Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (17 page)

“What is it?”

“I like you. I really wouldn’t lie to a guy that I liked right from the beginning.”

Cameron said, “Beginning of what?”

Li said, “You know. The beginning of whatever this is. For us.”

Cameron stayed quiet because it wasn’t the time to talk about it.

Li said, “What, you don’t think there’s an
us
?”

“I haven’t had time to process it,” Cameron lied.

“You’re right. It’s only been one day. Not even. Not really. It’s been what, like twenty hours?”

Cameron thought fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes, but he didn’t say it out loud.

They stayed quiet and drove.

Cord led them onto Freeway 495. The early morning sun shot waves of sunbeams across the sky. They drove on for another thirty-five minutes.

Chapter 24

SEAN CORD TOUCHED THE NAV SCREEN EMBEDDED
in his SUV’s dashboard
and waited for the female computer voice to speak.

It said, “Hey there, Agent Cord.”

Cord said, “Redial last call.”

The voice said, “Redialing.”

Cord’s iPhone was synced to his dashboard, and the female voice that operated it paused a beat and redialed the phone.

He looked in his rearview mirror and watched as Li and Cameron followed.

A voice answered on the other end of the line and said, “Did you get him?”

The voice was male, older, and had a deep echo of desperation in it.

Cord said, “I got’em. He’s following me now.”

The voice asked, “Does he know where Jack is?”

“No. But we expected he’d have no idea.”

The voice said, “Can he help us?”

“I don’t really know enough about him. He’s young.”

“His father has an impressive Army record.”

Cord said, “Like father, like son. But how true is that?”

The voice said, “Will he help us?”

“I don’t know. We’ll be there in twenty minutes, and you can ask him yourself.”

The desperation almost overwhelming, the voice said, “I hope so.”

And then the person on the other end hung up.

Chapter 25

AFTER ANOTHER TWENTY MINUTES,
they followed Cord as he turned off of the freeway and down a string of roads and into a rich-looking subdivision.

Big Victorian houses were perfectly threaded along the streets. Cameron saw high roofs and red brick. Some of the houses had tall walls surrounding the properties.

They followed Cord past a gate that looked more like a checkpoint into a military base than a gate to a residential community.

Li said, “This is where some politicians live.”

Cameron looked around. “Looks expensive. Who else could afford to live here?”

“Staffers live here, too.”

“They make enough to live here?”

Li said, “You’d be surprised what they make. Especially senior staff for the upper politicians. And I think the Speaker of the House’s Chief of Staff lives here.”

Cameron nodded and asked, “So where’re we goin’?”

Li said, “I’ve no idea.”

They trailed close behind Cord as he stopped at intersections and looked both ways and then headed either straight or left or right. And he did all three, each time following the rules of the road to the letter. Cameron couldn’t recall the last time he witnessed someone so strict about their driving. This guy stopped completely at each stop sign and turn before he continued on. And not in the way that most drivers stopped. Even the safest drivers Cameron had seen in his last year on the road weren’t this by-the-book. He couldn’t imagine this guy deviating far from the rules. A side effect of working for the Secret Service, he supposed.

Li said, “Looks like we’re going to that house at the end. And there’s a detail on it.”

Cameron noticed it, too.

The house at the end of the street was red brick with white shutters and one white-trimmed porthole. The house was two stories and set pretty far back on the property. No fence around the yard. No pool. There were two cars in the driveway and two Secret Service SUVs on the street in front, just like the one Cord drove.

He pulled alongside one and waved at a guy who stood at the top of the driveway. Then he pulled up and parked across the street, further from the parked SUVs.

Next door, Cameron saw two Secret Service agents standing post outside of the neighbor’s house. They remained still. Good posture. They gave off the impression that they didn’t move. No matter what.

Li said, “Someone important lives there. Must be a member of Congress or something.”

Li pulled out past Cord’s SUV and parked in front on the street.

She killed the engine and said, “That’s odd.”

Cameron said, “What?”

“The agent Cord waved at. I don’t recognize him.”

Cameron looked at him. He was old—older than Cord. Much older. The guy must’ve been retired. He looked sixty at least. But he was dressed in Secret Service getup. Black suit. No tie. Earpiece in his ear and a SIG Sauer fitted into a pancake holster on the side of his belt.

Cameron said, “He looks old to be an agent.”

Cord waved at them to follow.

Cameron opened his door and pulled himself out by grabbing the passenger door. Then he shut the door behind him and followed Li over to the house.

Cord stopped and shook hands with the older guy.

The guy was bald with a gray beard. He was taller than Cord, probably six foot three. He was shorter than Cameron but weighed more. Maybe two-fifty or two-sixty. He had some muscle left in his forearms and biceps. Cameron figured that when he’d been younger, he was probably no stranger to the gym. Maybe he’d even been a bodybuilder in his prime.

Cord said, “This is Jack Cameron.”

The older guy reached his hand out and said, “John Lucas. Retired.”

Cameron took his hand and shook it. The guy still had a powerful grip.

Cord asked, “Are the others inside?”

“They’re here,” Lucas said.

Cord led Cameron and Li through the neatly trimmed yard and shrubs to an entrance with a black door. The paint was glossy and streamed perfectly to where Cameron couldn’t tell one brush stroke from the next, but still he thought it had most likely been hand painted.

Lucas then led them into a short foyer with a high ceiling. Everything was painted white, even the frame around a full-length mirror on the opposite wall. White walls. White ceilings. White beams. White everything.

Cameron looked past the front staircase and straight down a long hall that cornered and turned off out of sight. Beyond that, the house opened up into an open floor plan with a second staircase. Lucas, Cord, and Li walked in front of him and led him down the hall, around the corner, and into the living room.

Sitting on a gray couch was a woman who was about forty years old. She had a black dress on. Nothing fancy. And not like a funeral dress. It was just work attire and made it seem to Cameron like she did something important and wasn’t just a housewife. He assumed she was the woman of the house. Maybe her job was being a politician’s wife. As Li had said, this neighborhood was the home of politicians and staffers—DC’s regulars and America’s elite.

Cameron walked up to the edge of a sofa and stood.

The woman was attractive in the way of political figures or first ladies or royalty. She obviously had a full-time makeup artist and fashion designer at her disposal. No doubt about it. The dress she wore had definitely been made exclusively for her because when she stood up, it fit her like an extra layer of skin. To say it was form-fitting would be an understatement. It wasn’t that she was an example of a woman who put in serious gym time, but she was a woman who looked after her figure. She was a beautiful woman, and Cameron had noticed that fact, but her looks and the way that she carried herself took a distant second to one glaring fact—she’d been crying, and she’d being doing a lot of it.

The skin underneath her eyes and above her nose was caked in dried eyeliner. It ran down her face like war paint. She looked like she had been captured and tortured by the enemy, and there was no escape. No future.

Cameron smiled at her, ignoring the makeup, and said, “Good morning, ma’am.”

A third man came out of the kitchen. He appeared to be the same age as Lucas. He wore black-rimmed glasses with thick lenses. The guy must’ve been close to being legally blind—maybe not right at the door but seriously in the neighborhood. He wore no jacket but sported a blue button-down shirt with a red tie and khakis. He had no gun holstered in his belt like Cord and Lucas had, but something about his poise made Cameron believe he was one of them.

Lucas said, “Claire, this is Jack Cameron and Kelly Li.”

The woman rose up from the couch, and a look of relief came across her face like a doctor had just come to tell her that her husband had survived a high-risk surgery.

Cameron said, “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“And this guy’s Detective Douglas Graine. He’s one of us. One of the
Army
us. Not the Secret Service.”

Cameron nodded at him and said, “Nice to meet you.”

They didn’t shake hands. Graine’s glasses must’ve helped because he looked in Cameron’s direction. Cameron wondered how blind the guy was without his glasses. The other two agents carried sidearms—even Lucas, who must’ve been retired. But Graine didn’t have one. Cameron suspected a big part of the reason for that was his bad sight.

Li nodded and said to her boss, “What’s this about?”

Cord said, “Claire is married to Gibson Rowley.”

Li cocked her head for a fraction of a second and then said, “The director?”

Cord nodded and said, “Cameron’s here to help us.”

Claire walked over to Cameron and stared up into his eyes. Her purplish lips quivered, and she almost couldn’t speak. But then she said, “Please. Please help us.”

Cameron nodded and said, “I’ll do whatever I can, ma’am. Soon as I know what’s going on.”

The third man said, “Better show him, John.”

Lucas said, “Come with me.”

Cord said, “I’m going to call Gibson. Be right behind you.”

Lucas nodded and said, “Follow me, Mr. Cameron.”

Cameron felt confused being called “Mister” by an older guy, but he made no show of it and followed Lucas ahead. They climbed up a staircase, first one flight and then the next.

As he walked, he heard the wooden floor creak under his weight.

At the top of the stairs, Lucas turned right and headed down a carpeted hall. They walked by an open doorway. Cameron glanced in and saw a bathroom. It was immaculate. Spotless. No scuffs on the tile. No trace of lint on the rug. The toilet seat was down and wrapped in one of those fluffy lid covers. It was blue and matched the rug and the shower curtain—not even the slightest shade of difference in any of them. They must’ve come in a set that the family had bought at Lowe’s or Home Depot or one of those places.

Cameron stopped at the doorway and looked into the bathroom, looked for toothbrushes. There was only one. It was a girlie pink color. This wasn’t a shared bathroom, but it was in the hallway. Must’ve been used by the Rowley’s daughter.

Lucas led Cameron into a teenage girl’s bedroom. There were surfing posters on the walls and posters of young guys on the beach with shirts off. But none of it was sexual, not like the rock star and celebrity posters marketed toward teenage girls. These posters were of real surfers. The Rowley’s daughter was into surfing. That was apparent not only from the posters but also from the broken surfboard that hung over the perfectly made bed.

The bed was full-sized, and the surfboard might’ve been full-sized as well, but Cameron knew nothing about surfboards or surfers or surf for that matter. The board had been torn into more than one piece, but the Rowley’s daughter had only one of the pieces on display. It was yellow with twin white stripes down the sides. The broken piece looked like it had barely survived a violent episode because the edges were jagged. What exactly had broken the board, Cameron had no idea.

He studied the rest of the room and saw a table lamp that shined a dim light over a desk with a black chair. There was a closed laptop on the desk with stickers that looked like more surfer references covering the casing. And there were pictures littering the walls—pictures of girls laughing and hanging out, of girls making funny faces, and of girls with surfboards on different beaches. Ordinary teenage girl stuff.

Cameron stayed quiet and touched nothing in the room.

Lucas said, “Do you know anything about the Rowleys?”

Cameron shook his head.

“The Rowley’s aren’t a famous family unless you live here. They’re known in political circles because they have a long family tradition. Cord says you’re from a family with a similar tradition.”

Cameron said, “What tradition’s that?”

Lucas said, “Cops.”

Cameron stayed quiet.