Page 78 of Bulletproof Jack: Hunting Lee Child's Jack Reacher

Which was why he didn’t hear the approaching sirens until they were already blaring loudly in the driveway.

Before he had a chance to get up off the sofa, officers had stormed the house, pounding on the front door.

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Chapter 30

Saturday, June 4

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, CA

The three investigators had fallen into a cooperative conversation lubricated by similar professional objectives. Which is not to say they trusted each other. All three were operating in the old fashioned “trust but verify” phase.

In response to the question about Reacher’s motives, Chang shrugged. “Reacher’s up to his thick neck in this thing for only one reason. Because he wants to be. You must understand that much about what motivates him.”

“Copy that.” Kim grimaced, nodding. Reacher never did anything unless he felt like it. Nothing on earth could force him to act against his will. Many had tried. All had failed. Some paid for the effort with broken bodies and others, with their lives.

“I ran into Reacher five years ago. Met Westwood around the same time,” Chang said. “You know how life is. When you want someone to help with something, who do you call first? Folks you already know, right?”

“So Westwood called you because he already knows you. From five years ago. When you were involved with Reacher,” Russell repeated flatly, as if the facts had to be more complicated than Chang made them sound, and he didn’t believe she’d spilled the whole story.

He was probably right. On both points.

“Exactly.” Chang nodded again. “Westwood is...was…a guy who got contacted by a lot of cranks. They were always aggrieved. Angry. Offended. And a little crazy.”

“Why was he such a magnet for the unstable ranters?” Russell asked.

“Not because he was abon vivant, if that’s what you’re asking. It was his job. They wanted him to blow the whistle on someone or write an expose of some sort. They were sure theirs was the story of the century.” Chang shook her head. “They’d become rich and famous just for doing the right thing. You know the type.”

“I do. They break the law and cause untold harm because they’re so damned sure they know better than everybody else. Westwood encouraged and enticed these lawbreakers, I gather.” Russell’s tone was one thousand percent sarcasm. “Yeah, the world needs morejournalistslike that.”

“Have some respect. The man’s dead.” Chang snapped in response, glaring fiercely. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

Russell didn’t seem the least perturbed by her anger. He wasn’t the kind of guy to cower for any reason.

Chang stopped talking for a good long while.

Kim closed her lids to rest her eyes. It had been too long since she’d last slept. She didn’t have energy to devote to squabbles.

After a brief cooling off period, she inhaled deeply and prompted Chang in a reasonable tone. “So Lucas Stuart called Westwood. What did he want?”

“Said his brother, this hot shot genius scientist, had been working on a secret weapon for the DOD,” Chang reported in a huffy tone. “And now the brother was missing. And so was the weapon. The implication was that the DOD had something to do with the brother’s disappearance.”

When Chang mentioned the DOD the scope of the problem escalated instantly, mushrooming like she’d tossed a nuke into the desert. For once, Russell had no comeback. Heavy silence overwhelmed the room.

In Kim’s experience, there were no secrets anymore. The age of social media and the constant internet news cycle had pretty much eliminatedclandestinefrom the modern dictionary.

Weapons weren’t developed in stealth or shrouded in secrecy anymore. An active and inquisitive free press was just one reason. Leakers, whistleblowers, spies, and the like were only too anxious to share top secret details.

Social media made disseminating all sorts of secrets as simple as sharing recipes and cat videos. Any fool with a phone and an internet connection could say whatever the hell they felt like saying, true or not.

Long gone were the days when a nuclear bomb could be paid for, developed, and deployed without the knowledge of the public.

Not much stayed under wraps outside the spotlight’s glare nowadays.

At least, that was the fiction deployed by governments around the world.

The idea that the DOD could be developing weapons in secret was the stuff of great fiction. But in the real world, intel about new and powerful weapons was a powerful deterrent usually deployed by governments as an effective threat to their opposition.

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