Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (7 page)

She said, “I like your body.”

And that was it. She said nothing else. And for a moment, he thought of his father’s scars. From his mother’s description in her notes, Jack was covered in them. His abdomen, in particular, bore a nasty scar from a terrorist bombing in Beirut outside of an army base. His old man had been hit with human shrapnel, a piece of another human being had been lodged in his gut.

This thought quickly faded away after Karen took off her bra, leaving only panties on her aptly curved body. She had pale skin that felt like satin. Cameron touched her, as any sane man would.

Karen was older, sure, but no man his age—or any other age for that matter—would’ve been able to keep his hands off of her. She was incredible without her clothes. A woman who should always be naked in Cameron’s opinion. Beautiful breasts. Magnificent waist.

Cameron spanned his hand across it as she leaned in over the top of him to kiss him. And kiss they did. It was one of the longest kisses Cameron had ever had. She took his lips into her own. Their lips intertwined until they were wet and he couldn’t tell his from hers. Truly he had made the right decision in staying an extra night.

They traded places, and he rolled on top of her. He reached down and slipped her underwear off. Slowly. She helped by scooching her legs slowly up and then back down. Then they moved into arenas far away from kissing.

And another night passed.

THE NEXT MORNING, KAREN WASHED
his clothes for him while he slept. She left them in the dryer and cooked breakfast. Eggs. Ham. Toast.

Cameron was a happy person by nature, and the last year he’d spent out on the open road, he’d found a kind of peace. But right there, in Karen’s small breakfast nook, he felt happy. It was a taste of the normal life. A man and a woman get together. Live together. Perhaps raise a family together. It wasn’t that bad, but then Cameron started to look down the long tunnel of that prospect, and he saw a narrow, unchanging, unexciting future that didn’t entice him. And he saw himself growing old and boring and always staying the same, and then the worst fear hit him. That fear wasn’t represented in a bullet, a bomb, a knife, or cancer, but it was represented in a single word.

Complacent
.

He saw a complacent life ahead of him if he settled for a situation like this. And he decided it was better to keep moving. He just didn’t have the heart to tell Karen, not yet. But she ended up doing it for him. At breakfast, she told him that her college-aged son was coming home, and it was best if Cameron was gone before he got there.

Cameron wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth about her son or not. There were no signs of a son in her house. No family pictures. No sports trophies. No extra kid’s bedroom. No clothes. No extra space in the garage for a car, but then again, he hadn’t gone snooping through her house and wasn’t sure what all there was in the other rooms. His were just observations he had made from what he had seen.

It didn’t really matter either way to Cameron because he was ready to move on. Constant forward movement was his first desire—like nature beating a drum that only he could hear.

Finding Jack Reacher had become his second, and both required him to put one foot in front of the other, step out of Karen’s front door, and get back onto California’s freeways. And he did. They said their goodbyes, and he continued on from her neighborhood.

AFTER HIKING A WAYS UP THROUGH COASTAL CALIFORNIA,
Cameron had come across a bus station and decided to take a bus. He rode to Sacramento and then bought another ticket to Eugene, Oregon and then another to Spokane, Washington.

He watched out of the window as the bus drove, forgetting all about Karen for the moment. He observed the highways and freeways. Admired the mountains of Northern California and the majestic trees of Oregon. He slept on the way to Spokane for a spell, just rested his head back on his headrest and shut his eyes.

He woke up moments before the bus arrived, then disembarked and, having no real desire to go, but no real desire to not go, decided to try out Seattle as his new destination. He figured that since he was already over that way, and it was a famous city he’d never seen, why not? From the bus station in Spokane, he caught a ride from a friendly young guy about Cameron’s own age. They rode most of the way, but then the guy’s truck had some major engine trouble—smoke tittered out at first and then heaped out in huge patches. They had to pull over.

The guy called his brother to come pick him up. The brother lived in Redmond, Washington. He came, and they offered Cameron a ride, but they were heading back to Redmond to get their mechanic friend to come out with a tow truck to pick up the broken-down car. Cameron didn’t like to go backward. Not his thing. Like gravity, he was pulled in one direction—forward—so he resumed hitchhiking again.

No one stopped to pick him up, and then the rain started. The walk from Redmond to Seattle took five hours and forty-five minutes. Now that he was in the city, he desperately wanted to get out of the rain.

After trying several places, Cameron had finally found himself in Coffeebucks, where he had met the paltry, little gatekeeper with the nametag that read “Jordan.”

After their interaction, Cameron left the Coffeebucks Coffee Shop and walked down the street, the rain hammering down at a slant and striking him repeatedly on the cheek as he searched the area for a place to shelter. Soon, he saw one of those Internet cafes, a thing he had thought was dying away. And by the looks of it, he was right because even in the pouring rain with people trying to get under cover, no one was inside the cafe. From the street and through the windows, the place looked barren. It was like a computer graveyard.

Cameron went to the entrance and entered. He shook himself off, which must’ve made the guy behind the counter visualize a mutt coming in from the rain and shaking its dingy, wet fur everywhere. He looked at Cameron with an expression of hospitality and awkwardness.

“Hello,” the guy said.

“Hi,” Cameron said, running one hand through his wet hair and combing a good amount of water out of it. He brushed more rain off of his face and blinked a couple of times and stared back at the guy behind the counter.

The guy was young, of average height and average weight. Nothing memorable about him except he had a thick, black beard and black-rimmed glasses. He reminded Cameron of one of those geeky guys that worked in an Apple store or a Windows store. Still, Cameron figured that a coffee shop mashed together with a computer lab, which was essentially what an Internet cafe was, was an adequate fit for a nerdy guy who loved computers and coffee. Cameron couldn’t fault the guy for loving coffee. Nothing but understanding there.

The guy said, “Can I help you, sir?”

Cameron stayed quiet and let his eyes scan the room, more out of habit than curiosity. The room was lit up brightly. High ceilings with some kind of railing system that held the bright lamps running the length of the room. It looked like warehouse lighting or maybe the kind of lights inside an airport terminal or a high school gymnasium, not the kind that belonged in a cafe. He had no idea what they were called exactly. Homes and gardens and airplane hangars were not his kind of things.

“Can I help you?” the guy repeated.

Cameron smiled at him and said, “I guess I’ll take a cup of coffee.”

The guy smiled and said, “You’ve gotta rent a computer.”

“Rent a computer?”

“Pay for Internet time.”

Cameron nodded and said, “How much?”

“It’s $6.50 for a half an hour or $10 for the hour.”

Cameron paused and looked outside. The rain hammered down nonstop and didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. He turned back to the guy behind the counter and said, “Better give me an hour.”

“No problem.”

The guy paused a beat like he was waiting for Cameron to say something, and then he said, “Got a credit card? I need to hold onto it. Like a bar tab.”

Cameron smiled and said, “Of course.”

He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out his debit card. He handed it to the guy.

“You can pick any computer you want. I’ll bring your coffee out to you.”

“Okay.”

Cameron turned and walked over to a computer in the back corner, sat down. His clothes were soaked. They bunched and squeaked as he walked, and then when he sat down, they made a swoosh sound like he had dumped himself down into a puddle of water.

He sat and waited, didn’t touch the computer because he had no real interest in using it. He just wanted to dry off and get coffee.

After a minute and fifteen seconds, the guy came around the counter, passing a bar designated for self-service. It had napkins and different types of sweeteners—sugar, brown sugar, Sweet ’n’ Low, and something called Sugar in the Raw. He had no idea what that last one was for.

The guy set a plain white mug down in front of Cameron on a coaster that was already there.

He said, “You can log on to the computer using this password.”

And he handed Cameron a slip of paper with a login and password on it.

Cameron stayed quiet and took the paper.

The guy said, “Call me if you need anything. My name is Mark.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Then Mark walked away.

Cameron took a look at the coffee. It was black and looked hot, and that was all that mattered at this point. He took a slow sip and confirmed that it was definitely hot—too hot to drink straight away. He blew on it and watched the steam shift and sway under his breath, then he set the cup back down on the coaster and waited for it to cool down.

Cameron looked around the room. His eye-level was much higher than the computers, so he saw most everything that there was to see—windows, doors, metal railings, a staircase that led up beyond the high ceiling. Nothing of interest until he heard a noise in the furthest corner of the room. It came from a nook that branched off into a more private location. He craned his head a little and saw something under the darkness of a broken light above.

He smiled when he realized it was a couple of teenagers making out, and then he thought about how he’d never had that experience. Not really. He had never made out with a girl in public before. Of course, he had done plenty of other things. Things that would’ve probably made those teenagers blush. Things with Karen, for example. But this wasn’t the place to sit and think about that sort of thing. Still, he couldn’t help but smile.

Cameron took another look at the coffee, having second thoughts about how hot it was, but still, he waited.

Might be a few minutes
, he thought.

He decided to go online.

When in Rome.

Cameron looked at the slip of paper and tapped on the keyboard. A screen popped up and asked him to log in. He followed the instructions, which led him through a series of clicks and
yes/no
and
agree/don’t
agree
obstacles before he was logged on. A small timer popped up at the bottom of the screen. It counted down sixty minutes. It was a big icon. It made him feel like he had sixty minutes left to live.

Better check my email before it’s too late,
he thought and smiled.

One thing he had noticed being on the road and having no one to interact with for long periods of time was that his sense of humor had gotten strange. Being alone for a long time, a guy started to make jokes to himself and before he knew it, he found the most stupid things to be amusing. This was why Cameron was glad for the occasional, temporary friend. They kept him from going so crazy that he started talking to himself and answering himself back. He had met drifters like that on the road, and he had seen them at bus stops and on train platforms and in alleyways and along the shoulders of sun-beaten highways.

Cameron stared at the screen for a moment and thought of where to go and what to look at before figuring he might as well check his email. He didn’t use it that much, not even when he had been a high school student, which had been the reason for creating it in the first place. His high school had required its students to have email addresses so that they could be constantly in touch with one another and their teachers and could receive school newsletters and updates.

Cameron doubted there was much in the way of spam in his email since, from his understanding, spam came from giving out your email on a regular basis. Filling out a form here and there and leaving your email or signing up for something like an account where you’d be prompted to first divulge your email. That sort of thing. These were traps he never fell for.

Cameron went to his email and logged on.

He had been wrong about one thing. His in-box was jam-packed. He browsed through it and looked at the senders’ addresses. Many of them were old—a year at least. Some of the handles he recognized, and some he didn’t, but he imagined most of them were people from another time—a past life—and not something he was interested in rehashing. He knew that some email programs allowed the sender of a message to see if it had been opened by the receiving party, so he did nothing to them. Didn’t open them. Didn’t trash them. He simply left them in the in-box, unread.

Cameron scrolled back to the top of the in-box because there had been a name repeated several times, and it had caught his attention. It was Chip Weston’s email.