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Karin Slaughter, Lee Child

Cleaning the gold 

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Karin Slaughter and Lee Child 2019

Excerpt from The Last Widow © Karin Slaughter 2019

Will Trent is a trademark of Karin Slaughter Publishing LLC.

Lyrics from:

“Africa” by David F. Paich and Jeffrey T. Porcaro

“I'm on Fire” by Bruce Springsteen

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Karin Slaughter and Lee Child assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008358938

Ebook Edition © May 2019 ISBN: 9780008358945

Version: 2019-04-30

Dear Readers

We're so thrilled to finally be able to share a short story with you that has been several years in the making!

We've been friends for nearly two decades now - and also fans of each other's writing. Over the years, our conversations have often turned to the topic of what our series characters, Jack Reacher and Will Trent, would do if they met in real life.

Would Will arrest Reacher for taking out some vigilante justice on a bad guy? Would Reacher break Will's face or throw him down a well? The challenge was finding a way for them to work together. Both men have strong moral compasses, but they each reach true north in very different ways. Finding a case that would bring them into each other's orbit was a very long conversation that finally resulted in a plot that we were both excited to work out on the page.

The result is Cleaning the Gold. We started off writing our own chapters separately but as the stories became intertwined things merged, so you won't necessarily know who wrote what - and we really hope you enjoy it. No matter what, we think Jack and Will had a pretty good time navigating the beginning of a beautiful friendship ...

Best wishes,

Karin Slaughter and Lee Child

1

Will Trent sat across from a closed office door listening to mumbled voices discussing the two DUIs and spotty work history on his employment application. The conversation did not seem to be going in his favor. Not good. Will needed this job. Otherwise his real job was screwed.