Dead men walking jack re.., p.1
Dead Men Walking (Jack Reacher's Special Investigators), page 1
Dead Men Walking (Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators)
Dan Ames
Slogan Books, New York NY
A USA TODAY BESTSELLING BOOK
Book One in The JACK REACHER Cases
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Copyright © 2020 by Dan Ames
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Dead Men Walking
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
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Dead Men Walking
(Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators)
Book One
by
Dan Ames
“There will be killing until the score is paid.”
-Homer THE ODYSSEY
Chapter One
He could smell her across the room.
Amid the various odors of stale beer, spilled liquor, cigarette smoke, pot, sweat, body odor, kitchen grease, perfume and cheap cologne, the scent seemed to linger in his senses. Tickling him, teasing him like a forgotten lover’s tongue.
His eyes stared straight ahead, but the mirror behind the bar ran the length of the room and it was easy to spot her. He’d already noted the position of the air-conditioning vent and the way the thin layer of smoke near the ceiling was pushed in his direction. Its path swept directly over the head of the sandy-haired woman wearing skinny jeans, a tight black T-shirt and gold hoop earrings. Her hair was a shade darker than dishwater blonde and it was pulled back over her ears, held in place by a pair of black Ray-Ban sunglasses. She had a lean face, strong neck and a body that spoke of either fitness or organized athletics.
In any event, she’d come to his attention.
Or, at least, her aroma had.
It wasn’t her perfume, or anything else superficial. No, what he could detect was something much more primal.
He drained the last of his beer, ordered another one and when the bartender placed it before him, he glanced over at the woman. She wasn’t looking his way but he continued to stare until she caught his eye.
Her expression didn’t change.
He could tell her eyes were blue, and they had widened in recognition of his interest, and her nostrils flared the tiniest fraction. They were microscopic nonverbal cues that he automatically interpreted. None of them was a surprise.
Her face was hiding any emotion, but physiologically, he could tell he was having an effect on her.
He looked away first.
Turned his attention back to the mirror and in its reflection, saw her turn back to her friends and say something.
The beer was cold and his finely tuned palate savored the slightly malty flavor of the hops. The alcohol had no effect on him whatsoever. While the blonde considered her reaction to his blatant challenge, he waited and studied himself in the mirror.
A good-looking man, no doubt. Not arrogance on his part, just an observation.
Long ago, he’d read about the ancient Romans and how they had distilled physical beauty into a numerical equation that represented an ideal spatial alignment. The brilliant minds of that time had been able to apply that formula to various aspects of the human body that the mind found pleasing.
His face would have qualified. All features fit into that spatial equation: the eyes just far enough apart, the size of the nose, the mouth and forehead. He was classically handsome, despite his size.
The rest of his body also met those requirements, but on a much larger scale. He was nearly six and a half feet tall and one heavy meal away from three hundred pounds. Yet his body fat would be the envy of an Olympic athlete for his frame was cloaked in muscle and not much else.
Something the blonde’s friends failed to notice.
Three of them, all slightly bigger than normal but small compared to him, approached.
They stood behind him and waited for him to recognize their appearance.
He didn’t.
He just drank from his beer and looked over at the blonde. She was staring at him. Her eyes were even wider, nostrils opened more, mouth slightly parted. He could smell her excitement, in addition to the pheromones that practically came off her in waves.
Behind him, the men bore the other scents; beer, smoke and from one of them, fear.
“Hey, dipshit,” one of them said.
Since that wasn’t his name, he didn’t turn around.
One of them tapped his left shoulder.
The bartender made a beeline for the end of the bar where he was sitting. An older guy with a dirty T-shirt sporting a Corona beer logo. He held up his hands, one of which held a dirty dishrag.
“Now come on, Joe, he wasn’t botherin’ anyone.”
The biggest of the trio who stood in the middle responded.
“Connie said he was staring at her,” he said. “Making her feel downright uncomfortable.”
He saw the man named Joe’s reflection in the mirror. A big guy with a scruffy beard. Young, maybe just over twenty-one. His two buddies looked like him. One of them was fidgeting and he figured that was the guy who was scared.
“That true, mister?” the bartender asked.
“If Connie is the one with the tight jeans and nice ass, yes I most certainly was looking at her.”
The hand that had tapped his shoulder now fell on it and pulled.
He turned and stood.
His height wasn’t something they’d expected. He was now looking down on the three of them by at least four inches. Their body language spoke a combination of fear, anger and excitement.
“Outside right now or I call the cops,” the bartender said.
The big man who’d just admitted he’d been staring at the trio’s female friend led the way but when he was halfway across the barroom, he glanced over at Connie, raised a finger, and gestured for her to follow.
She did.
Outside, the cool Virginia air enlivened his senses even more. Instead of stopping just outside the door to the bar, he kept walking until he left the cone of light provided by the overhead sign and entered the shadows in the parking lot.
Only then did he turn.
It was as if he was watching a movie he’d seen many, many times. Somehow, he simply knew Joe was going to start to ask him a question and then step in and throw a punch before he finished.
It was an old trick so cliché the big man almost felt insulted that Joe had tried it on him.
“So where are you from–” Joe began and then his feet turned in preparation for the move he thought was going to be a strategic surprise. Maybe even a game-ender.
The punch was meant to be fast and powerful, sort of a cross between a right hook and a haymaker.
The big man watched it come and also saw Joe’s buddies step forward. One more eagerly than the other.
He leaned back, let Joe’s fist flash by his face and then he stepped in, hooked Joe’s forearm with his left, brought up his right, and trapped it. It was then incredibly easy to apply opposite pressure.
Joe’s arm literally snapped in two, held together only by the skimpiest shred of skin and ligament. The sound was quite loud in the still night air and the silence of the parking lot. Joe sagged and fell backwards.
The braver of the other two continued forward and threw a punch that had no hope of causing any damage. It had some power, but not enough, and it was launched without a good angle. It came toward the big man way too high and way too slow, like a bad decision one was forced to live with.
The big man, who’d partially turned in order to break Joe’s arm, simply continued his pivot and lashed out with his right leg, performing a sweep that knocked Joe’s first defender off his feet.
The attacker landed on his back in a heap. When he tried to get up, a fist crashed into his face, breaking his teeth, nose, jaw and skull in one shot. The fracture of the skull was only a hairline break, but the damage to his face was severe. It was as if the big man’s fist had hit a plastic face and the flimsy material simply sagged inward.
Only one of Joe’s crew remained, the one from which the unmistakable scent of fear emanated.
And then there was Connie.
The big man glanced at her, which turned out to be a mistake because he had assumed the coward would run. Instead, Joe’s last buddy still in the game pulled out a switchblade knife and drove it into the big man’s side.
“Yeah,” Joe growled, from the ground.
The big man caught the coward’s wrist, gave it a twist and heard bones crack. He then grabbed the knife by the handle and pulled it from his body. He looked at the blood on the blade with curiosity.
Still holding the knife wielder, he pulled him close, lay the knife against his throat and pressed, then drove the blade in and away. It tore through the man’s throat, scraped against vertebrae. A huge, ugly gash opened and a river of blood poured down the man’s chest. He sagged and the big man pushed him away. His now lifeless body landed on the gravel of the parking lot.
Connie screamed.
The big man turned and stepped over to Joe’s other buddy whose face was caved in. The man was choking on blood and his body convulsing.
The man put the tip of the knife above the fallen man’s heart and drove it in. The choking man gave one last cataclysmic spasm and he too, died.
Joe was next.
Connie was slowly backing away.
“Look, we were just–” she started to say.
The big man raised the knife and his mind ran a series of calculations involving the quality of the blade, its length, the amount of force needed, and the unique construction of the human skull.
He twisted and drove his arm down with incredible speed. The force of it drove the knife through Joe’s hair, pierced his cranium and macerated his brain tissue. The big man twisted the knife and he heard Connie scream again, this one more terror-filled than the last.
The big man straightened up, walked to her and reveled in her scent. Her pheromones were even stronger than before. There was fear, yes. Revulsion, certainly. But there was eagerness. Excitement. And sexual desire; the same desire he’d first smelled in the bar.
His enormous hand closed over her wrist and he pulled her toward his vehicle.
Later, in his hotel room, he calmly removed her clothes and then disrobed himself.
“Are you serious?” she asked, her voice hollow. She was pale and dazed. He knew she was in shock. “You were just stabbed.”
Strangely, his shirt was bloody, but she couldn’t see the stab wound on his body.
Her eyes went to a tattoo across his chest.
ACE.
He grabbed her by the throat and spread her legs apart.
“Oh, I’m done bleeding. But honey, you’re just getting started.”
Chapter Two
Frances Neagley prepared to leave her office. It was a somewhat early departure for her as she was usually the last to leave the building, often staying several hours after most had begun to take leave beginning at five o’clock or so.
Today was different.
As one of the founding members of Pinnacle Security, one of the largest private investigative firms in Chicago, she occupied a corner office on the top floor of a high-rise in the Loop. Her desk was always immaculate and today was no exception. In fact, her entire office was spotless with zero clutter. Across from her desk were two visitor chairs and behind them off to the side was a more relaxed sitting area with a coffee table, couch and two more chairs.
To the right, along the wall was a bank of windows and a side table that was used for coffee, drinks or other refreshments if she was welcoming clients.
There was not a single personal item on display in her office. No family photos. No keepsakes. Nothing that reflected who Frances Neagley was as a person outside her position at Pinnacle.
She walked out of her office, nodded at her assistant, a young man named David who’d graduated from Northwestern with a degree in criminal justice, and took the elevator to the executive parking garage. There, she unlocked her BMW 7 Series and fired up the V12 engine.
Neagley expertly maneuvered the car out of the lot, and was soon heading north along the lakeshore to her home in Lake Forest.
But she wasn’t going straight home.
Which is why she’d left the office earlier than normal.
She drove fast, relishing the power of the BMW’s engine and a few minutes before reaching the outskirts of Lake Forest, she turned onto a side road and followed it to a small cluster of buildings not far from the railroad tracks.
There was a large structure clad in aluminum siding separate from the other buildings. Above the set of blue double doors that marked the business entrance was a sign: Lake Forest Animal Shelter.
Neagley parked in a lot across the street from the shelter, pushed the start/stop button on the BMW and the engine fell silent.
She sat and watched the building. It was cool outside with a slight chill in the air and the leaves on the trees on the other side of the railroad tracks were still green. In a matter of weeks they would begin to change color as fall arrived.
It was Neagley’s favorite time of year.
The doors to the shelter opened and a woman stepped out. She had three dogs on leashes and walked them around to the back of the building.
Neagley was glad the woman hadn’t glanced over to where she was parked. She’d been coming to the shelter every week or so, without ever going inside.
The thing of it was, Frances Neagley had been alone nearly all of her life. Her childhood had been something she’d worked to forget and eventually she had succeeded in banishing it from her daily thoughts.
She’d joined the Army to escape home, and landed in the 110th MP where she met her mentor, Jack Reacher. Since leaving the military Neagley had worked with Reacher several times, including one horrible case involving several members of the 110th who’d been murdered.
That had been some time ago, however, and since then, Neagley had not heard from any of the people she’d known in the military.
She lived for her work and had often been told that she was the very best at what she did.
True or not, Neagley was a force of nature, and she knew how to get things done.
So the indecisiveness she now felt was a foreign feeling to her.
The fact she was trying not to admit was that for the first time in her life, she perhaps felt a touch lonely. Her career was everything to her. Neagley had a passion for investigation, and helping bring about justice in the world. As a young girl, no one had been there to do the same for her.
She’d been toying around with adopting a dog from the shelter. Neagley had always loved animals and far back in the memories she’d banished from her consciousness was a dog. She wasn’t sure of the breed or the name and it really didn’t matter anyway.
Inside that building was a dog she could adopt and eventually bring home with her.
It was a huge step.
For several moments she sat, drumming her fingers along the top of the steering wheel. Eventually, she realized it was a step that she just wasn’t willing to take.
At least not today.
She fired up the BMW and put the big car into gear.
Minutes later, she pressed the button to her automatic gate and rolled the car through the entrance to her home. A long winding driveway led to her house, a stone and timber structure built in the 1920s. Five bedrooms. Six bathrooms. A home gym. Sauna. And pool. With spectacular views of Lake Michigan.
