Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel (35 page)

No matter the outcome, Rowley was finished.

Graine’s money was in an account in the Cook Islands, so why should he stick around? He’d fire one more shot, and then he was out of there. As a matter of fact, he should just take off now while Lane was occupied and none of the agents from the neighborhood had arrived yet. He knew they’d be coming any second. Probably the cops, too.

He decided to go. He didn’t even fire the next rounds like he was supposed to do. Seventy seconds had already passed. It had now been more than ninety. He turned and started to head out the front door when he heard a voice call from the top of the front staircase.

It was Cameron. Cameron had called down. He’d said his name.

Graine froze, trained his SIG Sauer at the stairs.

He said nothing. He waited. At the first sign of Cameron, he’d unload the rest of his clip into the guy. He had a backup.

Cameron said, “Graine, I’m coming down. Don’t shoot. We can talk.”

Graine readied himself, his finger tight on the trigger.

LI HEARD CAMERON CALL DOWN FROM THE FRONT STAIRS.
She lifted her head up and looked over the counter. She took a chance and darted toward the opposite wall. She hugged it close and crouched down low, moving slowly across it. She stopped three feet from the doorway. Graine was somewhere on the other side. She thought about shooting through the wall—surely a .347 Magnum would rip through it—but she didn’t know his exact location. Four bullets left. Maybe she’d hit him, and maybe she wouldn’t. So she waited.

CAMERON PULLED LANE’S CORPSE UP ONTO ITS FEET
and tossed him down the stairs like a rag doll. Lane’s body plummeted down the stairs like a heavy bag. He bounced and bumped against the railing. Blood and other loose entrails splattered out across the stairs.

Graine reacted, firing his SIG Sauer. The bullets did their job, tearing through and shredding his target. The problem wasn’t that his aim was bad. The problem, he realized too late, was that he hadn’t shot Cameron. He’d shot John Lane.

Lane’s corpse lay sprawled at the base of the stairs. It was a grisly heap of meat. It looked like someone had used him for target practice. Graine was suddenly reminded of a local African soldier they’d found in the jungle years ago. His body had been used as a target by the local rebels. And those rebels had turned out to be children. They’d caught the soldier and shot him to death one day, and then they’d just kept shooting him until they’d gotten bored and moved on.

Then, like a phantom, Cameron was suddenly at the top of the stairs, crouched down on one knee. He said, “Drop it!”

“Okay. Okay,” Graine said. He dropped his gun and slowly raised his hands.

Cameron said nothing about his missing glasses, figuring that they had been as fake as Graine was.

Cameron called, “Li?”

Li stepped out into the doorway, gun drawn like a trained agent. She said, “You got him!”

“
We
got him!”

Li smiled and pointed her gun at Graine.

Cameron asked, “You got handcuffs?”

Li said, “You know it!” She didn’t move her eyes from Graine. She said, “Turn around slowly and touch the wall! Spread your legs!”

Great cop voice
, Cameron thought.

Li shoved him against the wall and frisked him from top to bottom. She used one hand, keeping the gun shoved deep into his back, and then she holstered her gun.

She said, “You’re under arrest for treason and for conspiracy in the attempted homicide of President John Asher. Plus, a hundred other things, I’m sure.”

She cuffed him. The sound of the metal locking was loud in the stillness. She jerked on his cuffs like they were the reins on a workhorse.

Graine said nothing.

She started to take him out the front door, but Cameron stepped in the way.

He looked at Graine and said, “Remember my face! I hope you think about it every day while you rot away in prison.”

Graine started to speak, but Cameron catapulted off of his back feet, whipping himself forward. It was his third head-butt today, but by far the most enjoyable one. It wasn’t intended to crush Graine’s face, something he could’ve easily done, but to break his nose and his front teeth.

The results were perfect. Graine flew off his feet and hit the door. A cracking sound echoed through the foyer, and blood spurted out of Graine’s broken nose. He spat out four whole teeth and fragments of others. The man writhed on the ground.

Li said, “Why did you do that? That’s police brutality.”

Cameron said, “I’m not a cop, and no one is going to think you did it. No offense.”

She said nothing.

They could hear distant sirens closing in.

He said, “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.”

“Wait for me out there. There’ll be a lot of questions.”

Cameron said, “You take them. I’m going to slip out the back.”

She said, “What? Why?”

“Questions and red tape isn’t my thing.”

“What the hell do I tell them?”

Cameron started to walk away. He stopped and turned. He tossed the MP5 at her, and she caught it.

He said, “Tell ’em you did it. Cord won’t refute it. Believe me, he and Rowley will want to keep as much of this a secret as they can. They’ll probably never even mention me, and no one would believe them anyway.”

He turned again and walked down the hall. Stepping through the shattered French doors, he walked into the backyard and disappeared in the darkness by the back fence.

Chapter 54

LI TOOK GRAINE OUT TO THE COPS
and the Secret Service agents. Cord was taken immediately to a hospital.

Questions were asked and answered. More questions appeared after that, and they, too, were answered. Soon people got tired of asking questions.

Li spent the entire night in a debriefing room at FBI headquarters. She sat in a cold room with a hot cup of black coffee, which made her think of Cameron. She wondered where he was and if she’d ever see him again. She sat staring off into space. No one had been in to see her for forty-five minutes or so. She’d been questioned so much that she felt like she was the main suspect. And she had said as much to the last agent who questioned her.

He’d insisted that she was not under any suspicion. She was regarded as a hero.

Finally, she was told she could go home for the night but needed to return first thing in the morning. She nodded and left the room. She walked down a long maze of hallways, past cubicles with agents transfixed by their computer screens. She passed security downstairs, and they buzzed her out of the building.

On the street, she was stopped by a tall Secret Service agent named Renth.

He said, “Agent Li?”

Li nodded.

“Come with me, please.”

Li yawned and covered her mouth. She looked closely at the man’s face. She recognized him. He was the Assistant Director of the Secret Service. She nodded and followed him around a corner to a black sedan.

He said, “Get in, please. Someone would like to see you.”

She started to get into the front passenger side, and Renth told her to go to the back. She got in and leaned back in the seat.

Renth didn’t close the door behind her. Instead, he handed her an iPad. The screen was on. He said, “Take this.”

She took it, and he shut the door, leaving her alone in the car. Then she heard a familiar voice. She looked at the screen of the iPad and saw President Asher staring back at her from a FaceTime connection.

She said, “Mr. President?”

Asher said, “Hello, Miss Li.”

“Hi,” she said, not knowing what to say.

Asher said, “Agent Li. I want to thank you personally for your brave service tonight.”

Li said, “Thank you, sir.”

“I’m sorry I can’t meet with you in person, but this is the only way, I’m afraid.”

She said nothing.

Asher said, “I hear from Special Agent Cord that you were an essential part of foiling this terrible plot.”

She said, “Thank you.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to thank you personally.”

Again, she said, “Thank you.”

Asher hung up.

Li didn’t know what to think. Never in a million years did she think the president would speak her name.

Renth opened the door and took the iPad from her. He leaned down and said, “Want a ride?”

“Sure.”

He closed the door and got into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and looked back at her in the rearview mirror. “Where to Special Agent Li?”

She said, “I’m not a special agent.”

He said, “You sure are. Executive orders. Sorry, there’s no getting out of it.”

He reached over into the next seat and then tossed something back into her lap.

She looked down and saw a Secret Service badge that had no name engraved on it. It read, “Temporary Agent.”

Li stared at the badge with a feeling of accomplishment. She didn’t know what to say. For her whole adult life, she’d had the goal of making it as a special agent, and in one day, it had been both taken away from her and then given back—and by executive order. If she’d had more sleep and was more herself, she’d have cried with joy.

But right now, all she wanted to do was get home and see Cameron and go to bed. He’d said he would call her later, but she hoped what he’d really meant was that he’d wait for her. Where else was he going to go?

Renth said, “Where you wanna go?”

Li said, “Home. I’m exhausted.”

Renth turned and faced the street. He started the car and asked, “What’s your address?”

“Not far. Ten minutes maybe. Head east.”

Renth followed her instructions. They drove on through several lights and intersections and then through a small section of downtown. At this early hour, traffic was moderate—not quite as bad as it would be in a half hour, but not as light as it had been an hour earlier.

Once, they reached her apartment, Li thanked Renth again and got out of the car. She walked up her stone pathway and then to the elevator. The whole trip home, she’d had one thing on her mind.

A major flaw Special Agent Li had was that even though she was extremely organized, she was also a little forgetful when it came to everyday things. One of the things she had forgotten more than once in the past had been the keys to her apartment.

So she’d started to hide an extra key across the hall underneath the carpet in a place where it was torn up a little—something okay for most normal people but probably not the best idea for a United States Secret Service agent. The slight tear in the carpet helped her remember where she’d hidden her key.

The thing she’d thought on her ride up in the elevator was that she’d hoped that Cameron had found her key and was now waiting in her apartment. She hoped he was waiting for her in her bed, already asleep. Perhaps she could slip in without waking him. Perhaps she could snuggle up behind him. Perhaps she could tuck in close and sleep the day away.

When she got off the elevator, instead of checking to see if the spare keys had been used, she went straight to the apartment door and unlocked it. Inside, she saw nothing unusual. The morning light was creeping in through the closed curtains. She flipped the light switch, and the hanging lights flickered on. They were extremely dim, but she was used to it.

In the low light, she could see that her apartment was undisturbed. There was no bump in her bed from a sleeping man. No extra pair of shoes placed by the door. No one in the bathroom. And no one on the sofa. Her place was completely empty.

SPECIAL AGENT CORD WOKE UP
in a hospital bed the next afternoon. His chest still hurt like hell, but the staff of George Washington Hospital was taking very good care of him. His nurse was an attractive young woman, and that didn’t bother him one bit
.

He looked around his room and saw flowers and empty chairs. He smiled and breathed out, hurting from his broken ribs. His chest had been tightly bandaged, and he could see that the bandages Cameron had wrapped him with after stitching his bullet wound had been changed.

He glanced at the TV. It was turned off, something he was glad to see because he was sure every channel would be filled with news reports about what had happened, and that was the last thing he wanted to think about.

He laid his head back down and stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the silence. He thought about his dead friends and thought about Jack Cameron. He wondered where the kid was now. He had underestimated him just as he had underestimated Kelly Li. He’d also underestimated Douglas Graine, and because of that, one of his friends was dead and probably another and his oldest friend and boss would most likely lose his job and his future retirement—and that was the best case scenario.

Cord tried to turn his mind off and not think about it. He tried to concentrate on the silver lining—Raggie was alive.

RAGGIE AND MAX SLEPT
the entire next afternoon, snuggled up under piles of blankets in a bed at her aunt’s house in Virginia. Her mother looked in at her and smiled. She was glad her sister had finally gone to work because even though it was the afternoon, she was exhausted, too. She had stayed up all night thinking—and she had a lot to think about.