Карин Слотер: Cleaning the Gold

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Karin Slaughter and Lee Child 2019

Excerpt from The Last Widow © Karin Slaughter 2019

Will Trent is a trademark of Karin Slaughter Publishing LLC.

Lyrics from:

“Africa” by David F. Paich and Jeffrey T. Porcaro

“I'm on Fire” by Bruce Springsteen

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Luke SharrettlGetty Images (background image of Fort Knox),Shutterstock.com (all other images)

Karin Slaughter and Lee Child assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008358938

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008358945

Version: 2019-04-30

We're so thrilled to finally be able to share a short story with you that has been several years in the making!

We've been friends for nearly two decades now - and also fans of each other's writing. Over the years, our conversations have often turned to the topic of what our series characters, Jack Reacher and Will Trent, would do if they met in real life. Would Will arrest Reacher for taking out some vigilante justice on a bad guy? Would Reacher break Will's face or throw him down a well? The challenge was finding a way for them to work together. Both men have strong moral compasses, but they each reach true north in very different ways. Finding a case that would bring them into each other's orbit was a very long conversation that finally resulted in a plot that we were both excited to work out on the page.

The result is Cleaning the Gold. We started off writing our own chapters separately but as the stories became intertwined things merged, so you won't necessarily know who wrote what - and we really hope you enjoy it. No matter what, we think Jack and Will had a pretty good time navigating the beginning of a beautiful friendship ...

Best wishes,

Karin Slaughter and Lee Child

Will Trent sat across from a closed office door listening to mumbled voices discussing the two DUIs and spotty work history on his employment application. The conversation did not seem to be going in his favor. Not good. Will needed this job. Otherwise his real job was screwed.

He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. The temperature outside had already passed the boiling point. Inside was not much better. His sweat had started to sweat in the dank, 1950s tomb of a government building. The low ceiling sagged even lower. The drywall was swollen from humidity. He watched a bead of perspiration drop from his nose and roll across the floor. A gutter ran down the middle of the linoleum from decades of Army boots trotting up and down the hallway.

Will shifted in the chair. His vertebrae had transformed into zip ties strangling his spinal column. The muscles in his legs were congealing. His body ached for two reasons. The first was from the send-off his girlfriend had given him the night before. And this morning at the aptly named park and ride. The second was because he'd spent the entire one-hour flight from Atlanta to Lexington with his knees punching into the seat in front of him, jammed between a toddler screaming at a paperclip and a flatulent senior citizen.

Only one of those reasons was worth the ache.

From behind the door, a voice bellowed, “I don't give a good God damn what you think, Dave.”

Colonel Stephanie Lukather, the woman in charge of the United States Bullion Depository. An important command, but what did Will know? Most of his knowledge of the federal government's gold reserves came courtesy of Wikipedia and Goldfinger .

The facility was adjacent to the Fort Knox Army base, located at the intersection of Bullion Boulevard and Gold Vault Road. The main door was twenty tons of drill and torch-resistant material measuring twenty-one inches thick. Around $350 billion in precious metals was stored inside. The US Mint Police guarded the facility and the US Army guarded them. The vault had been opened for public inspection just once, in September of 1974. Previously, in 1964, Pussy Galore had knocked out the entire base with her Flying Circus and a dirty bomb inside the vault had been disarmed with 0.07 seconds to spare.

The door finally swung open.

Major Dave Baldani gave Will a smirky look.

Will knew that look. It was the way a good guy put a bad guy in his place. He used it a lot in his day job as a special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But Will wasn't at Fort Knox as a cop. He was working undercover as an ex-Army captain who'd fallen down the rabbit hole of stupid decisions after two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

His ID was air-tight unless you could crack the Pentagon's database. Jack Phineas Wolfe, honorably discharged in 2016. Two DUIs. Community service. Probation. Divorced. No kids. Overdrawn at the bank. Maxed out on his credit cards. Evicted from his last known place of residence. Car repo'd by the bank. Searching for honest work, or as close to honest as he could get.

“Hurry, boys.” Colonel Lukather was early fifties, lean and trim with her long blonde hair pinned up in a military style. She gave an impatient roll of her hand. “I'm waiting for you.”

Will had to duck his head to stand. The drop-ceiling was eighteen inches lower than it should've been. The dark paneled walls had buckled with age. Locked filing cabinets lined one side of the room. The colonel's regulation metal desk was shoved against the other side. There were no windows. The air didn't move. He could've been standing inside of a coffin.

Colonel Lukather pointed up at the low ceiling, explaining, “Brig Gen upstairs wanted a shower in his office. Shit rolls downhill. I don't need a skylight, Wolfe. Sit.”

Will took one of the chairs across from her. Baldani remained standing about two inches from Will's shoulder—another good guy/bad guy trick.

Lukather said, “Wolfe, you've been in some trouble since you FTA'd.”

Will didn't hear a question, so he didn't give an answer.

Lukather rested her hand on his file, waiting for the ensuing silence to wear him down.

Will didn't wear.

The clock on the wall gave a sharp tock.

Baldani let out a long, smoker's wheeze of a sigh.

“Dave, looks like we've got ourselves a genuine Captain Jack here.” Lukather opened the file and pretended to read the information for the first time. “Stationed in BFE. Fifth in your class at John Wayne School. Stacked up your chest candy in the Sandbox. Earned your Triple Threat. Quite the gung-ho mo-fo. You certainly win the big dick contest in the room.”