gets on the plane safely,” Pauling said to Tallon.

  �
�You got it,” he said.

  Tallon and Cassady left and Pauling wondered about the local cops. About how exactly she would handle that. She’d told Cassady she would take care of it.

  It was mostly true.

  She just didn’t know when she would share Cassady’s whereabouts.

  Pauling locked up Cassady’s house and drove down to her hotel room, showered, changed, and thought about her next steps.

  Tallon would be back once Cassady was safely on the plane.

  In the meantime, her plan was to dig deeper on the IDs of the men Tallon had dealt with at the abandoned gas station. She’d already run the basics through her software programs, but was waiting for information from one of her backchannel searches. The kind that didn’t appear in normal Internet traffic and therefore couldn’t be traced.

  A message was waiting in her inbox telling her that the information had arrived. She scanned through it, noting that it contained most of what she’d already learned.

  With one exception.

  Employment.

  In her initial background search, it had showed both men were unemployed. But this database, a back door into the IRS, traced payments to both men from an entity called S & S Security.

  What really caught Pauling’s eye, though, was the address associated with S & S Security. It was the same as Rio Grande Trucking.

  The exact same address as Rio Grande Trucking.

  Which Pauling already knew was an abandoned gas station west of the city.

  Reacher, what did you get me into? Pauling wondered. More accurately, what had Rick Simmons been into? Why him?

  She stood and began to pace. Sometimes, she thought better on her feet.

  What would Reacher do? He would explore the avenues. Think about who stood to gain. There were always commonalities. Cornerstone motivations at the root of most evil done by mankind.

  So far, Pauling had been unable to find out who would want to target Rick Simmons. And his wife.

  There had been no financial problems.

  No extramarital affairs.