Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel by Scott Blade

even though the place was so packed full of people it was dangerously close to being a fire code violation. He figured he could at least nudge his way through the people to stand in a corner and dry off. Maybe he could take his place in the long bathroom line and pretend. But before he even made it past the foyer, a guy in a yellow shirt and yellow tie and a shiny, gold nameplate that read “Jordan” asked him to leave.
    Jordan had pushed his way through the crowd quickly and with little regard for manners. He approached Cameron like a pit bull on steroids. The guy had no qualms about Cameron’s size or scary looks. He told Cameron that the place was at capacity—emphasizing the word capacity —and they didn’t cater to the homeless.
    Cameron could’ve argued that he wasn’t homeless, but the truth was that he was —technically. But that wasn’t what the guy had meant. He had meant no beggars. No undesirables. And Cameron was as about as undesirable to a business as a mosquito was to a blood bank.
    One of Cameron’s most recent and discouraging discoveries was that there were quite a few places that lawfully broke the first amendment on a regular basis—in principle that is, and in Cameron’s humble opinion. The first amendment guaranteed the right to free assembly. The idea of municipalities being able to thwart undesirables through legal means seemed to counter the first amendment in Cameron’s mind. But they did, especially in southwestern towns. Cameron had discovered that southwestern towns had a larger homeless population than other places. At least, that was how it appeared. He figured the reason was because the homeless migrated west. And he figured the reason for this migration was due to two factors.
    The first was that weather in the southwest stayed warm most of the year, especially in the deep southwest. Take San Diego, for example. The weather there never seemed to change. They had early summers and temperatures that remained in the late sixties in the winter, and that was about as cold as it got. Not always the case, Cameron was sure, but it was for the most part.
    The second reason he figured homeless people moved southwest was because of the desert landscape. Desert climates meant little rainfall. A homeless person by definition is someone with no home. No dwelling. No roof over his head. It was easier to sleep outside when you didn’t have to worry all the time about rain and waking up with pneumonia and so on.
    But none of these reasons applied to Seattle. It wasn’t a desert location, and it certainly wasn’t a place lacking rain. But who the hell was Cameron going to argue these points with?
    Not Jordan. And certainly not with any law enforcement officials Jordan would’ve called if he did argue. He didn’t want trouble, and Jordan looked like the kind of dog who was all bark and no bite, which meant he’d call the cops to do his biting for him. It wouldn’t have surprised Cameron if Jordan had one of those chains around his neck with a police call button centered in the center of a plastic medallion. All he’d have to do was to squeeze it, and the cops would come running.
    Cameron had been in the same clothes for two days—a drab green, long-sleeved cotton shirt and brown cargo pants. He had picked up the outfit in west Los Angeles and had worn it for so long because he liked it. It had been cleaned once.
    He had washed his clothes at a good-looking older woman’s house that morning.
    ON THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY, he had only been picked up once by a lonely driver. It was near, but not too near, the city of San Jose. Cameron had met an older woman named Karen, driving a well-kept green 2000 Jeep Cherokee. She had been peculiar at first, sort of standoffish but friendly. She wasn’t an older woman in the sense that she was old. She was older in the sense that she was older than Cameron. Then again, many women in the world were older than Cameron. He was in the middle medium of the