Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (28 page)

They’d left Cameron and Cord alone with the guy whose name he still didn’t know.

Cameron dropped onto his back and pulled his wrists up underneath his legs. He kicked his shoes off to get his hands easily around his feet and in front of him. He spun around and felt through the guy’s pockets for the keys and found them—front left pocket. He undid his handcuffs and then Cord’s.

Cord said, “What about Raggie?” He got himself up on his feet and wobbled over to the monitor. He could see what was happening before he got there, but like a good Secret Service agent, he stayed calm. He didn’t panic.

Cameron said, “Don’t worry about that. Get the gun. Cover the door.”

Cord didn’t question him. He didn’t throw up any kind of argument about his age and experience versus Cameron’s because Cameron had already proven his abilities. No question. This kid knew what he was doing.

Cord grabbed the MP5 and checked the clip. It hadn’t been fired. Full magazine. He wobbled over to the door and knelt down. He propped himself against the frame and took aim down the hallway. No one was getting past him.

Cameron scrambled into the bathroom and grabbed the cell phone. He prayed there was no passcode like many people had. There wasn’t. He hit the home button, and the screen lit up. He swiped the screen over to a search icon and typed in the name Valentine—just in case the guy turned out to be even dumber than Cameron thought he was already. But there were no names programmed into the phone. Just some generic factory listings like Verizon’s toll-free number.

Cameron swiped back to the home screen and then pressed the phone icon. He swiped over to the recent calls screen and scanned through them. There were several phone calls on the phone, all to the same group of numbers and the same area codes. Must be the same group of cell phones. Probably all purchased at the same time in a package deal.

He pressed the first one and put the phone up to his ear. He listened. Heard a ring. The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. Then a British voice answered and spoke one word— “Problem?”

Grant,
Cameron thought.

He clicked the phone and hung up on the guy.

He dialed the second number listed. The phone rang.

John Lane’s voice answered and said, “Is everything okay?”

Cameron hung up again and dialed a third number.

Cord said, “What’re you doing? Calling the cops? They can’t help us!”

Cameron said, “Relax.”

The phone rang and rang a few times.

Cameron turned and walked over to the monitors. He looked at the screen. He saw Valentine had unlocked Raggie from her cuffs. Her wrist was in his hand like he was trying to lead her somewhere. The phone interrupted him, and he stood up with his pants down around his ankles. He dropped Raggie’s wrist, and she scooted in tight underneath some kind of sink.

Valentine dropped down and pulled his pants back up and buttoned them. He left the belt and zipper undone. He reached into his pocket and scrambled to retrieve his cell phone. He got it out and put it up to his ear. He said, “What? I’m in the middle of something!”

Cameron said, “If you let the girl go right now, then I won’t beat you to death.”

Valentine froze in place. He looked left and looked right out of instinct or habit or just plain stupidity. Cameron wasn’t sure.

Cameron said, “That’s right, asshole! I can see you!”

Valentine turned around and looked up at the camera. He said, “Cameron?”

“You got it! And I’m coming for you!”

Valentine said, “Where’s Mitchell?”

Cameron looked back and down at the other guy. Mitchell, he presumed, but Mitchell didn’t move.

Cameron said, “He doesn’t look so good. Might be alive still.”

“Lane’ll kill you.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t concern myself with what Lane may or may not do.”

Silence.

Cameron said, “Don’t you want to keep your pathetic life? Don’t you want to keep breathing? Because if you don’t walk out of there right now and disappear, I will find you and end your breathing. Believe me. That’s a fact.”

Valentine started to say something, but he didn’t. He looked dumbfounded. A deer in the headlights.

Cameron watched and smiled. He didn’t know Raggie, but he’d formed a mental picture of her in his head as a tough girl. She was a girl who’d been raised in a family of military and Secret Service agents. She and Cameron had had a similar upbringing. But one thing separated them—Raggie might’ve been even tougher than Cameron because she’d survived a vicious shark attack. She’d lost her arm yet rebounded back to the ocean and to surfing despite it.

So when she moved back to the sink and then started to pull back out with a jug in her hand, Cameron smiled. She’d been smart. She hadn’t known about Cameron, and she hadn’t sat back and waited for the agents to come and save her. Instead, she’d started to design her own plan for escape.

Cameron said, “Valentine. Last chance before you get hurt.”

Valentine lifted his hand up to the camera to flip it off.

That was when Raggie exploded to her feet and said something that was not quite audible to Cameron but sounded like “Hey, asshole!”

Valentine spun around and caught a face full of ammonia. She didn’t splash it on his face, she heaved it, jug and all, like a grenade or a Molotov cocktail. The liquid sprayed into his eyes, and Valentine dropped the cell phone. It fell to the ground and shattered into tiny plastic parts.

Cameron lost the signal and couldn’t hear anything anymore, but he could watch.

Raggie had flung the liquid into Valentine’s eyes, and now he was clutching at them helplessly. She pushed him as hard as she could. He spun and grabbed at thin air. He fell back into the sink, nailing his head on the counter.

It wasn’t a fatal blow or even enough to knock him out because he was still squirming around. He reached one hand up, trying to get a grip on something, and the other hand clutched at his eyes. Cameron thought he saw thin wisps of steam coming off of his face, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or just a trick of the light. Did a chemical burn emit steam after skin contact? He wasn’t sure.

Raggie looked up at the camera like she wanted to talk to it. She’d heard her side of the conversation and must’ve known the caller was watching Valentine from the camera. She must’ve also known that he wasn’t one of them. He was a good guy.

What Cameron hoped she’d figure out was that they might not’ve been the only people watching the feed. Cameron figured Lane or Grant might’ve been watching from another location.

He tried to redial the phone to warn her to get the hell out of there, but there was no answer. The phone rang and rang. She wasn’t responding. Therefore, there must be no ringing on her end.

Raggie waved at the camera and then scrambled out of the frame and out of the room.

Valentine remained, still trying to stand. He looked like he was in a lot of pain. He was probably screaming at the top of his lungs.

Cameron could only hope.

Chapter 40

RAGGIE WALKED PAST THE BARKING DOGS
and carefully opened the outer door to make sure Valentine had been alone. She saw no one. She turned back to the room with the caged dogs. They were barking stridently. Then she ran back to the other door. She didn’t want Valentine making it out of there, so she inspected the door, looking for a lock. There was none.

She looked around hastily but then heard some scuffling from the next room. Valentine was moving around. It sounded like he was on his feet. She reacted and reached over and grabbed a rack full of caged pharmaceuticals. She pulled and jerked with all of her might. The cage started to tumble. She leaped up and put all of her weight into the downward force. The cage came crashing down. She dodged it and rolled out of the way as the large metal apparatus impacted with the wall next to the opposite side of the door.

Valentine had found the doorknob and had opened the door, but its motion was instantly halted by the obstruction of the cage.

He started to scream profanities at Raggie. “You little bitch! Get back here! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! Let me out!”

Raggie had stepped back into the noise of the barking dogs and couldn’t really hear anything Valentine was screaming. She watched the door carefully to make sure he wasn’t going to escape. It looked like he was pretty secure, and his phone had broken. No need to worry about him making any calls. Unless he had a backup phone, which some people did. Her dad, for instance, carried two different cell phones. One was for some guy he called POTUS, and the other was for everyone else.

Raggie looked around the room one last time and decided that she shouldn’t be the only free bird that night. She smiled. It was good to have a sense of humor. Without hers, she’d have gone nuts a long time ago. She started to unlock the cages of all the animals in the room. There were five cats, one of them with several kittens. They followed their mother out of the cage and ran out the open door. The nineteen dogs ran out after the cats and then waited in the front room, barking. One of the dogs was a weird breed she hadn’t seen before. It had puffy fur like a poodle only it was huge like Belgian shepherd or something. It came up to her and stared. It didn’t bark like the others.

She looked at a medical tag attached to its collar. It read, “Name: Max. Breed: Shepadoodle. Age: 8.”

She said, “Max, let’s get out of here.”

The dog looked at her like he understood completely.

Raggie wondered what the hell a Shepadoodle was. Whatever it was, this was a great dog. It seemed to have an automatic instinct to protect her. It escorted her past the office, where she stopped and stared at the laptop screens. She saw Valentine’s feet on the monitor. The rest of his body was out of the shot because he was banging on the door.

Then she saw another screen which was programmed to CNN. News anchors were waiting at Dulles International Airport. It was some kind of press event. She couldn’t hear anything because the sound was turned all the way down, but she read the text on the screen. It basically said that the president was going to land soon and give some kind of important speech about the state of Africa.

Raggie thought of her father. She needed to let him know she was okay, but she couldn’t call him. First off, there was no phone anywhere in sight, and secondly, he was on Air Force One and couldn’t receive calls. At least that’s what she thought.

The last thing that she remembered was riding in a car with Graine and then waking up here with these guys. Maybe they had been attacked? Maybe he was dead? Either way, she didn’t know who to trust—except she knew she could trust Agent Lucas. She needed to get home and tell him what happened. Tell him that Graine was probably dead, and these guys had kidnapped her.

Off to the side of the laptop, she saw a black object. It was a gun. It looked like a Beretta M9. She wasn’t an expert on guns, but she’d seen plenty of Berettas. She lifted it. It was light—too light. And then she realized that, of course, the magazine was missing. She looked around the desk. No clip. She looked back at the monitor showing the room she’d been in. Valentine must have it on him.

She left the gun and turned and left the office. She went to the front of the veterinary clinic and walked to the entrance. The animals were all lined up like they were ready to go out. Luckily, the keys were already in the door and not in Valentine’s pocket. That would’ve been a difficult situation.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open. Somewhere behind the desk, a buzzer sounded indicating that someone had entered the clinic. It was probably to alert the staff, but this time, no one was entering, and everyone was escaping.

She waited for the dogs to run out first, and then the cats mixed in. The last to leave the building was the litter of kittens and then her and Max.

Chapter 41

CAMERON STOOD OVER THE GUY CALLED MITCHELL
and checked his pulse. He was barely alive. He pulled him over to another exposed wood wall and handcuffed him to it the same way he’d been handcuffed.

Cord said, “He’s not going anywhere.”

Cameron said, “He’ll be lucky to live through the night.”

“We can’t call the paramedics. Not yet. They’ll bring the cops, and they’ll have tons of questions. They aren’t dumb. They’ll put two and two together. Plus, this guy probably has a rap sheet that runs into the classified arena. And a sheet like that will alert the FBI. And then they’ll notify the Secret Service once they’ve identified a man who may or may not be a terrorist within a hundred-mile radius of the White House. That’s SOP.”

Cameron said, “He’ll probably die.”

Cord shrugged and asked, “You care?”

“I’m not a priest. If I were, I’d read him his last rites.”

They picked up the MP5 and checked the guy’s pockets, finding a spare magazine and a Beretta M9.

Cameron said, “Why didn’t he pull the gun on me before he checked my pocket?”

“Guess stupidity is why he does this type of work.”

“I guess.”

Cameron took the MP5 and gripped it beneath the front magazine and barrel. He gave the Beretta to Cord, who tucked it into his holster where his SIG Sauer used to be.

Cord said, “I wonder where they put my SIG?”

“Grant took it with him.”

Cord nodded.

Cameron walked with Cord, his arm around his back and his hand locked around the back of Cord’s belt for support. They walked out of the house and to the street.

Cord said, “What now?”

“It doesn’t look like they’re around. They might be headed to Raggie, or they might be headed to another location, but certainly they’ll be near a TV. It’ll be six soon.”

Cord asked, “What time is it?”

Cameron said, “Five thirty-five.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s just a thing I do.”

“We should call the cops. At this point, Raggie is free.”

Cameron said, “We should call Rowley.”

Cord nodded.

“Do you know the number?” Cameron asked.

Cord nodded and said, “He’s on Air Force One, but he’ll answer.”

Cameron walked Cord over to the neighbor’s driveway and then behind a half-finished, enclosed patio near the front door. He set him down on the concrete. Cord sat upright.

Cameron handed him Mitchell’s cell phone and said, “Make the call. Tell him not to worry.”

Cord nodded and asked, “What about you? Where’re you going?”

“I’m going to get us a ride.”

Cord said, “Our SUV is probably still there.”

“I know. I’m going to go take a look. Do you know how to hot-wire the thing?”

“Not necessary. We always keep a hidden key. You never know when you need to roll. And you can’t be in a situation where you lost your car keys.”

“Where is it?”

“Under the rear passenger tire well.”

Cameron nodded and said, “Be right back. Call Rowley. Then call the cops. Get them over to the house. Tell them to take Graine into custody and put out an APB for Rowley.”

Cord nodded and started dialing the phone.