Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel by Scott Blade Read Free Book Online

Airport. He waited out a layover from Seattle to Washington, DC.
    The coffee bar had a fancy, black granite countertop. Everything else had a chrome finish. It was a setup he had never seen before in a place where you get coffee, but then again, over the last three hours and fifteen minutes, he had seen a lot that he hadn’t seen before. The fact that there were a lot of new sights and sounds wasn’t surprising because airports were new to Cameron.
    He had just flown on a passenger plane for the first time. It wasn’t the first flight he’d ever been on, just the first he had ever flown that wasn’t at gunpoint like back in Black Rock, Mississippi. That had been a short flight. Much shorter than the one he had just taken and not a flight that he cared to repeat or recall.
    Cameron looked at a new iPad device that was fastened and locked to a rail-thin, chrome arm. It had a screen that read “Order here” at the top and “Let us keep up with your flight” at the bottom. He ignored the flight screen and examined the menu.
    Pictures of different food items scrolled across the top half of the screen. Cameron tapped the glass and then swiped to the left and then to the left again. He pulled up a menu that read “Beverages.” He immediately went to the “Hot” section and scoured for coffee or plain coffee or coffee black or coffee without cream or without sugar. He found no such offering. Instead, he saw descriptions like “cappuccino,” “Americano,” and “frappe.” Cameron was familiar with all of those terms as terms, but even though he was of the Starbucks’ generation, he had no clue what they meant when applied to coffee.
    Cameron was nineteen years old, but he had grown up fast in the last year. This had been a year he would’ve never predicted. Not in a million years. Not under any circumstances. Unlike most nineteen-year-olds, at least the ones that Cameron had known, he had been humbled because of his experiences. Whereas most nineteen-year-olds were self-absorbed or thought they knew it all or were invincible, Cameron was learning quickly that he wasn’t as invincible as he’d thought. More importantly, he was becoming aware of his own mortality and need for humility. When he’d first set out on the road to find Jack Reacher, he had thought his size to be a great advantage, but now he wasn’t so sure. Bullets could stop anyone. No doubt about that. And being a big guy made him a big target.
    He had also thought his intelligence was a great advantage, but this past year had tested him to the point that he realized that he may be smarter than some people, but that didn’t mean he knew everything. In fact, he was quickly learning that he was not as smart as he had thought. There was a huge difference between knowing everything and being smart enough to realize that you’ll never know everything.
    He felt grateful for the knowledge of this fact because arrogance had almost gotten him killed—and worse, it had put other people in jeopardy, people that Cameron had cared about. Being arrogant could’ve easily gotten Amita or Mike Jacobs or Chief Red Cloud or Faye Matlind or many others killed. He didn’t even like to think about the people who had died. Thinking about them made him second guess himself. What if he had acted differently? Made a different choice. Maybe they’d still be alive. Maybe Matlind or Hank would still be alive if Cameron had been a little wiser and not so overconfident.
    He wondered what Jack would’ve said. Or what he would’ve done.
    The price of youth was inexperience, and Cameron had plenty of inexperience and a lot to learn about the world. He knew that his wins so far were partly due to genetics and partly due to his mother’s training, but perhaps they were also because of luck—maybe more luck than genetics and training. The reality about luck, though, is that it always runs out.
    His father had taught him, whether he’d been present or not. And he had a lot