Diane Capri - Jack and Kill

Gaspar asked a paramedic to remove the cover.

When they lifted the blanket, Kim required only the briefest glance to settle her questions. She glanced at Gaspar. He nodded.

His face was a mess. His nose was pulped and his cheekbones smashed. Hair was fair and long, hung over his ears and below his collar. He had the thick neck and heavy shoulders of a bodybuilder. His thighs bulged inside indigo jeans. He wore heavy work boots on his feet. The shotgun remained clutched in his right hand. Dead eyes stared at nothing. His forehead was red and swollen and might yet bruise, even though his heart had finally ceased pumping not long after he cracked his skull open on the pavement’s edge. Bad luck, falling just there, where frost had heaved the pavement to a sharp edge harder than the guy’s head.

No doubt he seemed like a giant to the boy. He was about 6’2” tall, maybe 220 pounds. The man really was huge. But not big enough to be Jack Reacher.

While she dealt with the adults, Gaspar approached the remaining eye-witness. Kim pulled out her smart phone and snapped a few photos before she asked the paramedics to replace the blanket. She noticed the deepening dusk and glanced at her Seiko to check the time. Soon, the official FBI team would arrive. She hoped they were bringing sufficient lighting. In another thirty minutes, they’d be working with only insufficient ambient light to process the scene.

She turned her attention next to the woman. Jill Hill. The name sounded silly enough to be real, but Kim figured it was more likely made up on the spur of the moment when someone asked and Jill wasn’t prepared with a better lie. Because she had the phone out already, she snapped a few pictures of Ms. Hill, too.

Ms. Hill shivered under the blanket the paramedic had wrapped around her. Her blonde hair was matted with blood, probably from a scalp laceration. Scalp wounds bled like faucets. An effort had been made to wipe the blood from her battered, swollen face, but her broken nose was going to require surgery. Maybe her cheekbones were broken, too. It was hard to say given the lighting conditions. When she watched Kim, her pupils were uneven and nonreactive.

Kim was no doctor, but like all FBI agents she’d had extensive emergency first aid training. And what she saw alarmed her. She waved Chief Brady over and reported quietly, “She needs to be transported now.”

Brady said, “We didn’t think she was emergent. We were waiting for FBI to make the call.”

Instead of asking why again, Kim said, “Now’s the time.” She understood the protocols for concurrent FBI jurisdiction. But if Jill Hill died for killing this man, Kim wanted that to be a decision made by the justice system and not the result when law enforcement failed to provide treatment.

Gaspar had crouched low, eye-to-eye with the boy, engaged in lively conversation. He was an adorable child who looked maybe a little familiar. Blonde curls, dancing blue eyes, sweetly cherubic cheeks, and a bubbly smile accentuated by a heart-shaped full mouth. Kim noticed only one odd note: Whatever happened here seemed not to have troubled him overmuch.

Kim tapped Gaspar on the shoulder. He looked up and she tilted her head toward the Crown Vic. He nodded agreement. They’d been here too long. The unmistakable whap-whap-whap of a helicopter, no doubt bringing the FBI agents actually assigned to the case, grew louder. If they hurried, they could be gone before the official team disembarked.

The boy glanced at Kim and popped up wearing a drooling grin. “I’m Brook! You’re tall as me!” he said, clearly delighted to find at least one adult occupying space near his vertical dimension.

Kim felt her back stiffen, raised to her full 4’11” height and straightened her shoulders before she teased, “In your dreams, Bucko!”

He giggled as if this was the funniest thing any adult had said to him today. Which, sadly, it might have been. He offered her a high five. She slapped palms with him, somewhat chagrined to realize that his hand was not so much smaller than hers.

Gaspar had struggled out of his crouch. “We’ve gotta go, buddy. I had fun talking to you.”

Young Brook shook hands solemnly with each of them. Then he giggled his glorious laugh and waved while in a singsong voice he said, “Ta-ta! See you in the funny pages!”

“You bet,” Kim replied. Where have I heard that phrase delivered just like that before?

They hastened toward the Crown Vic, not only because of the cold, but because the whapping chopper blades had stopped.

Chief Brady stepped into their path before they reached the Crown Vic. “We sent a couple of cars to collect your team. They should be here shortly. We’ll let you get right to it. Meet up later in my office?”

“That works,” Kim said. “But you never told me why you called the FBI in the first place.”

Briefly, Brady’s brows joined over the bridge of his nose in puzzlement before enlightenment struck. “Why did we know about the kidnapping, you mean?”

Kidnapping?

“We recognized the kid from the classified BOLO.” Brady chuckled like a proud papa. “He looks exactly like his grandfather, don’t you think? What a charmer. This kid is likely to be president instead of vice president when he grows up, huh? He’s already got the wave and the farewell line down pat.”

Kim felt about two beats behind while she made the connection. Of course, the boy was former Vice President Brook Armstrong’s grandson. That’s why his farewell words seemed so familiar. Otto and Gaspar had been living so far under the radar, they didn’t even know about the kidnapping. Agencies would have been advised officially, but a media blackout would have been imposed until sometime later as a matter of national security. Kids of politicians were protected from the bright world spotlight. But FBI agents would have known.

Gaspar must have been similarly behind the curve because he didn’t immediately jump in, either. Half a moment later, they completely lost their opportunity to leave undetected.

Chief Brady’s gaze moved and fixed at a point beyond. “Here’s your team now,” he said.

Otto and Gaspar heard the lead agent speak behind them as she approached and moved into their line of sight. “Susan Duffy. Chief Brady?”

Brady nodded and shook hands and delivered a succinct summary, “Agent Otto here has already sent one injured woman to the hospital. One dead. And the boy is with one of my officers.”

Perhaps Duffy decided to be discreet for the moment. She said, “Otto and Gaspar can catch me up, Chief. My team will come with you to the crash site. There’s another chopper and team on the way to collect the child. I’ll be right there.”

When Brady and the other agents moved out of earshot, Duffy’s congeniality disappeared. Her tone was as cold as the frigid wind. “Why are you here?”

Kim might have attempted conciliation if she hadn’t felt like a complete fool. She hated being ignorant of a major alert for the entire national security team. And Duffy knew too much about Otto and Gaspar already. Belligerence was called for. “Same reason you are. Reacher. Where is he?”

Duffy didn’t flinch. “You’re confused, Agent Otto. Building the Reacher file is your assignment, not mine.”

Gaspar intervened. “You can do better than that. Maybe this kidnapping isn’t our case, but it’s not yours either, is it? You didn’t tell Grady you’re BATF, so he wasn’t expecting you. Which means Reacher must have called you and that’s why you’re here. What are you worried about?”

Duffy seemed to consider things for a moment or two longer than necessary. Probably running the possible scenarios through her mind, deciding how much to reveal, what to conceal. Kim recognized the signs.