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

her mom to take her to Bebe or GAP or some department store and buy her some clothes that weren’t really appropriate for a girl who was barely a teenager. But that was how Nicole imagined the girls back home to be.
    Right now, all she cared about was the surf. All she concentrated on was trying out the new trick that she’d been working on. She’d watched the advanced videos, and she’d practiced the jump every day during sunup. She practiced while the other girls were still asleep.
    She wasn’t the only surfer around at sunup. In fact, most of the really dedicated surfers were at the beach by dawn. If midnight was the witching hour, then sunrise was the surfing hour.
    Today was a weekday, and she had come early at dawn and practiced the jump, but she hadn’t done it in front of any of her friends yet. And they were there now. Three other girls stood in a circle behind her on the beach. Their surfboards were laid out on the sand like seals lying in the sun.
    The tallest girl was Nicole’s closest friend out of the bunch. Her name was Saffron.
    Saffron was fifteen and already had a sleeve tattoo—all tribal. And even though Saffron was her best friend, she was also the best surfer out of all of them. This was the reason Nicole had kept her new trick a secret from them. She wanted to impress Saffron. She wanted her to see her perform a jump that not even Saffron could do.
    The trick was a high jump with the surfboard over a wave. It wasn’t anything special in the eyes of true-blooded surfers, but for a thirteen-year-old girl who’d had a knee injury several months before, it was pretty impressive.
    Nicole watched for the perfect break. She’d been on the beach since sunrise, and now the sun was nearing sunset—not quite ready to set, but not far away. She didn’t have much light left to show her new skill.
    The beach had been crowded, but not many people had been out in the surf because of the warning flag. There was a small crew of lifeguards on duty, and one of them had spotted dark shadows about a hundred yards down the beach. The shadows were probably from a school of fish or a group of sea turtles—it could’ve been anything really—but the beach wasn’t far from a place known for the likelihood of spotting Carcharodon carcharias. Which is the scientific name for the Great White shark. So whenever there was the tiniest possibility that one had been spotted, the lifeguards threw up a red flag. Which meant danger. Which usually meant shark. And today, for the last hour, they’d had the red flag up.
    Nicole watched out over the sea and saw her waves coming and crashing down. The perfect chance. No one else was on the water, nothing between her and her chance to show off her new jump.
    She ignored the flag and went out onto the water.
    Chapter 6
    NICOLE PADDLED OUT PAST the first crashing waves and the shallowest parts of the beach. She felt the waves underneath the board. She cleared her mind and paddled forward. First she passed the three-foot depth and then five and then seven, and she kept going. She felt no fear. She’d practiced and practiced the jump and was ready to do it in front of her friends.
    She passed the ten-foot depth and then the twelve and the fifteen.
    The ocean wasn’t too brutal, but the surf was much higher than normal. Of course, she was getting further out so that she could ride in longer and then take a deep breath and find the right wave to jump from. She paddled, feeling her arms strain. Her elbows bent, fighting the current. The water splashed her face. Her eyes blinked involuntarily every time, and she forced them back open and stared ahead.
    She got to a comfortable place and stopped paddling. The waves splashed in over her, and she held her breath and held onto her board with each pass. She came out of the other side and was ready for her wave. It barreled toward her. She grabbed the board, turned back to the shore, and paddled. Her hands pounded into the water and her feet