Past tense / Lee Child.
"Jack Reacher has extended his thumb and hit the pavement. His plan is to follow the autumn sun on an epic trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn't get far. On a country road in rural New Hampshire, deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been: The town where his father was born. He thinks, What's one extra day? and takes the detour. At the same moment, in the same isolated area, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians are trying to drive to New York City to sell a treasure. Now they're stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. The owners almost seem too friendly. It's a strange place, but it's all there is. The next morning in the city clerk's office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He's told no one named Reacher ever lived in town. He knows his father left and never returned. Now Reacher wonders, was he ever there in the first place? As Reacher explores his father's life, and strands of different stories begin to merge, he makes a shocking discovery: The present can be tough, but the past can be tense and deadly."-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780399593512
- ISBN: 0399593519
- Physical Description: 382 pages ; 24 cm.
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Delacorte Press, [2018]
- Copyright: ©2018
Content descriptions
General Note: | Series numeration from NoveList. |
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Subject: | Reacher, Jack (Fictitious character) > Fiction. Family secrets > Fiction. New Hampshire > Fiction. FICTION / Suspense. FICTION / Action & Adventure. FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. |
Genre: | Suspense fiction. Mystery fiction. |
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Available copies
- 144 of 149 copies available at Evergreen Indiana.
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- 0 current holds with 149 total copies.
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Chapter 1
Jack Reacher caught the last of the summer sun in a small town on the coast of Maine, and then, like the birds in the sky above him, he began his long migration south. But not, he thought, straight down the coast. Not like the orioles and the buntings and the phoebes and the warblers and the ruby-Âthroated hummingbirds. Instead he decided on a diagonal route, south and west, from the top right-Âhand corner of the country to the bottom left, maybe through Syracuse, and Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque, and onward all the way to San Diego. Which for an army guy like Reacher was a little too full of Navy people, but which was otherwise a fine spot to start the winter.
It would be an epic road trip, and one he hadnât made in years.
He was looking forward to it.
He didnât get far.
He walked inland a mile or so and came to a county road and stuck out his thumb. He was a tall man, more than six feet five in his shoes, heavily built, all bone and muscle, not particularly good looking, never very well dressed, usually a little unkempt. Not an overwhelmingly appealing proposition. As always most drivers slowed and took a look and then kept on going. The first car prepared to take a chance on him came along after forty minutes. It was a year-Âold Subaru wagon, driven by a lean middle-Âaged guy in pleated chino pants and a crisp khaki shirt. Dressed by his wife, Reacher thought. The guy had a wedding ring. But under the fine fabrics was a workingmanâs body. A thick neck and large red knuckles. The slightly surprised and somewhat reluctant boss of something, Reacher thought. The kind of guy who starts out digging post holes and ends up owning a fencing company.
Which turned out to be a good guess. Initial conversation established the guy had started out with nothing to his name but his daddyâs old framing hammer, and had ended up owning a construction company, responsible for forty working people, and the hopes and dreams of a whole bunch of clients. He finished his story with a little facial shrug, part Yankee modesty, part genuine perplexity. As in, how did that happen? Attention to detail, Reacher thought. This was a very organized guy, full of notions and nostrums and maxims and cast-Âiron beliefs, one of which was that at the end of summer it was better to stay away from both Route One and I-Â95, and in fact to get out of Maine altogether as fast as possible, which meant soon and sideways, on Route Two, straight west into New Hampshire. To a place just south of Berlin, where the guy knew a bunch of back roads that would get them down to Boston faster than any other way. Which was where the guy was going, for a meeting about marble countertops. Reacher was happy. Nothing wrong with Boston as a starting point. Nothing at all. From there it was a straight shot to Syracuse. After which Cincinnati was easy, via Rochester and Buffalo and Cleveland. Maybe even via Akron, Ohio. Reacher had been in worse places. Mostly in the service.
They didnât get to Boston.
The guy got a call on his cell, after fifty-Âsome minutes heading south on the aforementioned New Hampshire back roads. Which were exactly as advertised. Reacher had to admit the guyâs plan was solid. There was no traffic at all. No jams, no delays. They were bowling along, doing sixty miles an hour, dead easy. Until the phone rang. It was hooked up to the car radio, and a name came up on the navigation screen, with a thumbnail photograph as a visual aid, in this case of a red-Âfaced man wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard. Some kind of a foreman on a job site. The guy at the wheel touched a button and phone hiss filled the car, from all the speakers, like surround sound.
The guy at the wheel spoke to the windshield pillar and said, âThis better be good news.â
It wasnât. It was something to do with an inspector from a municipal buildings department, and a metal flue liner above a fireplace in an entrance lobby, which was properly insulated, exactly up to code, except that couldnât be proved visually without tearing down the stonework, which was by that point already three stories high, nearly done, with the masons booked on a new job starting the next week, or alternatively without ripping out the custom walnut millwork in the dining room on the other side of the chimney, or the millwork in the closet above, which was rosewood and even more complicated, but the inspector was being a hardass about it and needed to see for himself.
The guy at the wheel glanced at Reacher and said, âWhich inspector is it?â
The guy on the phone said, âThe new one.â
âDoes he know he gets a turkey at Thanksgiving?â
âI told him weâre all on the same side here.â
The guy at the wheel glanced at Reacher again, as if seeking permission, or offering an apology, or both, and then he faced front again and said, âDid you offer him money?â
âFive hundred. He wouldnât take it.â
Then the cell signal ran out. The sound went garbled, like a robot drowning in a swimming pool, and then it went dead. The screen said it was searching.
The car rolled on.
Reacher said, âWhy would a person want a fireplace in an entrance lobby?â
The guy at the wheel said, âItâs welcoming.â
âI think historically it was designed to repel. It was defensive. Like the campfire burning in the mouth of the cave. It was intended to keep predators at bay.â
âI have to go back,â the guy said. âIâm sorry.â
He slowed the car and pulled over on the gravel. All alone, on the back roads. No other traffic. The screen said it was still searching for a signal.
âIâm going to have to let you out here,â the guy said. âIs that OK?â
âNo problem,â Reacher said. âYou got me part of the way. For which I thank you very much.â
âYouâre welcome.â
âWhose is the rosewood closet?â
âHis.â
âCut a big hole in it and show the inspector. Then give the client five commonsense reasons why he should install a wall safe. Because this is a guy who wants a wall safe. Maybe he doesnât know it yet, but a guy who wants a fireplace in his entrance lobby wants a wall safe in his bedroom closet. Thatâs for damn sure. Human nature. Youâll make a profit. You can charge him for the time it takes to cut the hole.â
âAre you in this business, too?â
âI was a military cop.â
The guy said, âHuh.â
Reacher opened the door and climbed out, and closed the door again behind him, and walked far enough away to give the guy space to swing the Subaru around, gravel shoulder to gravel shoulder, across the whole width of the road, and then to take off back the way he had come. All of which the guy did, with a brief gesture Reacher took to be a rueful good-Âluck wave. Then he got smaller and smaller in the distance, and Reacher turned back and continued walking, south, the way he was headed. Wherever possible he liked to maintain forward momentum. The road he was on was a two-Âlane, wide enough, well maintained, curved here and there, a little up and down. But no kind of a problem for a modern car. The Subaru had been doing sixty. Yet there was no traffic. None at all. Nothing coming, either way. Total silence. Just a sigh of wind in the trees, and the faint buzz of heat coming up off the blacktop.
Reacher walked on.
Two miles later the road he was on curved gently left, and a new road of equal size and appearance split off to the right. Not exactly a turn. More like an equal choice. A classic Y-Âshaped junction. Twitch the wheel left, or twitch the wheel right. Your call. Both options ran out of sight through trees so mighty in places they made a tunnel.
There was a road sign.
A tilted arrow to the left was labeled Portsmouth, and a tilted arrow to the right was labeled Laconia. But the right-Âhand option was written in smaller writing, and it had a smaller arrow, as if Laconia was less important than Portsmouth. A mere byway, despite its road being the same size.
Laconia, New Hampshire.
A name Reacher knew. He had seen it on all kinds of historic family paperwork, and he had heard it mentioned from time to time. It was his late fatherâs place of birth, and where he was raised, until he escaped at age seventeen to join the Marines. Such was the vague family legend. Escaped from what had not been specified. But he never went back. Not once. Reacher himself had been born more than fifteen years later, by which time Laconia was a dead detail of the long-Âago past, as remote as the Dakota Territory, where it was said some earlier ancestor had lived and worked. No one in the family ever went to either place. No visits. The grandparents died young and were rarely mentioned. There were apparently no aunts or uncles or cousins or any other kind of distant relatives. Which was statistically unlikely, and suggested a rift of some kind. But no one other than his father had any real information, and no one ever made any real attempt to get any from him. Certain things were not discussed in Marine families. Much later as a captain in the army Reacherâs brother Joe was posted north and said something about maybe trying to find the old family homestead, but nothing ever came of it. Probably Reacher himself had said the same kind of thing, from time to time. He had never been there either.
Left or right. His call.
Portsmouth was better. It had highways and traffic and buses. It was a straight shot to Boston. San Diego beckoned. The Northeast was about to get cold.
But what was one extra day?
He stepped right, and chose the fork in the road that led to Laconia.
At that same late-Âafternoon moment, nearly thirty miles away, heading south on a different back road, was a worn-Âout Honda Civic, driven by a twenty-Âfive-Âyear-Âold man named Shorty Fleck. Next to him in the passenger seat was a twenty-Âfive-Âyear-Âold woman named Patty Sundstrom. They were boyfriend and girlfriend, both born and raised in Saint Leonard, which was a small faraway town in New Brunswick, Canada. Not much happened there. The biggest news in living memory was ten years previously, when a truck carrying twelve million bees overturned on a curve. The local paper reported with pride that the accident was the first of its kind in New Brunswick. Patty worked in a sawmill. She was the granddaughter of a guy from Minnesota who had slipped north half a century earlier, to beat the draft for Vietnam. Shorty was a potato farmer. His family had been in Canada forever. And he wasnât particularly short. Maybe he had been once, as a kid. But now he figured he was what any eyewitness would call an average-Âlooking guy.
They were trying to make it non-Âstop from Saint Leonard to New York City. Which by any standard was a hardcore drive. But they saw a big advantage in doing it. They had something to sell in the city, and saving a night in a hotel would maximize their profit. They had planned out their route, looping west to avoid the summer people heading home from the beaches, using back roads, Pattyâs blunt finger on a map, her gaze ranging ahead for turns and signs. They had timed it out on paper, and figured it was a feasible course of action.
Except they had gotten a later start than they would have liked, due a little bit to general disorganization, but mostly due to the Hondaâs aging battery not liking the newly crisp autumnal temperatures blowing in from the direction of Prince Edward Island. The delay put them in a long line at the U.S. border, and then the Honda started overÂheating, and needed nursing along below fifty miles an hour for an extended spell.
They were tired.
And hungry, and thirsty, and in need of the bathroom, and late, and behind schedule. And frustrated. The Honda was overheating again. The needle was kissing the red. There was a grinding noise under the hood. Maybe the oil was low. No way of telling. All the dashboard lights had been on continuously for the last two and a half years.
Shorty asked, âWhatâs up ahead?â
Patty said, âNothing.â
Her fingertip was on a wandering red line, which was labeled with a three-Âdigit number, and which was shown running north to south through a jagged shape shaded pale green. A forested area. Which matched what was out the window. The trees crowded in, still and dark, laden down with heavy end-Âof-Âsummer leaves. The map showed tiny red spider-Âweb lines here and there, like the veins in an old ladyâs leg, which were presumably all tracks to somewhere, but nowhere big. Nowhere likely to have a mechanic or a lube shop or radiator water. The best bet was about thirty minutes ahead, some ways east of south, a town with its name printed not too small and semi-Âbold, which meant it had to have at least a gas station. It was called Laconia.
Jack Reacher caught the last of the summer sun in a small town on the coast of Maine, and then, like the birds in the sky above him, he began his long migration south. But not, he thought, straight down the coast. Not like the orioles and the buntings and the phoebes and the warblers and the ruby-Âthroated hummingbirds. Instead he decided on a diagonal route, south and west, from the top right-Âhand corner of the country to the bottom left, maybe through Syracuse, and Cincinnati, and St. Louis, and Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque, and onward all the way to San Diego. Which for an army guy like Reacher was a little too full of Navy people, but which was otherwise a fine spot to start the winter.
It would be an epic road trip, and one he hadnât made in years.
He was looking forward to it.
He didnât get far.
He walked inland a mile or so and came to a county road and stuck out his thumb. He was a tall man, more than six feet five in his shoes, heavily built, all bone and muscle, not particularly good looking, never very well dressed, usually a little unkempt. Not an overwhelmingly appealing proposition. As always most drivers slowed and took a look and then kept on going. The first car prepared to take a chance on him came along after forty minutes. It was a year-Âold Subaru wagon, driven by a lean middle-Âaged guy in pleated chino pants and a crisp khaki shirt. Dressed by his wife, Reacher thought. The guy had a wedding ring. But under the fine fabrics was a workingmanâs body. A thick neck and large red knuckles. The slightly surprised and somewhat reluctant boss of something, Reacher thought. The kind of guy who starts out digging post holes and ends up owning a fencing company.
Which turned out to be a good guess. Initial conversation established the guy had started out with nothing to his name but his daddyâs old framing hammer, and had ended up owning a construction company, responsible for forty working people, and the hopes and dreams of a whole bunch of clients. He finished his story with a little facial shrug, part Yankee modesty, part genuine perplexity. As in, how did that happen? Attention to detail, Reacher thought. This was a very organized guy, full of notions and nostrums and maxims and cast-Âiron beliefs, one of which was that at the end of summer it was better to stay away from both Route One and I-Â95, and in fact to get out of Maine altogether as fast as possible, which meant soon and sideways, on Route Two, straight west into New Hampshire. To a place just south of Berlin, where the guy knew a bunch of back roads that would get them down to Boston faster than any other way. Which was where the guy was going, for a meeting about marble countertops. Reacher was happy. Nothing wrong with Boston as a starting point. Nothing at all. From there it was a straight shot to Syracuse. After which Cincinnati was easy, via Rochester and Buffalo and Cleveland. Maybe even via Akron, Ohio. Reacher had been in worse places. Mostly in the service.
They didnât get to Boston.
The guy got a call on his cell, after fifty-Âsome minutes heading south on the aforementioned New Hampshire back roads. Which were exactly as advertised. Reacher had to admit the guyâs plan was solid. There was no traffic at all. No jams, no delays. They were bowling along, doing sixty miles an hour, dead easy. Until the phone rang. It was hooked up to the car radio, and a name came up on the navigation screen, with a thumbnail photograph as a visual aid, in this case of a red-Âfaced man wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard. Some kind of a foreman on a job site. The guy at the wheel touched a button and phone hiss filled the car, from all the speakers, like surround sound.
The guy at the wheel spoke to the windshield pillar and said, âThis better be good news.â
It wasnât. It was something to do with an inspector from a municipal buildings department, and a metal flue liner above a fireplace in an entrance lobby, which was properly insulated, exactly up to code, except that couldnât be proved visually without tearing down the stonework, which was by that point already three stories high, nearly done, with the masons booked on a new job starting the next week, or alternatively without ripping out the custom walnut millwork in the dining room on the other side of the chimney, or the millwork in the closet above, which was rosewood and even more complicated, but the inspector was being a hardass about it and needed to see for himself.
The guy at the wheel glanced at Reacher and said, âWhich inspector is it?â
The guy on the phone said, âThe new one.â
âDoes he know he gets a turkey at Thanksgiving?â
âI told him weâre all on the same side here.â
The guy at the wheel glanced at Reacher again, as if seeking permission, or offering an apology, or both, and then he faced front again and said, âDid you offer him money?â
âFive hundred. He wouldnât take it.â
Then the cell signal ran out. The sound went garbled, like a robot drowning in a swimming pool, and then it went dead. The screen said it was searching.
The car rolled on.
Reacher said, âWhy would a person want a fireplace in an entrance lobby?â
The guy at the wheel said, âItâs welcoming.â
âI think historically it was designed to repel. It was defensive. Like the campfire burning in the mouth of the cave. It was intended to keep predators at bay.â
âI have to go back,â the guy said. âIâm sorry.â
He slowed the car and pulled over on the gravel. All alone, on the back roads. No other traffic. The screen said it was still searching for a signal.
âIâm going to have to let you out here,â the guy said. âIs that OK?â
âNo problem,â Reacher said. âYou got me part of the way. For which I thank you very much.â
âYouâre welcome.â
âWhose is the rosewood closet?â
âHis.â
âCut a big hole in it and show the inspector. Then give the client five commonsense reasons why he should install a wall safe. Because this is a guy who wants a wall safe. Maybe he doesnât know it yet, but a guy who wants a fireplace in his entrance lobby wants a wall safe in his bedroom closet. Thatâs for damn sure. Human nature. Youâll make a profit. You can charge him for the time it takes to cut the hole.â
âAre you in this business, too?â
âI was a military cop.â
The guy said, âHuh.â
Reacher opened the door and climbed out, and closed the door again behind him, and walked far enough away to give the guy space to swing the Subaru around, gravel shoulder to gravel shoulder, across the whole width of the road, and then to take off back the way he had come. All of which the guy did, with a brief gesture Reacher took to be a rueful good-Âluck wave. Then he got smaller and smaller in the distance, and Reacher turned back and continued walking, south, the way he was headed. Wherever possible he liked to maintain forward momentum. The road he was on was a two-Âlane, wide enough, well maintained, curved here and there, a little up and down. But no kind of a problem for a modern car. The Subaru had been doing sixty. Yet there was no traffic. None at all. Nothing coming, either way. Total silence. Just a sigh of wind in the trees, and the faint buzz of heat coming up off the blacktop.
Reacher walked on.
Two miles later the road he was on curved gently left, and a new road of equal size and appearance split off to the right. Not exactly a turn. More like an equal choice. A classic Y-Âshaped junction. Twitch the wheel left, or twitch the wheel right. Your call. Both options ran out of sight through trees so mighty in places they made a tunnel.
There was a road sign.
A tilted arrow to the left was labeled Portsmouth, and a tilted arrow to the right was labeled Laconia. But the right-Âhand option was written in smaller writing, and it had a smaller arrow, as if Laconia was less important than Portsmouth. A mere byway, despite its road being the same size.
Laconia, New Hampshire.
A name Reacher knew. He had seen it on all kinds of historic family paperwork, and he had heard it mentioned from time to time. It was his late fatherâs place of birth, and where he was raised, until he escaped at age seventeen to join the Marines. Such was the vague family legend. Escaped from what had not been specified. But he never went back. Not once. Reacher himself had been born more than fifteen years later, by which time Laconia was a dead detail of the long-Âago past, as remote as the Dakota Territory, where it was said some earlier ancestor had lived and worked. No one in the family ever went to either place. No visits. The grandparents died young and were rarely mentioned. There were apparently no aunts or uncles or cousins or any other kind of distant relatives. Which was statistically unlikely, and suggested a rift of some kind. But no one other than his father had any real information, and no one ever made any real attempt to get any from him. Certain things were not discussed in Marine families. Much later as a captain in the army Reacherâs brother Joe was posted north and said something about maybe trying to find the old family homestead, but nothing ever came of it. Probably Reacher himself had said the same kind of thing, from time to time. He had never been there either.
Left or right. His call.
Portsmouth was better. It had highways and traffic and buses. It was a straight shot to Boston. San Diego beckoned. The Northeast was about to get cold.
But what was one extra day?
He stepped right, and chose the fork in the road that led to Laconia.
At that same late-Âafternoon moment, nearly thirty miles away, heading south on a different back road, was a worn-Âout Honda Civic, driven by a twenty-Âfive-Âyear-Âold man named Shorty Fleck. Next to him in the passenger seat was a twenty-Âfive-Âyear-Âold woman named Patty Sundstrom. They were boyfriend and girlfriend, both born and raised in Saint Leonard, which was a small faraway town in New Brunswick, Canada. Not much happened there. The biggest news in living memory was ten years previously, when a truck carrying twelve million bees overturned on a curve. The local paper reported with pride that the accident was the first of its kind in New Brunswick. Patty worked in a sawmill. She was the granddaughter of a guy from Minnesota who had slipped north half a century earlier, to beat the draft for Vietnam. Shorty was a potato farmer. His family had been in Canada forever. And he wasnât particularly short. Maybe he had been once, as a kid. But now he figured he was what any eyewitness would call an average-Âlooking guy.
They were trying to make it non-Âstop from Saint Leonard to New York City. Which by any standard was a hardcore drive. But they saw a big advantage in doing it. They had something to sell in the city, and saving a night in a hotel would maximize their profit. They had planned out their route, looping west to avoid the summer people heading home from the beaches, using back roads, Pattyâs blunt finger on a map, her gaze ranging ahead for turns and signs. They had timed it out on paper, and figured it was a feasible course of action.
Except they had gotten a later start than they would have liked, due a little bit to general disorganization, but mostly due to the Hondaâs aging battery not liking the newly crisp autumnal temperatures blowing in from the direction of Prince Edward Island. The delay put them in a long line at the U.S. border, and then the Honda started overÂheating, and needed nursing along below fifty miles an hour for an extended spell.
They were tired.
And hungry, and thirsty, and in need of the bathroom, and late, and behind schedule. And frustrated. The Honda was overheating again. The needle was kissing the red. There was a grinding noise under the hood. Maybe the oil was low. No way of telling. All the dashboard lights had been on continuously for the last two and a half years.
Shorty asked, âWhatâs up ahead?â
Patty said, âNothing.â
Her fingertip was on a wandering red line, which was labeled with a three-Âdigit number, and which was shown running north to south through a jagged shape shaded pale green. A forested area. Which matched what was out the window. The trees crowded in, still and dark, laden down with heavy end-Âof-Âsummer leaves. The map showed tiny red spider-Âweb lines here and there, like the veins in an old ladyâs leg, which were presumably all tracks to somewhere, but nowhere big. Nowhere likely to have a mechanic or a lube shop or radiator water. The best bet was about thirty minutes ahead, some ways east of south, a town with its name printed not too small and semi-Âbold, which meant it had to have at least a gas station. It was called Laconia.