Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (14 page)

Cameron said, “My mom told me to get him on her deathbed.”

“Get him?”

“Yeah.”

“What does that mean?”

“She meant to find him. I never knew about him. And he never knew about me. I think we deserve the chance to know each other. Plus, it was my mom’s dying request. How can I stop now?”

Li said, “So it’s like a quest?”

Cameron nodded and said, “Something like that.”

Li took a big drink of wine.

They sat in silence for a bit at her bar, and then she said, “I like you.”

Cameron said, “I like you.”

“It’s weird because we only just met, but I feel like I’ve known you longer.”

Cameron said, “Common thing, I guess. Generally, good people meet under fleeting circumstances all the time and form a bond. Like on an airplane or a train ride. You take a long trip somewhere, have no idea who’s sitting next to you, and you start talking. Small talk. Before you know it, you’ve bonded with them. It even happens with kidnappers and their captives. Happens with prison guards and inmates. Happens all over the world every two and a half minutes.”

“Two and a half minutes?”

Cameron nodded, stayed quiet.

“I guess you’re right,” she said.

Cameron said, “We’ve spent the whole night together, talking. And we made a connection. That’s life. And the world spins on.”

Li took a last pull from her wine and set the glass down.

She said, “Want to see something?”

Cameron nodded, didn’t touch his wine.

She took his hand.

She led him over to the bed and sat down on it. He stayed standing, feeling a little nervous about where she wanted him.

She said, “Sit down. It’s okay.”

Cameron sat down carefully. His weight dipped the mattress down, and she slid toward him a little and then she twisted back and bent over the bed like she was reaching down to get something out from underneath it. Her backside faced Cameron, and he wasn’t going to lie to himself—he definitely looked. It was a view he hoped to see many more times.

She came back up with a small shoebox. She opened it and pulled out a single picture which was placed on top of a pair of tiny old shoes.

“See this? Take a look,” Li said and handed him the picture.

It was a black-and-white picture. It had to be very old, or it was made to look that way.

The picture was of a woman at least ten years older than Li and a little girl. Both looked exactly like her. Exactly. The older woman was just as amazingly beautiful, and the little girl was just as adorable as Li must’ve been as a little girl.

Cameron asked, “Is this you and your mom?”

“No way! The picture is black and white! Come on!”

“Sorry.”

“It’s an old picture. I wasn’t born for another thirty-something years.”

Cameron asked, “So who’s this?”

“That’s my mom and grandmother. That picture was taken sometime before they left China. It was in November, I think. 1949.”

“Wow. The end of the Chinese Civil War.
Mao Zedong had just established the People's Republic of China.
”

Li looked at Cameron with a look he’d seen before. Before she even asked, he said, “I like history, and I just remember things.”

Then he decided it best not to go into greater detail. Instead, he listened.

Li said, “My mom was supposed to perform in a ballet in Shanghai at the time of the picture, but those sorts of things were risky. So my grandmother pulled her out, but my mom kept the shoes from the picture. All my mom ever wanted was to be a ballerina.”

Cameron said, “They’re both beautiful women. Look exactly like you.”

Li smiled and said, “I know. I love this picture. It’s like looking at who I was and who I will become. My grandmother was a good woman.”

Cameron said, “I’m sure that you will be even better.”

Li said nothing else. She just took the picture back from Cameron and placed it back in the shoebox and clumsily plopped the lid back on. Then she slid the whole thing off of the bed and leaned into Cameron. She put her tiny hand on his face, felt his stubble.

She smiled and said, “You need to shave tomorrow. Sean’s very professional and will expect to see you clean.”

“I don’t work for Cord.”

“I do. Do it for me?”

Cameron nodded and noticed that Li didn’t take her hand off of his face. Instead, she moved it down to his chest, ran it across his abdomen and down, then lower.

She moved in to kiss him. He kissed her back. Her lips were cool, and her tongue was warm. Their tongues danced their own private ballet. He gently caressed the back of her head with his hand. Her hair was soft and smooth.

She whispered, “Lay back.”

He did as commanded.

She got on top of him and unbuttoned her shirt but left it on, teasing him with her breasts beneath it. She wasn’t wearing a bra, something Cameron hadn’t noticed before. He could see the tan skin of the bottoms of her breasts and then knew why she didn’t wear one. She didn’t need to. They were magnificent.

She said, “I want you, Cameron.”

Cameron stayed quiet because there was nothing to say with words but a lot to say with actions. He took her and pulled her in and kissed her more. Soft at first and then harder. Passionately.

He rolled her over, underneath him.

Li whispered into his ear, “Take my skirt off.”

He reached down and slid it off. She reached out with her hands and fumbled with his belt and then the button and the zipper on his pants.

Cameron sat back up and stood off of the bed, took his pants off, and threw them on top of her skirt on the floor. Then she jumped up on her knees and grabbed the hem of his shirt. She pulled the shirt up over his head as far as she could reach, and he did the rest.

She kissed his chest and then his abs.

He pulled her shirt off completely and stared at her for a long second.

Li said, “What? You don’t like what you see?”

Cameron stayed quiet and just stared.

“Cameron? What?”

He spoke with a slight lump in his throat. He said, “Earlier, I saw your behind and thought it was the best ass I’d ever seen. Gotta be your best feature.”

“And? What?”

“Now, I think I was wrong. Your front side is just as good as your backside.”

She smiled and clawed at him and said, “Come here.”

Cameron obeyed.

He never made it back to his own hotel.

Chapter 19

HYDE’S REAL NAME WAS JOHN.

John had arrived in London by passenger plane where he met with a private investigator. The same thick man he had employed for the last year to help him find out a very important piece of information—information regarding a murder, a murder in John’s eyes at least. It was a cold case that was cold only because no one had been investigating it except for John. No cops. No other relatives.

Ten years ago, John’s younger brother had come to London with his small group of employees. These were capable men—mercenaries. They were the type of men who don’t just disappear without a trace unless that’s what they had intended, and that was not what they had intended. This John knew without a doubt. His brother had come to London looking for the man who’d killed his wife, but instead, he’d been murdered by a stranger. A drifter. Some guy named Reacher.

The private investigator’s name was Scot Heminton, and he had recounted to John the same dead end information that he’d explained to him on the phone and on Skype many times before. Information that was dead end because it led nowhere. It didn’t lead John to the whereabouts of his younger brother, and because his brother’s trail had gone cold, the only thing he could assume was that his little brother was dead.

John’s brother had several men under his command—mercs who’d do anything for him, but only because he paid them and he’d paid them well.

John had the same type of guys with the same type of loyalty. Money talks.

Two of his guys were waiting for him in the United States, one at JFK and one at a rented location paid for in cash outside of DC. It was the perfect place for his plans. Quiet. No neighbors. Just empty warehouses.

Grant was a guy who wasn’t a part of his US crew. And Grant had a very particular skill set. He was a big Scottish guy who used to be SRR, which stood for Special Reconnaissance Regiment, a special version of the British Special Forces. These were the guys who did the covert things, the black ops, the things in other nations that involved words like disavowed and espionage. Not the kind of guys Scot Heminton was used to dealing with.

London was busy at night, like any major city, but on this particular street, it was quiet, dead quiet, all except for one basement. Heminton’s office was located on this street and above the basement he was in. The sign outside told the public that Scot Heminton was a licensed PI. He had been licensed by the British government and had a background in law enforcement, which gave him an edge over most bad guys he came in contact with, but not against guys like John and Grant.

John looked down at the blood-covered face of Scot Heminton, who was handcuffed to a pipe on the back wall of his basement. He had endured twenty minutes of pain, not the longest stretch that John or Grant had ever made a man endure. Not even close. But to Heminton, it felt like a lifetime. It felt like he was already dead.

Grant said, “Answer the question, mate!”

Grant had a pair of thick black gloves with him, but he was only wearing one of them on his left hand. His right glove was tucked into the back pocket of his trousers because he needed that hand free to hold onto the crimson-colored knuckleduster gripped tight against his fingers.

He reared his right fist back slowly, no need for speed, and swung another vicious right cross. His fist hammered into Heminton’s bloody face and shattered what was left of the bones in his right cheek.

“Careful!” John said. “He can’t talk if his jaw breaks!”

John kept his gloves on and used his gloved right hand to jerk up Heminton’s head by a tuft of his hair. He looked into Heminton’s left eye, the only eye still open. The right socket had been smashed to bits. It was swollen shut. Massive. Dark. The lashes were missing, probably embedded into the knuckleduster on Grant’s hand along with pieces of skin from Heminton’s face.

John said, “In the last year, I’ve paid you a small fortune to do one thing.” He jerked the PI’s head even harder. “Find my brother’s body! That’s it! I know he’s dead. I know one man who was involved. One name. A name that you didn’t provide me with. A name that I had to get on my own.

“I know my brother came here with his crew. And now they’re all dead. Some of them died in Iraq. That I made sure of. Because they couldn’t help me. And I know for certain that all of them—my brother’s whole crew—came here almost ten years ago, and some of them never left. Including my brother.

“I’ve accepted that he’s dead. No question in my mind. But I paid you to find his body! To give me the name of the people involved in his death! Instead, you find me nothing!”

Heminton whimpered something inaudible because his speech was muffled by blood and broken teeth.

“What? What da hell did you say?”

Heminton whimpered and said, “Reacher.”

“I know that name already. I’m taking care of him. Without your help.”

Heminton said, “Pleee… Please.”

John turned to Grant, looked at his watch, and said, “We’ve got to catch that flight.” He began to weave his way through boxes and shelves back toward the basement stairs, and then he stopped. Without turning back, he said, “Kill him. No gunfire.”

Guns were especially hard to get in London, but Grant had lived in England most of his life. He knew the right people. Knew the right places. But he didn’t need a gun.

John said, “Ten minutes. No more.”

Grant pulled Heminton’s chin up and stared into his jumbled face. Then he beat into it with the brass knuckles until his arm was weak and Heminton was dead.

Chapter 20

FIVE TIME ZONES AWAY
and eight hours and twenty minutes later, John was getting off of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner Jet, one of Virgin Atlantic’s newest luxury planes. He had sat in first class with his associate, Grant, who went by his real name only to John. No need for him to be known by a code name because Grant didn’t ever speak to Jekyll.

Jekyll was in a position where code names were necessary to protect his mission. But the truth was that John didn’t care about the mission, not anymore. The mission was only a thing of money. A way for someone somewhere to turn a major profit or change the politics of the American landscape or corner the financial markets of the world or make a regime change or simply wake Americans up to the demands of some foreign power.

Whatever the intentions behind the mission were, they were only the intentions of John’s employer. He had sold his time and skills and the time and skills of his mercenaries to his employer. He had to prove that he could make it happen, that he could pull it off, that he could make a son kill his father, the president—and he had succeeded in his demonstration.