Карин Слотер - Cleaning the Gold

“The GBI system, right? Proudly local. Right now we're in Kentucky.”

“Someone made a match.”

Reacher nodded.

“Now I'm wondering who,” he said. “I'm thinking maybe a kid in a suit. From where the true power is. Which might not be the three-letter agencies anymore. These days it might be the congressional staffs. With seats on all kinds of intelligence subcommittees. Maybe there's a congressman from Georgia. The local half of his brain wants to see the GBI do well, so he lends a helping hand, with information out of the federal half of his brain.”

“Which begs a huge question,” Will said.

“Exactly. Why send you here in person? A Kentucky SWAT team could have done the job. I could have been extradited. What's another couple months? Your case is already twenty-two years old. Or the MPs could have got me. Why is your actual presence necessary, doing this dumb job as cover?”

Will didn't answer, but he was beginning to think he knew.

“Exactly,” Reacher said again. “Because you're good with numbers. Maybe you try to hide it, but you can't. They know. Same with me. They didn't write their program to look for a strong guy. They looked for a guy good with numbers.”

Will was quiet a long moment. Then he said, “Did you know that the vault has only been opened to the public one time?”

“1974,” Reacher said. “As a matter of fact, the kid in the suit talked about it. A DC attorney named Peter David Beter circulated the theory that the gold had been removed by the Deep State.”

“Right, the Deep State. Those guys really get around.”

“Do the math,” Reacher said. “There's $350 billion worth of precious metals stored here, but the national debt is over twenty trillion. That's already less than two cents on the dollar.” Reacher stacked his bars. “This gold is just a symbol. Apparently good enough of a symbol right now. Based on folk memories of 1974. But if people thought even half of these vaults had been emptied out since then, the entire US economy—the world economy—would go into free fall. There'd be rioting in the streets. The banks would fail.”

Will passed Reacher on his way to the pallet. They were back on the timing belt. “What I'd do is set up a domino effect.”

Reacher caught his meaning. “Night crew moves the gold two doors down. Then we move it two doors down the next day. Same gold. Double-blind. Neither crew knows the other crew is doing it.”

Will stood up from the pallet. His kidney screamed around an elbow-sized bruise. Sweat formed a river down his back. They had at least another six hours to go.

He said, “We were sent here to find out.”

“I agree,” Reacher said. “An obscure congressman from Georgia went to a lot of trouble to bring us here, so we would ... know, I guess ... that the nation's gold reserves are terminally depleted, and that fact is being actively hidden by a game of three-card monte. I guess for some reason the guy wants at least one person out there in the world, with that knowledge.”

“Two people.”

“Only one of us was supposed to survive. Either you would bust me, or I would kill you and escape. He didn't care which, by the way. He was hedging his bets.”

“Plus Lukather,” Will said. “She must know. She was in charge. Probably she gamed out the way the dominos have to fall so no one person can put together the truth. That's how she's getting her deal. She's trading her silence for her freedom.”

“I guess,” Reacher said. “So now there are three of us who know.”

“The question is why?” Will said. “I mean, okay, we're out there in the world, with the knowledge. So what? What are we supposed to do with it?”

Neither one of them knew.

Karin Slaughter is one of the world's most popular and acclaimed storytellers. Published in 120 countries with more than 35 million copies sold across the globe, her 19 novels include the Grant County and Will Trent books, as well as the Edgar-nominated Cop Town and the instant Sunday Times bestselling novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter and Pieces of Her. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, Karin Slaughter lives in Atlanta. Her standalone novels Pieces of Her , The Good Daughter and Cop Town are in development for film and television.

www.KarinSlaughter.com

Lee Child is one of the world's leading thriller writers. He was born in Coventry, raised in Birmingham, and now lives in New York. It is said one of his novels featuring his hero Jack Reacher is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds. His books consistently achieve the number-one slot on bestseller lists around the world, and have sold over one hundred million copies. Two blockbusting Jack Reacher movies have been made so far.

www.LeeChild.com