Jude Hardin - The Reacher Code - Timestream 1

“Not yet,” McDaniels said. “But I’m thinking this would be the perfect time to start.”

23

Tubes.

They were the first things he noticed when he opened his eyes. There was a line delivering fluids to his forearm and a line delivering oxygen to his nostrils. He tried to sit up, but his wrists were strapped to the bed frame.

A man wearing a white lab coat stood by the door, thumbing a text into a cell phone.

“Where am I?” Wahlman asked.

The man looked up from the phone. Wahlman blinked him into focus. It was Ray McDaniels.

“You’re in the infirmary,” McDaniels said. “You were dehydrated.”

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“You were sending me out on a recon mission,” Wahlman said. “I was on the pedestal, ready to spin. That’s the last thing I remember.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“We might never know exactly what happened,” McDaniels said. “At least you made it back. That’s the important thing.”

Wahlman glanced down at the leather cuffs buckled around his wrists.

“Why the restraints?” he asked.

“You were combatiQve. You didn’t take your RTL meds before spinning back. We found the unopened packet in your wallet. We had to sedate you.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Four days.”

Wahlman tried to process that.

“What happened with Jack Reacher?” he asked.

“We put Stahler and Nilke on the mission. Unfortunately, neither one of them made it back to the lab.”

“They’re dead?”

“Nilke’s dead. We’re still not sure about Stahler. He’s either dead or stuck there in the timestream we sent him to.”

“Are you going to try to rescue him?” Wahlman asked.

“We’ve been trying to figure out a way,” McDaniels said. “But honestly, I’m not very hopeful that it can be done. The frequencies become dangerously unstable after fifty-seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds. And it just keeps getting worse from there. Trying to bring him back now would probably kill him, and it might kill the rescuer as well.”

“So you’re just going to leave him there?”

“What other choice do we have? Anyway, it’s a good reminder to always be conscious of the countdown. I can never stress that enough.”

Wahlman nodded.

“What about Reacher?” he said.

“He’s okay,” McDaniels said. “For now. But Topple’s already planning another attack in another timestream. We’ll probably need you to do some more recon in a couple of days. After you rest up some more.”

“I’m fine,” Wahlman said. “I just wish I could remember what happened.”

McDaniels walked over to the bed and unbuckled the restraints.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” Wahlman said.

“I’ll see about getting you something to eat.”

“Thanks.”

McDaniels exited the room.

Wahlman sat up on the side of the bed. He was wearing a hospital gown and nothing else. The muscles in his back and shoulders felt as though someone had gone at them with a hammer. He examined his wrists, expecting them to be red and sore. From the restraints. But they weren’t. Not at all. Which made him question whether or not he’d really been there in the infirmary for four days. Or even one day.

And something else had been bothering him. The nagging lump in the back of his throat. The one he always felt for a few hours after taking the larger tablet in the RTL packet. He’d never been very good at swallowing pills. Especially big ones. He hadn’t been good at it for as long as he could remember. Since he was a little kid. And the lump seemed even worse than usual this time. As if maybe he hadn’t had any water. As if maybe he’d swallowed the medication dry.

It was possible that McDaniels had lied about the length of time he’d been back, and about the reason for the restraints. But it was also possible that he was still experiencing some of the paranoia that supposedly went along with traveling into a different time period without the proper medications.

He sat there and tried to remember what had happened during the reconnaissance spin he’d been sent on. But he couldn’t. It was a total blank. He couldn’t remember one single thing about it.

So he decided to accept what McDaniels had told him as the truth.

For now, anyway.

The food came and he ate it and he tried to relax for a while but couldn’t. He kept thinking about Kasey and Natalie, longing for the day when he could be with them again.

It was the only reason he did any of this.

It was what he lived for.

Before his first recon mission, he’d been allowed to visit the timestream they’d been relocated to, but only for a few minutes. Maybe Victor would let him go back there, maybe sometime soon, maybe for a little longer this time.

He thought about that and smiled.

And then he drifted off to sleep.

Thanks so much for reading The Reacher Code: Timestream 1.

Before being recruited as Jack Reacher’s time-traveling bodyguard, Rock Wahlman got chased and shot at and beat some bad guys senseless in The Reacher Experimentseries of thrillers. Pulse-pounding action from the first page to the last!

Love Jack Reacher? If so, I think you’ll also love Nicholas Colt. “This is a character I’m eager to follow through many adventures to come,” says bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.

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Thanks again, and happy reading!

Jude

Copyright © 2019 by Jude Hardin

This book 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.

August 2019