A Hard Man To Forget Read online

  A HARD MAN TO FORGET

  THE JACK REACHER CASES

  DAN AMES

  Contents

  THE JACK REACHER CASES

  Foreword

  A HARD MAN TO FORGET

  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

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by DAN AMES

  THE JACK REACHER CASES

  A HARD MAN TO FORGET (THE JACK REACHER CASES) is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

  Copyright © 2017 by Dan Ames

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Slogan Books, Inc., New York, NY.

  Foreword

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  A HARD MAN TO FORGET

  The Jack Reacher Cases

  * * *

  Book One

  * * *

  Written by Dan Ames

  1

  The two men with guns walked behind the man carrying the shovel. They knew what they were doing. A shovel was sometimes as good a weapon as any. A man with a shovel and nothing to lose was bound to make an effort with whatever he had.

  So they kept their distance.

  Should the man turn and swing the shovel with arms extended, his reach would cover eight feet or so.

  The men with the guns maintained a ten-foot distance.

  The man with the shovel gave no indication of a desire to attack, however. His shoulders were slumped. His feet shuffled along in the sand. He said nothing.

  It was night in the desert. The stars were out. The wind was blowing steadily from the southwest but it had no power. It was cool and the men with the guns were chilly. Above them, the night sky was littered with stars.

  The man with the shovel was sweating. He trudged along, and his face was slick, glinting in the pale moonlight. Occasionally, he stumbled on a large rock. Without bothering to look at what had impeded his path, he simply moved forward.

  The men with the guns neatly avoided the stones the man with the shovel stumbled upon. He was their trailblazer, even though he was the only one who had no idea where they were going.

  When the trio was at least a mile from the road, the men with guns glanced at each other, nodded and stopped abruptly.

  The man with the shovel initially kept stumbling forward, but eventually, he noticed that his escorts had stopped.

  He stopped. Turned and faced them.

  One of the men with guns pointed his pistol at a spot on the ground and lifted his chin toward the shovel.

  The man with the shovel glanced down at the spot on the ground. He saw nothing special. Sand. Some loose gravel. A weed.

  He glanced back up at the men.

  They waited.

  “You bastards,” he said. His words carried no force. No threat. A simple statement, accepted by all.

  The man with the shovel put the point of the blade in a spot in front of him. He stepped forward, placed his foot on the shovel and pushed it into the ground.

  He started digging.

  In the distance a coyote howled. The sound of the steel shovel echoed in the empty desert air. When it hit a loose rock or a layer of gravel, the reverberation seemed to hang in the space above the men.

  The men with guns paid no attention to the desert or its distant inhabitants. They were solely focused on the man with the shovel. They continued to keep their distance. A shovel full of sand flung at them was always a possibility. So they stood well back. Close enough to be able to shoot and kill their target with complete confidence, yet far enough to cause a spade full of sand to dissipate over the distance it had to travel.

  The man with the shovel showed no signs of a plan to attack.

  He was mechanical. Insert shovel. Scoop. Toss sand. Repeat.

  His sweating had stopped.

  His hands were unsteady. At times, the shovel wobbled in his hands.

  It seemed that he was about to say something, but his mouth moved without producing any sound. One of the men with guns was very tall and as he watched the digger’s face, it reminded him of a freshly caught fish tossed onto the bank, gasping for air.

  When the floor of the desert was level with the middle of the shoveling man’s thigh, one of the men with guns spoke. It wasn’t the tall one. The other one was short and stocky, with a bull neck.

  His voice carried no emotion.

  “Toss the shovel. Sit down.”

  The man in the shallow grave paused. He leaned on the shovel and looked toward the dark purple sky. His lips continued to move, but no sound came out.

  One of the men with guns was curious if the man was praying. But the voice was so soft, and with the ten-foot safety zone, he couldn’t hear. But his educated guess was that a prayer was being recited.

  The man with the shovel put one hand on the bottom of the tool’s handle and threw it into the darkness. It sailed on an arc and rotated slightly, like a perfectly thrown football.

  It landed in the sand and made a soft, distant thud.

  The man sat down, pulled his knees up toward him and wrapped his arms around them. He buried his face into the space between his arms and his chest.

  He was crying.

  One of the men with guns stepped forward, lifted his pistol, and fired twice. The pistol was equipped with a silencer and the sound of the shots was little more than a soft huff. It made no echo and quickly faded.

  The hair on top of the shoveling man’s head puffed upward as each bullet entered his skull. He tipped backward and slumped onto his back.

  The shooter tilted his head to the side, and judged how well his shots had laid out the man in the grave.

  He seemed disappointed with the result.

&nb
sp; He unscrewed the silencer and slipped it into a pocket. He placed the gun in a concealed holster underneath his left arm.

  He then reached forward and pulled the dead man’s feet toward him, so the body was flat in the grave.

  The other man retrieved the shovel and joined his partner at the foot of the grave.

  He withdrew a quarter from his pocket and let the shovel handle rest against his stomach.

  “Call it.”

  “Heads.”

  The man with the coin tossed it, caught it and slapped it down on top of his other hand. He then pulled his hand away with a flourish.

  He showed it to the other man, who then grabbed the shovel and began tossing sand on top of the dead man.

  In the distance, the coyote howled once more.

  2

  It wouldn’t be until much later, long after the bodies had begun to pile up and all hell had broken fully loose, that Lauren Pauling would begin to wonder just why she had been thinking about Jack Reacher that morning.

  It had been a fairly routine start to the day.

  Early coffee. Quick skim of the New York Times. A brutal workout in the gym housed in the basement of her apartment building. It was a ferocious routine that included a punishing cardio segment followed by an extensive free weight program. As Pauling was nearing the age of fifty, she took special pride in knowing that her fitness regimen would leave much younger women begging for mercy.

  A shower, light breakfast and the start of her work day.

  For Pauling, that meant leaving her apartment on Barrow Street and heading over to her office on West 4th. As she walked, she glanced at her reflection in the store windows. She was a little taller than average, with goldish blonde hair. Her startling green eyes weren’t discernible in the reflection, but they were often the first thing people noticed about her. She could use them strategically when she needed to.

  She reached her office building, climbed the narrow staircase, and let herself into the two-room office suite.

  There was a casual lounge area at the front with two chairs and a table. Magazines were neatly arranged on the table’s surface, and the chairs each held an accent pillow. The walls were home to art prints. Not expensive. Professional.

  The second part, her actual office, was in the back.

  Pauling was a private investigator. Her top-of-the-line business card gave a little bit more information: Lauren Pauling. Private Investigator. Ex-Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. At the bottom was an address with 212 and 917 phone numbers for landline and cell, plus e-mail and a website URL.

  Like the woman herself, the business card was professional, elegant and direct. The same held true for her website and the office.

  It was the picture of efficiency and prestige. Not over-the-top luxurious, but with high-end finishes that would impress clients.

  Pauling wasn’t cheap.

  Her professional habitat reflected that fact.

  She cruised through her email with practiced efficiency. Within thirty minutes every issue had been addressed, every necessary action taken, and all inconsequential messages filed.

  Maybe it was then, during the momentary lull when her mind turned to Reacher.

  Of course, the truth was, it often did.

  Pauling’s last case with the FBI had been the worst period of her life. A kidnapping turned murder. She had felt like a failure, that she had let the victim down. It wasn’t until Jack Reacher arrived that eventually the case of Anne Lane reappeared in her life. Working with Reacher, she’d eventually found justice for Anne.

  And then Reacher was gone.

  It was his way, she understood that.

  But the resulting justice that finally arrived, along with the knowledge that she, Pauling, had done nothing wrong, had breathed new life into her.

  She had returned to her company and her career with renewed vigor. As a result, her business had soared to the point where she often turned down work, or referred cases to other investigators.

  Now, she shook off thoughts of Reacher.

  He was a hard man, and a hard man to forget.

  But she had been trying to move on. It just wasn’t easy to do. Pauling was well past the point of romantic infatuations. There had been men. Successful. Impressive. Kind.

  But none of them had been like Jack Reacher.

  And she knew without a doubt that there never would be. There was Jack Reacher, and there was everyone else.

  The thought of moving on gave her the motivation to get up from behind her desk, and walk toward her front door. She was going to swing by the mailbox and see if anything had been delivered. She tried not to spend more than a half hour at a time sitting behind her desk. She had a second desk to the right of her main workstation that could be lifted so she could stand and work.

  But now, she wanted to move. Thoughts of Reacher always prompted her to take an action of some sort.

  As she prepared to leave her office, Pauling spotted a letter that had already arrived, placed neatly under her door.

  She hadn’t heard anyone stop by.

  It was a little early for mail, so she assumed it was an overnight envelope.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was a plain white letter.

  With one word emblazoned across its front.

  Reacher.

  3

  Despite having worked for an organization known to have a vague and fluid set of guidelines, Michael Tallon lived by a very specific set of rules.

  The saying went that the world was not black-and-white. Plenty of shades of grey, that sort of thing.

  While sometimes true, Tallon preferred to live in the black-and-white as much as possible. He detested vague boundaries and shadowy borders. Maybe it was an innate desire to be able to quickly deduce a threat. Split-second decisions between right and wrong. Life and death.

  Tallon’s mind went to those rules when the man in the restaurant began behaving badly.

  It wasn’t much of a place, the restaurant. A chain eatery serving generic Mexican food, barely one step up from fast food.

  It featured an open seating area, mostly tables separated here and there with a stand of booths. A giant drink dispenser was on one side, the serving counter in the middle, the entrance on the other side. The walls held posters advertising the latest meal special with a soft drink the size of a city’s water tower.

  A row of plaques touted employees of the month, as well as awards for customer satisfaction, given by the restaurant itself.

  The place was half-full, mostly locals, Tallon guessed. His eyes had scanned the customers when he’d entered, and the only person who’d caught his eye was the man now demanding the attention of just about everyone in the place.

  “You’re a nightmare,” the man barked at the young woman sitting across from him. She recoiled at the volume of the man’s voice, and the proximity of his face. Tallon figured she probably caught a little spittle on that exclamation.

  He tried to ignore the man. He was here only because he was hungry and needed a quick stop before continuing his drive. Tallon had just finished a project and was on his way home.

  Ordinarily, he would have pushed through but his need for food had grown to the point of distraction and knew that he still had six hours of driving ahead of him.

  He’d ordered the least offensive item on the menu, grilled chicken tacos. The chicken was rubbery, the tortilla soggy. But the coffee was good and surprisingly strong. It was fuel, nothing more.

  Tallon had eaten all of the tacos he’d planned to, and was about to take the rest of his coffee and go, when the man’s voice cut through the monotonous drone of the restaurant yet again.

  “You’re worthless, just like your mother,” the man said. “Both of you are useless.”

  All of which brought Tallon’s mind around to his rules.

  One of which dealt with bad parents.

  Tallon had seen his fair share of them and been tempted to intervene on previous occasions. But
Tallon believed in perseverance. His own parents had been fair and generous people. But he’d known others who had been cruel and vicious. Yet, he’d seen their children survive and in some cases, even thrive.

  The world could be a cold and dark place. At some point, everyone had to learn that donning armor and entering combat was an occasional necessity.

  So Tallon had decided not to get involved. The man was big, well over six feet, with greasy hair tied into a ponytail. He wore a sleeveless shirt, revealing thick arms wrapped with barbed wire tattoos.

  He had thick hands, with large silver rings on nearly every finger. They looked like skull rings, one of them featured some kind of colored glass pieces for the eyes.

  Tallon saw movement to his left and before the older woman rose from her booth, he knew exactly what was going to happen, long before it did.

  He’d seen the older couple sitting in the booth near the window. The woman had one of those open, caring faces that denoted a love of family and goodness in others. She also had wide, expressive eyes that revealed an intensity of personality typically seen in someone much younger. It was a face and a demeanor that meant action. This was a woman who preferred to get involved sooner than later.