by Jude Hardin
Wahlman still had his fingers hooked into the handle of the coffee mug he’d been sipping from. In one swift motion he slung the steaming hot liquid from the mug over his right shoulder, splashing it directly into the private investigator’s face, and he pivoted on the stool and grabbed the man’s right wrist and twisted it with a quick jerk and planted the sole of the nice new work boot on his left foot into the man’s left knee. The private investigator went down and the gun skittered across the floor and the attractive woman sitting on the other end of the counter started screaming. Wahlman picked up his backpack and grabbed the gun and trotted down the aisle to the street side exit and stepped outside and took a quick look around to see if any police cars had showed up yet. He didn’t see any. There was a passenger van parked at the curb with the name of a car dealership painted on the side of it. Some kind of shuttle, Wahlman supposed. You take your car in to get it worked on and the dealership gives you a complimentary ride to the mall so you don’t have to sit around in a plastic chair and watch TV for several hours. The van was empty, except for the gray-haired guy behind the steering wheel, who appeared to be either asleep or dead. Wahlman was thinking about using his newly-acquired revolver to persuade the elderly gentleman to let him borrow the vehicle for an hour or so when he saw a car that he recognized. It was Kasey, looking for a place to park. Wahlman ran that way. Kasey braked to a stop when she saw him coming. She unlocked the passenger door and he climbed in and told her not to panic but that they needed to get out of there right away.
She looked him directly in the eyes.
Then she glanced down at the gun in his hand.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Please. Just drive.”
She put the car in gear and weaved her way through the parking lot, out to a traffic signal that allowed customers exiting the mall to turn left or right or continue straight across to a cluster of boutiques and restaurants.
“Which way?” Kasey asked.
“Left,” Wahlman said. “Get on the interstate.”
“Should I run the red light?”
“No. And don’t speed, either. Just drive like you normally would.”
“Normally I would speed,” Kasey said.
“Just go with the flow of traffic. Not too fast, not too slow.”
“Are we in danger?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Why do you have a gun?”
“It’s a long story.”
The light turned green and Kasey steered out into the intersection and merged over into the far right lane and took the ramp to the interstate.
“East or west?” she asked.
“East,” Wahlman said. “Don’t stop until you get to Vegas.”
8
Kasey stopped for gasoline about ten miles from the Las Vegas city limits. There was a shabby little motel across the street from the filling station with a marquis that said FREE CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST and some fast food joints and a Mexican restaurant with some dusty pickup trucks with big tires parked near the entrance.
“I’ll go inside and pay for the gas,” Wahlman said. “Want me to get some snacks and drinks while I’m in there?”
“I’m hungry,” Kasey said. “I want a proper meal.”
“You like Mexican?”
“Yes.”
“We can eat across the street after I get the gas.”
“Okay.”
It was almost four o’clock in the afternoon. On the drive to Nevada, Wahlman had told Kasey his real name, and he’d told her about his ordeal in New Orleans a few months ago. He’d told her about almost being run over by a semi, and about the driver of the truck—a man named Darrell Renfro, who looked almost exactly like him—dying from multiple stab wounds, and he told her about a homicide detective named Collins coming to the scene. He told her about the DNA tests that followed, tests indicating that Wahlman and Renfro were exact genetic duplicates of a former army officer named Jack Reacher. He told her about the woman he’d met named Allison, and about narrowly escaping the assassin who killed her, and about getting into a gunfight with the guy and blowing the top of the guy’s skull off. He told her about the subsequent warrant issued for his arrest and about going back to Florida and about his best friend Mike Chilton being abducted and murdered. He told her about the team of assassins in Jacksonville, and about being shot in the leg, and about learning that the cloning experiment had actually started way back in 1983, and that now, over a hundred years later, someone in the army was trying to eliminate any evidence that it had ever happened. He told her about the guy in the little gray sports car who’d tried to kill him just yesterday afternoon, about how it was the same guy he’d seen at The Quick Street Inn that first morning in Barstow, and he told her about the private investigator who’d tried to detain him just before he’d come running out of the bookstore. When he finished telling Kasey about all of those things, she told him about the threatening phone call she’d gotten and about putting her daughter on a plane to her parents’ house early that morning and about being afraid to go back to her own house.
Wahlman was thinking about all of that as he pumped the gasoline into Kasey’s car. He was thinking about all of it, but he was especially thinking about the threatening phone call Kasey had received, about how such a thing could have happened, and about why it had happened. It seemed that the people who were after him had somehow discovered that he’d made contact with her. Maybe they’d tapped into her cell phone signal, or maybe they’d planted a listening device in her house. He wasn’t exactly sure why they would have done any of that, but he’d started formulating some ideas, some sketchy hypotheses that kept circling back to Kasey’s ex-husband, who’d been shot to death in his car outside an abandoned filling station out in the desert.
Whatever the case, it was good that Kasey had terminated her phone service, and it was good that she’d gotten her daughter and herself away from Barstow.
He finished pumping the gas and climbed back into the car. Kasey drove across the street to the Mexican restaurant and they got out and walked inside. A hostess led them to a table and gave them menus and asked if they would like something to drink. Wahlman ordered a bottle of Mexican beer, and Kasey ordered a margarita with an extra shot of tequila on the side. The hostess told them that their server would be there shortly, and then she walked over to the bar to put the drink orders in.
“An extra shot of tequila?” Wahlman said.
“Don’t worry,” Kasey said. “I’m not planning on driving anymore today.”
“So you want me to drive?”
“No. I’ve decided we’re going to stay here tonight.”
“Here?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I have some money,” Wahlman said. “We can ride into town and stay at a decent hotel.”
A skinny young man with dark hair and a dark complexion brought the bottle of beer and a frosted glass and the margarita and the extra shot of tequila, along with a basket of tortilla chips and two saucers and two small crocks filled with salsa.
“My name is Rey,” the skinny young man said. “I’ll be your server today. Would you like to order something from the appetizer menu?”
“Do you have quesadillas?” Kasey asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Excellent choice. Anything else?”
Kasey looked at Wahlman.
“That’s fine,” Wahlman said. “Just the quesadillas for now.”
“Okay, I’ll be back around with those shortly. If you would like to go ahead and order dinner, the stuffed flounder is on special this evening and it’s really, really good.”
“I think we’ll take a few minutes to look at the menu,” Kasey said.
“Take as long as you like. I’ll be right back.”
Rey smiled and walked away. Wahlman spooned some salsa onto his saucer and tried one of the tortilla chips.
“These are good,” he said. “They taste really fresh.”
Kasey took a sip from the shot gla
ss, and then she knocked it back and chased it with a long pull from the margarita.
“That phone call wasn’t the only reason I sent Natalie to her grandparents’ house,” she said. “I’ve been having some personal problems.”
“Anything you want to talk about?” Wahlman asked.
“Well, I told you about my ex-husband being murdered.”
“Yeah. And then I saw it on the news. His name was Stielson, right?”
“Right. And I kept his name after we got divorced. It’s Natalie’s last name, and I just didn’t want to—”
“I understand,” Wahlman said.
“Anyway, I’ve been having some problems since then, just trying to keep it together, if you know what I mean.”
“Were you still in love with him?”
Kasey almost choked on the sip of margarita she’d just taken. She coughed into a napkin, and then she reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“No,” she said. “In fact, just the opposite. I didn’t even cry at the service they had for him. I think that’s part of the problem. The guilt I’m feeling for not feeling anything. I had a child with the man, you know?”
“Of course,” Wahlman said.
“So there’s that, but it’s mostly about the money he was sending me every month. On the first of February, when the money didn’t come, it became glaringly obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to keep making a car payment and a house payment and a payment to the school Natalie was going to. I started feeling like a complete failure and I started drinking a lot, and then I finally heard from you after weeks of waiting, and then I got that other phone call—which was a death threat, there’s really no other way to put it—and that’s kind of where I am right now. I’m kind of a mess.”
“I would love to tell you that everything’s going to be all right,” Wahlman said.
“And I would love to hear that everything’s going to be all right,” Kasey said.
Wahlman took a drink of the Mexican beer, not bothering to pour it from the bottle into the glass.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re nearly as much of a mess as you think you are,” he said. “I think you’re keeping it together incredibly well, considering the circumstances.”
“Thank you.”
“I think you did the right thing by sending Natalie to your parents’ house. Since she had to fly there, I’m assuming it’s a fairly good distance from Barstow.”
“Oh, it’s way far away from Barstow,” Kasey said. “But I’m not going to tell you exactly where. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“That’s fine. I don’t need to know where your daughter is. All I need to know is that she’s safe. And I need to know that you’re going to be safe too. Are you planning on joining Natalie there at your parents’ house?”
“I don’t know what I’m planning to do,” Kasey said. “Right now I’m just planning to order another shot of tequila.”
Rey brought the quesadillas and asked if they were ready to order dinner yet.
“We need a few more minutes to look at the menu,” Wahlman said.
“No problem,” Rey said. “How are you doing on the drinks?”
Kasey ordered another shot, and Wahlman decided to have one as well. They looked at the menu while Rey walked up to the bar, and when he returned they ordered dinner. And more shots. Rey brought the drinks, and then he delivered the food a few minutes later. Wahlman had the chili rellenos with refried beans and Kasey had the tamales with Mexican rice, and they shared portions from each other’s plates. They sat there and ate and talked, and they laughed some and they cried some and they drank tequila until it wasn’t a good idea for either one of them to drive.
9
“He was a Military Policeman,” Wahlman said.
He and Kasey had decided to stay at the shabby little motel, which wasn’t all that shabby once you got to your room. It was as clean and comfortable as any of the chain places Wahlman had been staying at, and the nightly rate was about half what those places usually charged. He and Kasey had decided to stay in the same room, and they had decided to sleep in the same bed. They hadn’t actually done any sleeping yet, but they had done just about everything else a man and a woman can do on a king size mattress in a motel room ten miles west of Vegas between seven and nine o’clock on a Friday evening, including at least one thing that you weren’t likely to find in any sort of manual or magazine.
Kasey snuggled in close and rested her head on Wahlman’s shoulder.
“Who was a Military Policeman?” she asked.
“Jack Reacher. He was a lawman. Like me.”
“You were an MP?”
“Master at Arms. That’s what they call it in the navy, but it’s basically the same thing.”
“Do you think about him a lot?”
“Reacher?”
“Yes.”
“I do,” Wahlman said. “I’ve been doing some research online, trying to gather as much information as I can, thinking that maybe something he did or said might provide some insight into my current predicament. Apparently he’d been involved in what Detective Collins referred to as some questionable activities after he got out of the army, some vigilante justice stuff and whatnot, but I haven’t been able find any details on any of that yet.”
“What have you been able to find?” Kasey asked.
“Mostly records from court martial proceedings that he’d been involved in. He was a good cop. And a good guy, all-around, as far as I can tell. Which makes me happy, since he’s the closest thing to a biological father I’ll ever have.”
“Remarkable that they were collecting cells for a future cloning experiment way back in nineteen eighty-three,” Kasey said.
“Yeah. So far, there’s no indication that Reacher was aware that he’d been chosen as a donor. Supposedly there were forty of them. American Soldiers. They had been injured during an attack in Beirut, Lebanon, but I’m guessing that they were healthy otherwise, and I’m guessing that they weren’t chosen at random. I’m guessing that there was something about their physical and mental attributes that the army wanted to copy. Supposedly there were two fetuses produced from each donor. And supposedly, out of the eighty fetuses produced, the two from Jack Reacher were the only two that survived.”
“Darrell Renfro and you,” Kasey said.
“Right.”
“Which means that you and Renfro were the strongest. The crème de la crème. The baddest of the badasses.”
“I guess so,” Wahlman said. “Assuming all that stuff about the experiment is true. Right now I’m just going on the word of a man who was trying to kill me. But he was convincing. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. And of course the DNA tests that Collins ordered confirmed the genetic connection.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” Kasey said. “If that guy with the leather trench coat was trying to kill you, why didn’t he kill you in Barstow? You were sitting five stools away from him that first morning you came into the diner. You and I started talking about how I was cleaning the coffeepot, I think. He was sitting right there. Why didn’t he just wait until you walked out of the diner and then—”
“He left abruptly,” Wahlman said. “At exactly eleven o’clock. I think I mentioned that at the time. Like he had somewhere to be. The only thing I can figure is that he didn’t know who I was yet. Maybe he had a meeting set up with the people who hired him. Maybe they told him my name at the meeting and gave him photographs and everything. Maybe he looked at the photographs and realized he’d seen me earlier that day right there in Barstow. He couldn’t have known for sure that I was still in town, but he probably stuck around for a while, thinking that I probably was. He probably stuck around until he was certain that I was gone, and then he probably started working on finding out where I’d gone to. You never saw him come into the diner again?”
“No. I was off that night, and then the next morning I got the c
all about my ex.”
“When you first told me about your ex being murdered, I was hoping that it didn’t have anything to do with me. I didn’t see how it could have, until the guy with the leather trench coat showed up at Jimmy’s Ringside yesterday afternoon.”
“You think that guy killed my ex-husband?”
“I don’t know,” Wahlman said.
“Why would he have had a reason to do that?”
“I don’t know. You said your ex was assigned to a temporary post there near Barstow. What kind of work was he doing for the army?”
“Intelligence. You know, classified stuff. He never talked about it much. Are you implying that—”
“It’s possible,” Wahlman said. “It’s possible that your ex was involved with the people trying to cover up the cloning experiment. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for the past day and a half.”
Kasey rolled away from Wahlman’s shoulder and stared at the ceiling.
“Why am I getting the feeling that Barstow was never just a random choice of destinations for you?” she asked.
“I knew that the United States Army maintained a strong presence in the area,” Wahlman said. “So that part of it wasn’t random. But I had no idea that there was some sort of temporary intelligence unit out there somewhere, the exact kind of unit that could be behind the nightmare that has become my life. And when I started talking to you, and when we got together that first night, I had no idea that your ex was even in the army. I didn’t know he was active duty military until you told me about the time he went AWOL and took your daughter with him.”
“I think I need some more tequila,” Kasey said. “Or maybe not. I almost called you Tom. I have to keep reminding myself that your real name is Rock. Which I like, by the way.”
“Was your ex an officer?” Wahlman asked.
“He was a major.”
“Do you know who he reported to?”
“What do you mean?”
“His immediate supervisor. It probably would have been a colonel or a lieutenant colonel.”
