Read Jack and Joe: Hunt for Jack Reacher Series (The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series Book 6) for Free Online

overseas and Jack was with them, so Joe was on his own for a couple of years before Jack entered West Point.”
    “What was Joe like?”
    “Big. Tall. Wide. As a kid, I thought he was a giant. Studious, I guess you’d say. More than a little exacting sometimes.” He grinned and tore off a piece of bread to sop up the last of his chowder. “Joe didn’t have a middle name, but he joked that if he had, it would have been Joe Pedantic Reacher.”
    We both laughed at that. “That’s quite a concept for a kid to remember.”
    “I’ll never forget this.” Major Clifton nodded slowly, smiling still. “Joe was teaching me to play chess. I might have been oh, I don’t know, eight or so at the time. I played pretty well for an eight-year-old. But nowhere near as good as Joe. He wanted me to learn some complicated opening move and I just couldn’t get it. He wouldn’t give up, though. He said he taught Jack to play chess and he knew he could teach me, too. He played with me for hours that weekend. It was a lot of attention for a boy to get from one of his big brother’s buddies.”
    I filed away the chess player comment to consider later. Reacher as a chess master made sense. The Boss was playing an elaborate game with Reacher and I believed Reacher knew it and was making his own countermoves.
    Something in Clifton’s tone led me to ask, “Not altogether welcome attention from Joe, sounds like.”
    “At the time, I think I just wanted to play baseball with my friends.” He finished his meal and pushed his plate away. “In retrospect, I see how extraordinary it was for Joe to do that. There were probably other things he would rather have been doing, too.”
    “He sounds like a decent guy.”
    “He really was. I thought so then and I still do. There was a girl in our neighborhood that he liked. What was her name? Linda? Lauren? Lilly?” He closed his eyes a moment as if he might recall her name if he could visualize her. He shook his head. “Sorry. I can’t remember. But she was old man Browning’s girl. We called him ‘old man,’ but he was probably not more than forty-five at the time. Anyway, he didn’t like Joe at all.”
    “Why not?”
    He shrugged. “He wouldn’t have liked any boy trying to date his daughter. And she—well, she was just—I don’t know. Crazy, my brother said. Not a mental case, but—a piece of work. You know what I mean?”
    I nodded, thinking about my sister at that age. Certainly headstrong. Definitely crazy about boys. There for a while it seemed she might cause my dad to stroke out with her foolishness. “So what happened?”
    “Well, there was a long weekend break. Joe came home with Matt and she was there and—I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “I was a kid. But I guess they eloped or something.”
    “Eloped?” I hadn’t seen that one coming. “Joe Reacher and this girl got married?”
    “Yeah, I guess so. Though they kept it to themselves for a while. She came back home and Joe went back to school. Nobody seemed to notice.” He grinned again. “Old man Browning was off the charts when he found out a few weeks later. He came over with a baseball bat, threatening to beat Joe with it. Fortunately for all of us, Joe wasn’t there.”
    “What happened to the girl?”
    “I guess they must have divorced or maybe they never really got married. I don’t know. She came home, but Joe never did come back to our house after Matt told him about the baseball bat.” He drained his coffee mug and placed it on the table.
    I’d been so engrossed in Joe Reacher’s story that I hadn’t seen Sergeant Church approach. He startled me when he spoke. “M-M-Major Clifton? The Provost Marshall requests a 10-19 im-mm-mediately.”
    A 10-19 meant the Provost wanted Clifton to call him. Why couldn’t the Army speak the same English as the rest of the country?
    Clifton thanked him, and then as if he’d remembered something, asked, “Sergeant Church? Wasn’t your dad with the