Second Son Read Online Free PDF

heavy and stiff, sheathed in gray plastic. The spool had a wire cutter attached to it by a short chain.
    Reacher left it on the hallway floor and headed back to the kitchen. He asked, “Why do we need electric cable?”
    “We don’t,” his father said. “I ordered boots.”
    “Well, you didn’t get them. You got a spool of wire.”
    His father blew a sigh of frustration. “Then someone made a mistake, didn’t they?”
    Joe said nothing, which was very unusual. Normally in that kind of a situation he would immediately launch a series of speculative analyses, asking about the nature and format of the order codes, pointing out that numbers can be easily transposed, thinking out loud about how QWERTY keyboards put alphabetically remote letters side by side, and therefore how clumsy typists are always a quarter-inch away from an inadvertent jump from, say, footwear to hardware. He had that kind of a brain. Everything needed an explanation. But he said nothing. He just sat there, completely mute.
    “What’s up?” Reacher said again, in the silence.
    “Nothing for you to worry about,” his father said.
    “It will be unless you two lighten up. Which I guess you’re not going to anytime soon, judging by the look of you.”
    “I lost a code book,” his father said.
    “A code book for what?”
    “For an operation I might have to lead.”
    “China?”
    “How did you know that?”
    “Where else is left?”
    “It’s theoretical right now,” his father said. “Just an option. But there are plans, of course. And it will be very embarrassing if they leak. We’re supposed to be getting along with China now.”
    “Is there enough in the code book to make sense to anyone?”
    “Easily. Real names plus code equivalents for two separate cities, plus squads and divisions. A smart analyst could piece together where we’re going, what we’re going to do, and how many of us are coming.”
    “How big of a book is it?”
    “It’s a regular three-ring binder.”
    “Who had it last?” Reacher asked.
    “Some planner,” his father said. “But it’s my responsibility.”
    “When did you know it was lost?”
    “Last night. The call this morning was a negative result for the search I ordered.”
    “Not good,” Reacher said. “But why is Joe involved?”
    “He isn’t. That’s a separate issue. That was the other call this morning. Another three-ring binder, unbelievably. The test answers are missing. Up at the school. And Joe went there yesterday.”
    “I didn’t even see the answer book,” Joe said. “I certainly didn’t take it away with me.”
    Reacher asked, “So what exactly did you do up there?”
    “Nothing, in the end. I got as far as the principal’s office and I told the secretary I wanted to talk to the guy about the test. Then I thought better of it and left.”
    “Where was the answer book?”
    “On the principal’s desk, apparently. But I never got that far.”
    “You were gone a long time.”
    “I took a walk.”
    “Around the school?”
    “Partly. And other places.”
    “Were you in the building across the lunch hour?”
    Joe nodded.
    “And that’s the problem,” he said. “That’s when they think I took it.”
    “What’s going to happen?”
    “It’s an honor violation, obviously. I could be excluded for a semester. Maybe the whole year. And then they’ll hold me back a grade, which will be two grades by then. You and I could end up in the same class.”
    “You could do my homework,” Reacher said.
    “This is not funny.”
    “Don’t worry about it. We’ll have moved on by the end of the semester anyway.”
    “Maybe not,” their father said. “Not if I’m in the brig or busted back to private and painting curbstones for the rest of my career. We all could be stuck on Okinawa forever.”
    And at that point the phone rang again. Their father answered. It was their mother on the line, from Paris, France. Their father forced a bright tone into his voice, and he talked