Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (29 page)

Cameron took off running in the direction of the SUV.

Chapter 42

MOMENTS AFTER RAGGIE RAN
from the veterinary clinic, Grant pulled up with the Range Rover and stared at the open front door. He pulled his Beretta M9 out of its holster and jumped out of the SUV, leaving the engine running. He surveyed the parking lot but saw no one around, only a couple of cats.

He entered the clinic and scanned the corners with his gun out, ready to fire. No one. He entered the office and looked at the monitor and saw an empty room, but he knew the room wasn’t empty because he could hear Valentine pounding on the door with his fists. He was screaming and yelling. It sounded like he was in tremendous pain.

Grant entered the second room. No dogs. He knew all he needed to know—the girl was gone, and Valentine was locked up in the next room.

He walked over to the other door and holstered his weapon. He reached down and lifted the steel-mesh cabinet that the girl must’ve thrown down to block the door. He shoved it aside and then stepped back. He pulled the M9 out again and said, “Step back.”

Valentine recognized his voice.

Grant opened the door and found Valentine with his eyes swollen shut and his face freshly scarred and disfigured.

Valentine said, “Thank God! Grant, she tricked me. I need a doctor.”

Grant said, “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. She ran off, I guess.” He was clutching at his face and yet not touching it with his hands because every time he did, it burned even worse.

Grant said, “How long?”

“I don’t know. I really need a doctor!”

“How long since she got out?”

Valentine waving his hands through the air like a blind man trying to find his way. Grant slapped them aside and repeated his question once more.

Valentine said, “I think maybe ten minutes ago. Maybe not even.”

Grant said, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Get me to a doctor!”

Grant shot him twice in the chest, watched him stumble backward, and left him to die.

In the parking lot, Grant pulled out his phone and dialed Lane. When Lane picked up, he said, “The asset is out.”

Lane remained calm and said, “Call Mitchell. Check on the other two.”

“Think they planned this?”

“No. Probably good luck on their part—and bad on ours. But I’d guess they’re probably free as well.”

Grant said, “Why do you think that?”

Lane said, “Because Mitchell is watching her on the other laptop, and he didn’t call us. So my guess is that Cameron managed to get out at the same time. He’s turning out to be a pain in the ass.”

“Should I look for her?”

“Forget it. She’ll hide from you.”

“What about the police?” asked Grant.

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle that. Just call Mitchell.”

Grant said, “And what if you’re right? Should we abort?”

“No. The target will be retired in less than thirty minutes,” Lane said.

Grant hung up the phone and got back into the Range Rover. He pulled out of the parking lot slowly, checking for any sign of Raggie. But there was nothing.

THE MAN WITH ONE ARM AND NO
EARS
sat center in the backseat of the Mercedes even though the passenger seat was free. He liked to sit in the back like royalty, a side effect of his indoctrination into Sowe’s regime—once a tortured enemy, now a loyal assassin.

He leaned forward and spoke into John Lane’s right ear but not in a whisper or a hushed voice. It was his regular, thick West Ganbolan accent. He said, “Is this going to be a problem?”

Lane didn’t turn to him. He simply said, “No problem. We’re still on schedule. We planned for contingencies. Don’t worry.”

The man with one arm and no ears sat back and remained calm, unusual for a terrorist in his position because anyone who was part of an international conspiracy to assassinate the American president on American soil and in front of the whole world would’ve been naturally nervous when a critical part of the plan went to hell. But he wasn’t a normal terrorist. He’d hand selected Lane, and he trusted him.

The man said, “What’s the next step?”

Lane said, “We picked these guys because they were expendable. We didn’t care about their competency because we were going to kill them anyway. However, we didn’t anticipate Cameron being so resourceful, but that’s why we’ve got Graine.”

The man said, “And what is Detective Graine going to do about it?”

Lane said, “I’m calling him now.”

He pressed his phone to his ear, waiting for an answer.

The phone rang.

Graine sat on the sofa, listening to Claire Rowley droll on and on about her daughter and how much she missed her. He listened to her claims of being a good mother and how she’d be so much better when Raggie returned. This had seemed to go on and on.

He’d had one eye on the TV in the living room and the other on Mrs. Rowley so that she’d think he was the nice guy they all thought he was. The act must continue a little longer. The truth was that they knew little about him. Sure, he’d formed a bond with Rowley, Cord, Lucas, and Haverly. But he’d also formed a bond with John Lane. The bonds of brotherhood seemed to be important to Rowley. He was always gabbing on about the family kinship between Cord, Lucas, Haverly, and himself. He went on about how he’d never leave any of them behind, but he’d left Lane behind—in a way.

At first, it didn’t bother Graine that much because the guy had been the newest one to join their unit back in the day. But then he’d started to feel bad about it and had started to wonder what if it had been him instead. He was the second youngest one to join their unit. Next to Lane, he’d been the lowest rank.

After several months of knowing the truth of what happened, Graine had started to question their choices—to himself at first. And then he’d been declined by the Secret Service even though Rowley had promised him he’d make it. Graine had started to resent the others. He’d became a cop back in his hometown and stopped talking to the rest of them—until one day, Lane had reached out to him from prison.

Years passed, and it turned out there was a slight change in the regime back in West Ganbola. Sowe was still in charge, but he had kept his public appearances to a minimum. There was a rumor going around that he’d befriended one of his enemies—some guy he’d tortured for years—and, in a kind of demented brainwashing, the enemy had become his friend. Eventually, the enemy became his most trusted ally—not in the sense of friendship but more because Sowe had taken and hidden his enemy’s family.

But the enemy was promised they’d be taken care of and was even granted visits where he had to fly on a plane with no windows, under guard, and then blindfolded on the ride to their location. All he knew was that they were in Africa and probably still in the country. The man with one arm and no ears was allowed to fly to them for two months a year. There, he’d try to forget the evils he’d done for Sowe. He had betrayed his friends and his countrymen. He had betrayed everyone but his family.

When Lane had reached out to him via his old Army email, Graine had been astounded that Lane was able to use the Internet. As the months passed, the two became friends. Lane had told him about how nicely he’d been treated after the first year. He was still a prisoner, but eventually, he’d been entrusted with certain responsibilities involving security and intelligence. He’d told Graine about how the other prisoner who had no ears had become his friend. When this prisoner was released into a high-level government position, he’d joined forces with him. After all, it was his own country that had abandoned him.

Graine and Lane kept in contact for years. Graine thought of telling the others, but after such a long time of keeping it a secret, it had become more of a dark secret. A secret they wouldn’t understand. He and Lane were friends now like he used to be friends with them. And a brotherly bond was supposed to last a lifetime.

Graine used to feel that same kind of bond with Rowley and the others, but it had faded over time. Their bonds had fallen apart pretty much around the time they’d all gotten into the Secret Service and he didn’t. And after years had passed, the only two members of his old unit he’d felt close to were Haverly and Lane.

Of course, he never caused any problems. He never dreamed that one day he’d agree to this plot to assassinate the president or that he’d betray his old team or that he’d kidnap an innocent girl. But the moment things changed for him was the day he’d come home and found that his wife had packed up her things and left with their three young boys. Graine was devastated. He blamed himself at first. The only person who even listened to him anymore was Lane. He couldn’t tell the others. Even Haverly had drifted away.

Once he got to a place where he was nothing but angry, he started to think he should find his wife. The woman had taken years of his life and his children. He wanted to find her. He wanted to get even. Graine hadn’t been good enough to get into the Secret Service, but certainly he’d been good enough to locate a single woman with three young boys. He searched and searched. But he found nothing.

He started to think that maybe he wasn’t very good as a cop, either. So he reached out to his friend Haverly. Secret Service Agent Haverly had been the only guy from his old unit that he’d considered a friend. Haverly agreed to meet him.

Graine had rented a decent car with decent gas mileage because his old truck wouldn’t make the drive from Missouri to Pennsylvania where Haverly lived. He’d driven for two days to reach Haverly’s house, mostly because he stopped a few times on the way to see touristy things. After all, he’d worked his whole life for that woman and her children and had never really done anything for himself.

Finally, he had arrived at Haverly’s house. Haverly lived alone, which probably helped to end his life. The two of them caught up on old times. They drank and drank. They ate barbecue. And they drank some more. At fourteen minutes before midnight, Haverly confessed that Jillian, Graine’s wife, had reached out to him. She’d asked for his help. And reluctantly, he had helped her. He’d given her some money and set her up with a place to stay. But she’d already vanished, and he didn’t know where. Haverly swore that he thought she’d stay in touch with Graine—but she hadn’t.

Graine kept his cool and went to bed without a word about it. But he didn’t sleep. He stayed up the whole night trying to stop thinking of ways to murder his old friend. In the end, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He had never been the kind of person to take immediate action. He’d never been intuitive, and his past employers would never have described him as an outgoing employee, but he was good at some things—like keeping secrets. He was used to taking his time.

He returned home to Missouri, and he waited. Then one day, he visited an unstable and depressed nurse he’d known whom he’d saved from an abusive boyfriend. From time to time, he’d listen to her babble on and on about her depressing life. One day, she’d gone further than usual. She had started to plan her own suicide.

Graine had tried to console her, as usual, but for the first time, he didn’t try to talk her out of it. No more ‘you’ve got too much to live for’ or ‘you’re worth more than that’ or ‘what about your family?’ No more of that. Not for Graine.

This time, he was asking, “How would you do it? How would you take your own life?”

She’d explained that she had access to a lot of narcotics and that she’d chosen the least painful and fastest way to go. So he started to ask her about the
most
painful. She replied that there were a plethora of options. He asked her what the options where no one would know how she died. He wanted to know what drugs would simulate a natural death.

She told him there were a bunch of those, but the problem was that they were all traceable. There was really no such thing as a drug that simulated natural causes but was untraceable. Everything was metabolized and could be found in the blood. Then she stopped and explained that there were a few drugs that could be used to kill someone that would mirror regular normalcies found in the blood after death. An overdose of potassium chloride, for example, would kill someone, but it would mimic a cardiac arrest.

When he asked again about the pain factor, she grew a little hesitant. She asked why he wanted to know and said she didn’t want to feel any pain. He told her he asked out of curiosity. So she explained to him that a drug called succinylcholine was probably the best answer in a case where someone wanted to inflict a great amount of pain yet make a murder look like a heart attack. Essentially, she said, succinylcholine would have to be administered by injection. It would first sedate a person’s muscles and organs and cause paralysis. Everything would stop working except for the mind—the person would still be conscious and see, feel, and hear everything going on around them.

He remembered her saying, “This would be a cruel way to murder someone.”

He had asked her if she could get some of this drug. She asked why, and he explained it was for a case. He needed it but couldn’t ask officially due to the nature of the case. He told her it was a small town thing, and he didn’t want to start up the rumor mill. It would look bad for him if it turned out he was wrong.

So the nurse helped him to get some succinylcholine. He had gotten the needle on his own. He called Haverly from an untraceable line and said he needed to see him. Of course, this was after he had rented a car from Joplin Regional Airport, which was a four-hour drive from where he was. He rented it with false ID and then drove back to Pennsylvania.