Foreign and Domestic: A Get Reacher Novel Read Online Free Page B

from the locations.
    Without the knowledge of local law enforcement agents, they always made secret backup escape plans of their own. Breaking laws or pissing off the local officials wasn’t their concern—protecting the president at all costs was.
    Their second mission was to guard the locations and routes after they’d been analyzed. This was to ensure that the locations remained secure until after the president had come and gone.
    Being on the advanced operating team meant that Rowley needed to remain on site. He had to live in South Africa as long as the mission was ongoing. He and his team had to remain in place at all times.
    And when Nicole was still Nicole and not yet Raggie, she and her mother had to go and live in South Africa with her father. Not that this made much difference because even though the president didn’t visit the region that much, her father was always gone anyway. He was always too busy for her.
    While Raggie was in South Africa, she made friends with some local girls. A small, tight group of them. Immediately, she picked up on something about these girls that set them worlds apart from the girls back home. These girls weren’t really girls at all. Not the baking cookies and wearing dresses kind. These girls were fun, and they tore down the American conventions of girls.
    Nicole became good friends with them. Six weeks after the end of winter, they introduced her to something that would change her life forever. The girls were surfers.
    It started as an exercise in trying to fit in with them, but over the course of that first summer, Nicole spent every afternoon—with or without her new friends—on the beach learning how to surf.
    She loved it! Surfing was the thing that had been missing from her life.
    That first time she caught a wave without tipping over or crashing into the unforgiving surf was one of the best moments of her life. She’d wished that Claire could’ve been there to know that feeling. To feel the rush of the wind and the unpredictability of the surf.
    Even after her first injury from surfing, she’d longed to get back out into the waves. Before she understood how to ride a wave, she’d sprained her left knee trying to ride waves the wrong way. She had to stay out of the water for the rest of the summer, and it wasn’t until her thirteenth birthday that her mother had even let her return to the water.
    Nicole spent her time away from the ocean thinking about the water and researching the sport of surfing. She watched videos on the Internet on how to surf. She even found a guy with a series of YouTube video—or a YouTube channel, as it’s known—who was a former pro surfer. He had great videos teaching techniques and tricks for getting the most out of a surfboard. The guy didn’t have a lot of followers, but he had an account with patreon.com so that he could accept donations from people to finance his lessons. And Nicole used her mom’s credit card to donate money to him on a regular basis. She had never met the guy, but she learned a lot from his lessons.
    So when the first rays of warm weather hit the beach the following summer, she was ready to get back on the board. Nicole rejoined her friends and surfed every day. She even got good enough to look somewhat graceful. Her friends asked her how she’d gotten so good after her injury. And she replied, “How does anyone get good at anything these days? The Internet!”
    Chapter 5
    NICOLE WATCHED THE SURF from the shore. Her break was coming up. She knew it. She felt it in her bones. The wetsuit was form-fitting, but she didn’t have any form that would indicate she was a girl. She was thirteen years old and had a boy’s body—athletic arms, stringy legs, and a flat chest. She thought back to the girls back home in Virginia. She thought about Claire, who was at that very moment most likely praying she’d grow a pair of breasts and hoping for more curves to show off in a dress. She was probably trying to convince