Diane Capri - Jack and Kill

Gaspar replied. “No woman should pick up any hitchhiker, Sunshine. Not even you. And I don’t care how good a marksman you are.”

Kim didn’t bother to defend against his challenge because she agreed with him on principle. But if Jillian had followed her first instincts and simply kept going, she’d be dead now. Maybe she’d known that. Maybe she knew that violence is a process, not an event.

After the Prius passed, Reacher turned to face westward again and resumed trudging, his head down against the frigid wind once more.

Less than five minutes later, he must’ve heard the puny engine’s unmistakable whine again. He glanced up and saw the same driver behind the wheel. Maybe he wondered why she’d changed her mind. What did he think? Probably some misguided act of Christian charity or something?

The car passed him again, made a U-turn, returned and pulled up alongside. Jillian lowered the passenger side window and he bent over to speak to her. It was then he would have seen Brook belted into a booster seat on the passenger side. Young Brook’s head was barely as high as the window’s edge.

“What’s going through his head now?” Kim asked, as if she was talking to herself.

“He’s thinking she’s either very brave or very foolish,” Gaspar said. “What’s she thinking?”

“Maybe she figured the boy would provide a level of security. She couldn’t possibly have known whether he would hurt her or the boy, right? Was she stupid? Crazy? Both?”

Gaspar shrugged. “To him, her motives didn’t matter. Hers was the only car he’d seen in the past hour and he was cold and tired and hungry. The only thing that mattered to him at the moment was getting somewhere to bunk in for the night rather than sleeping outside in the snow.”

The boy grinned. His eyelids seemed heavy. A bit of drool dampened the side of his smile. Blue eyes widened when Reacher doubled over to stick his head in the window.

The boy said something. Reacher smiled at him, tried to look less menacing. No success.

Jillian shouted from the driver seat against the wind rushing in around him through the open window. Maybe she asked where he was going or maybe she just suggested he hop in. Impossible to tell from the silent video.

He said something. Pointed toward the town twelve miles ahead. He waited and she watched him a couple of moments, trying to decide, probably. Maybe he was mildly curious about her next move. If a normal man had had any reasonable option, he might have allowed her to keep driving, collecting nothing but a story to tell her girlfriends about the hulking, menacing hitchhiker who’d flagged her down on the way into town.

He reached back and opened the passenger door quickly, maybe worried she’d come to her senses and speed away. He folded himself into the back seat awkwardly; his bulk barely allowed him to close the door.

The boy tried to turn around and look at him, but the seatbelt held him firmly in the federally certified and approved safety restraint system. Kim was glad the restraints worked because he should have been in the back seat. Brook wiggled a little bit before he gave up and asked his questions without eye contact.

Kim could see the child’s lips moving, but she couldn’t hear his words. “What did he ask about, do you know?”

Gaspar grinned. “He told me the whole thing, blow by blow. He wanted to know if Mr. Giant had a beanstalk they could climb. But it was a short conversation. Long on questions from young Brook and short on answers from the giant.”

Jillian reached over and ruffled the boy’s curls in a gesture as old as motherhood itself. She maybe asked him to be quiet and play with his toys. He seemed to do that and Kim saw no signs of unhappiness from either the woman or the boy. Had Reacher assumed Jillian was Brook’s mother? A reasonable, if incorrect, assumption.

Jillian glanced into her rearview mirror to meet his gaze and spoke to him. Whatever he replied satisfied her because she turned her attention back to driving and soon had the car moving steadily westward again.

“What did she say to him?” Kim asked.

Duffy said, “I don’t know. Maybe she’ll be able to tell us when we have a chance to question her.”

Reacher closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest.

Apparently, he wasn’t in the mood for conversation. After a few contortions, he slouched further down onto the backseat.

“Is he sleeping?” Kim asked aloud.

“I would be,” Gaspar replied.

Twenty-one minutes later the car had stopped at the intersection of Valley View and Grand Parkway, waiting for the traffic signal. The boy must have dropped something; Jillian seemed to be searching on the floor or maybe between the seats.

The traffic light changed to green, allowing westbound traffic to proceed. But the little car didn’t move immediately.

Gaspar said, “This would have been the point where witnesses reported the first long horn blast from the F-150 immediately behind her car. Another long one, then two shorter blasts followed, Brady said.”

“We’ve got spotty sound from here on out,” Duffy said. She reached over to turn up the volume.

On the video, Jillian stopped searching for the toy and sat up abruptly. She slid the transmission into gear. Kim could see her lips moving as she spoke silently. Maybe she said, “Okay okay okay. Keep your shirt on. We’re going.” Or something like that.

Jillian pulled the vehicle through the intersection making a right turn and curving narrowly moving into the far right lane, allowing the angry truck driver plenty of room to pass. Kim heard his revved engine amid traffic sounds from other cars in the intersection. Jillian’s Prius floated side to side in the truck’s wash as it sped past.

And that should have been the end of it. In a more civilized age, it would have been. But not this day. Because whether Jillian knew it or not, violence is still a process, not an event, and the day wasn’t finished yet.

Instead, Jillian continued her steady stream of nervous chatter, but whatever she said inside the car was inaudible through the available surveillance microphones and the image wasn’t the right angle for lip reading.

But the horns, the lost toy, Jillian’s agitation, and probably a hundred other things altogether flipped a switch of some sort and the boy began to squall while still safely belted into his car seat.

Jillian glanced over, maybe to comfort the child. In the split second she was distracted, she didn’t see the F-150 stop abruptly in front of her and the Prius slammed into what must have felt like hitting a brick building.

From the back seat, her passenger had no warning and no opportunity to brace himself. The impact threw him onto the floor in a jumble of boots and knees and elbows. Maybe his head took a resounding whack against the padded front seat.

Brook cried harder and Jillian panicked, yelling now, probably near hysteria, which fed the boy’s squalling and the cacophony inside the car must have reached decibels assaulting all ears.

The truck driver moved swiftly from inside the F-150’s cab to standing beside the Prius holding his shotgun by the barrel like a club or a baseball bat.

Kim and Gaspar watched Reacher struggle to extricate himself from his tortured position in the foot well. When the truck driver smashed Jillian’s window, Reacher must have heard the sound of breaking glass and felt the rush of cold air into the cabin.

Jillian screamed and the boy continued screeching and while Reacher was still struggling to get up off the floor. The truck driver’s angry tenor shouted, “What the hell is wrong with you, bitch?”

That was the point where the truck driver opened Jillian’s door and hauled her out and threw her hard against the car.