The Jack Reacher Cases (A Man Born For Battle)
A USA TODAY BESTSELLING BOOK
Book One in The JACK REACHER Cases
CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW
Praise for Dan Ames
"Packed to the gills with hard-hitting action and a non-stop plot." –Jacksonville News
“A fast-paced, unpredictable mystery with an engaging narrator and a rich cast of original supporting characters.” –New York Times bestselling author Thomas Perry
"Dan Ames writes fast-paced, gripping tales that capture you from Page One and hold you enthralled till the last word. He brings a strong, clear voice to whichever genre he chooses. This guy is one hell of a storyteller. Watch for him." -Amazon Review
Dan Ames' writing reminds me of the great thriller writers -- lean, mean, no nonsense prose that gets straight to the point and keeps you turning those pages.” –Robert Gregory Browne
These Jack Reacher stories are packed with action and unforgettable twists and turns. Great reads! -B & N Review
“Cuts like a knife." -Savannah Morning News
“Grabs you early on and doesn't let go." -Tom Schreck
“From its opening lines, Daniel S. Ames and his private eye novel DEAD WOOD recall early James Ellroy: a fresh attitude and voice and the heady rush of boundless yearning and ambition. Ames delivers a vivid evocation of time and place in a way that few debut authors achieve, nailing the essence of his chosen corner of high-tone Michigan. He also deftly dodges the pitfalls that make so much contemporary private detective fiction a mixed bag and nostalgia-freighted misfire. Ames’ detective has family; he’s steady. He’s not another burned-out, booze-hound hanging on teeth and toenails to the world and smugly wallowing in his own ennui. This is the first new private eye novel in a long time that just swept me along for the ride. Ames is definitely one to watch.” — Craig McDonald, Edgar-nominated author
“Dan Ames pulls off a very difficult thing: he re-imagines what a hardboiled mystery can be, and does it with style, thrills and humor. This is the kind of book mystery readers are clamoring for, a fast-paced story with great heart and not a cliché to be found.” -- Jon A. Jackson, author of Badger Games
“Dan Ames is a sensation among readers who love fast-paced thrillers.” – Mystery Tribune
“A smart detective story stuffed with sharp prose and great action.” –Indie Reader
A Man Born For Battle
The Jack Reacher Cases #13
Dan Ames
Slogan Books, New York, NY
NEW SERIES! Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators.
CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!
Contents
The Jack Reacher Cases (A Man Born for Battle)
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
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Also by Dan Ames
About the Author
Free Books And More
Would you like a FREE copy
of my story BULLET RIVER and the chance
to win a free Kindle?
Then sign up for the DAN AMES BOOK CLUB:
For special offers and new releases, sign up here
The Jack Reacher Cases (A Man Born for Battle)
by
Dan Ames
He who tells a lie is not sensible of how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.
-Alexander Pope
1
They were known as the three sisters.
In a town as small as Gideon, Indiana, that kind of sobriquet wasn’t totally unexpected; a small community often uses shorthand for local objects of interest and three dark-haired beauties were no exception.
As is so often the case in instances such as this, more than one reason for the trio’s popularity existed. Of particular note was their likenesses which were so similar that many speculated they were triplets. They most certainly were not triplets; in fact, they weren’t even sisters.
However, each of the three was strikingly beautiful. In fact, one older farmer remarked over a breakfast of scrambled eggs in the local diner that the three “sisters” could have made more money working as models in Paris. His dining companions nodded their heads in collective agreement.
Their means of income also had led to the nickname: they were owners of the Three Sisters Tire Company. The little auto repair shop had been a low-level affair for years and years, owned by a man whose main income was a welfare check and who only occasionally opened the doors to the little gas station that no longer sold gas.
The little white building with the garage sporting two full bays with retractable doors and auto hoists had occupied the corner of 4th Street and Elm for nearly eight years.
One day, instead of being called Sullivan Auto – which had been the original name until the welfare recipient somehow came to own it – the original sign was gone and in its place was a professionally painted logo: The Three Sisters Tire Company.
No one knew for sure how the sisters had managed to acquire the little business, and no one really cared. What mattered was that it was usually open and had tires just as good as the Walmart out on Highway 26. Most of the locals of Gideon, Indiana, shopped at the ugly mega retail store begrudgingly; they were on budgets, and the low prices helped out.
However, if push came to shove and they could find something from an actual local business –that didn’t belong to a family of billionaires somewhere in Arkansas– at a competitive price, they’d give their business to a neighbor, who just might return the favor.
And so it was the little auto repair shop experienced a rebirth and soon, it wasn’t uncommon to see both garage bays occupied by paying customers. The sisters didn’t do the work themselves, they’d managed to lure a certified mechanic from Chicago – which was just a few hours away – and the man knew his cars.
Soon, talk at the local café was all about if and when the beautiful sisters might find some local boys worthy of entering into holy matrimony. The women didn’t get out much and talk at the bowling alley over pitchers of beer speculated maybe they went to the big city on weekends.
It was pointed out they had half of a duplex apartment on Lincoln Street, just a few blocks from the tire shop, and they seemed to be home most of the time.
Talk of that quickly came to an end thanks to the same farmer who was fond of comparing the sisters to the most gorgeous supermodels on the covers of slick magazines down at the Piggly Wiggly.
Talk ended because one cool morning the farmer was driving into town for his daily coffee and eggs when he noticed three signs hanging down from the town’s welcome arch that had been erected sometime in the 1950s when optimism and the community’s municipal improvement budget were at an all-time high.
The farmer lightly pressed on the old Ford F
-150’s brake pedal and he slowed down.
As he came closer to the arch and the plaque off to the right welcoming visitors to “Gideon, Indiana, where happiness is always in bloom,” the farmer realized they weren’t signs.
They were three bodies.
Each hung by the neck.
The faces were twisted and distorted in ugly death grimaces, but the farmer recognized them straight off.
The three sisters.
2
“This is torture.”
Tallon looked over at Pauling. She was doing some sort of bizarre pose dreamed up by the yoga instructor at the front of the class. It had some kind of animal name but Tallon figured it was all make-believe. The “instructor” was probably a con artist getting a huge kick out of people falling for a workout designed around pretending to be a jungle species.
“Shhhh,” Pauling said.
He had to smile. Pauling was doing great. She’d been shot twice in a case that had taken her to Belize among other locations. Luckily, the bullets hadn’t hit any major organs and she’d been able to recover quickly. Yoga was the final piece of the physical rehabilitation Pauling had endured without complaint for the past twelve weeks. From Tallon’s perspective, she was doing great.
He, on the other hand, was drenched in sweat and praying the hand on the clock would move faster. His legs and arms were wobbly. Across from him, a woman in her sixties was rock steady and seemed to have a smug smile on her face as she watched Tallon struggle.
Mercifully, class ended less than five minutes later, and Tallon chugged from his water bottle and toweled the sweat off his face. The yoga studio was on the third floor of an old building in Lower Manhattan and the space was kept hot. Supposedly, the heat helped purge the body of toxins. All Tallon knew was he couldn’t wait to get out of the damn sweat lodge.
“You looked a little shaky there,” Pauling teased him. She had never looked more beautiful to Tallon: striking green eyes, blondeish hair with just a touch of highlights, and that great, whiskey-and-cigarette voice that always made him tingle in all the right places.
“Yeah, yoga’s good for skinny little things like you,” Tallon said, knowing how lame it sounded but going ahead with it anyway. “That’s why you don’t see a lot of guys built like me in here.”
Pauling smiled but didn’t take the bait. He understood why; he’d been trying to take part in her physical therapy when he could, so she didn’t always feel like she was going through it alone. In the early stages it hadn’t been possible but now she was close to one hundred percent.
They’d already been to the gun range several times and her shooting was back on point. They were pretty much equals on the range. One day he scored better, the next, she did.
They gathered their gear and left the yoga studio for the walk back to Pauling’s place. The cool air felt amazing to Tallon and he begrudgingly admitted to himself that he felt great. Super relaxed. Maybe there actually was something to this yoga thing.
Pauling lived in a walkup on Barrow Street. Tallon had pretty much lived with her since the shootout and had helped take care of her as well as do the mundane tasks like grocery shopping and cooking.
He’d actually enjoyed the hell out of taking care of Pauling and in a way didn’t want it to end. Even though they’d committed to each other and Pauling had sold her business and had been spending a lot of time at Tallon’s ranch out West, they were still busy professionals. Especially Tallon. He’d talked of slowing down, but it seemed there was always a new job in private security he couldn’t turn down. He was fine financially, but it was always easy to imagine that just a little bit more would be great.
They made their way up to Pauling’s loft-style apartment where she undid the alarm. Inside, Pauling went to shower while Tallon headed straight for the fridge and popped a cold beer.
Nothing like a cold beer after hot yoga, he thought and laughed. If his fellow special ops soldier friends knew he’d gotten his ass kicked in a yoga class, they would never let him hear the end of it.
Tallon went into the living room. It was a great space with huge windows that let in plenty of natural light. Pauling’s style was contemporary but comfortable. Lots of natural wood, leather and original art.
As he thought of his comrades-in-arms ribbing him over his newfound interest in yoga, Tallon’s cell phone buzzed and he glanced at the message.
Manuel “Manny” Ordonez. He and Tallon had fought side by side and had known each other for years.
Tallon looked at the text message.
It was simple, direct and pure Manny Ordonez.
Someone killed my sister. I need your help.
3
They called him La Roca, which in Spanish meant “The Rock.”
It wasn’t because he was a fan of the professional wrestler turned actor; rather, it had to do with his peculiar physiognomy.
As a kid, he’d had a tremendous underbite. His lower jaw had stuck out at least several inches farther than his upper. A group of physicians had toured his small village and offered to help. They’d manually broken his jaw, removed chunks on either side and bolted it all back together.
The operation had gone horribly wrong. An infection set in and parts of the bone began to fail. This required a second operation and the addition of metal plates and even more metal hardware to hold most of his jaw, face and even parts of his skull together.
He almost died on the operating table.
Twice.
Years later, after everything had healed and was as good as it was ever going to get, he’d gotten into a fistfight. His opponent had landed a good punch to the side of La Roca’s face. The young man’s hand broke in several places.
The boy who’d endured multiple surgeries and who’d been left with a severely misshapen head was fine.
As the fighter hopped around, howling in pain and holding his broken hand, he’d shouted: “It’s like hitting a rock!”
The nickname had stuck.
He wasn’t a big man, just under 5’7” but he was wide and powerfully built. His legs were especially short and his upper body oversized and muscular.
La Roca occasionally wore a black cowboy hat with a band made of Mexican rattlesnake. People opined he wore the hat to compensate for his overly large jaw, which jutted out like a block of granite, and to hide the dented and malformed skull. They were right. He felt the hat made him look more normal.
He had just arrived in the United States via an underground tunnel. In the back of a panel van, he was driven north to Denver. There were two other men in the van, employees of the same organization that was paying La Roca for the task at hand.
Not much was said in the van. They’d given him identification papers and a gun. They also told him a car was ready with a full tank of gas and more weapons in the trunk.
When they reached Denver, they drove into the heart of the city to an underground parking garage. The van stopped and the men pointed toward a car.
“Keys are inside. Good luck,” the man in the passenger seat said.
La Roca exited the van, started toward the car and then turned back to the panel van, as if he’d forgotten something.
He hadn’t.
He shot both the driver and the passenger in the head, then pulled the van into an empty parking space. He tore a swath of cloth from the driver’s shirt, popped the cap to the fuel tank and fed the cloth in. He pulled it back out and then put the other end of the cloth in and pushed it as far as it would go.
He went back to his car, backed it out of the space and then opened the driver’s door and left the engine running.
La Roca lit the piece of cloth, jogged back to his car and drove ahead. Just as he was about to turn the corner and exit the garage, he heard a loud woomph and felt the air vibrate around him.
He pulled out of the parking lot (there were no cameras – he’d made sure of that) and pointed the car, a big American Buick, toward somewhere he’d never heard of.
Gideon, Indi
ana.
4
The girl was nervous.
Her friend wasn’t.
The nervous girl’s name was Tanya and she was fifteen years old. Her friend, Roquelle, was a year older but much wiser in the ways of the street. It had been her idea to come here, to this scary-looking motel on the edge of town. It seemed Roquelle had a date with an older man, a very generous older man, and wanted Tanya to ride shotgun, whatever that meant.
Now Roquelle pulled a half-pint bottle of peach-flavored vodka from her back pocket, took a drink, and handed the bottle to Tanya.
“Here, this will calm your nerves,” Roquelle said. Tanya gulped the vodka and felt it burn her throat. She coughed and a little went up her nose, into her sinuses. Tears came to her eyes.
“Jesus, you’re such a little bitch,” Roquelle said, laughing. “You should be thanking me for bringing you here instead of cowering. Hell, you could walk away with a hundred bucks, maybe more.”