Diane Capri - Jack and Kill

Jack and Kill is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Otto’s mood matched the bleak November landscape. They’d traveled the county road for eighteen miles under smothering gray skies, which allowed plenty of time for brooding. Thin snow covered the empty fields like a dirty blanket. Perhaps a riot of color had dressed the hardwoods before Halloween, but now only a few dead leaves dangled from dried stems beneath spindly branches. Even the vehicle in which they traveled was dull inside and out.

She felt captured in a monochrome movie. Yet, she welcomed the dreary weather because while the low, dense cloud ceiling interfered with the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle surveillance drones, she enjoyed a thin slice of breathing room.

Not the atmospheric gloom, then, but her quarry was responsible for her personal brain cloud. He was toying with her, which was okay. But he was winning the game, which wasn’t.

“Tell me again why you think we’ll find Reacher in New Hope,” she said.

FBI Special Agent Kim Louisa Otto didn’t mind matching wits with Jack (none) Reacher at the right time and place. Actually, she hoped this assignment grew in that direction.

Meanwhile, a better profile of Reacher slowly developed in her mind the way an old fashioned photographic image revealed itself when blank paper was submerged in the proper fluids. She was better at strategic games than he was; Reacher’s military file confirmed. But preparation was key. She needed to gather sufficient data to devise and implement a decent strategic plan before their joust. In short, she needed more time.

Meaning today was most definitely not the right day. Nor was New Hope, Virginia, the right place. Which was why, despite the perfect weather for a confrontation that might escape sophisticated surveillance, she wasn’t all that happy right at the moment. She didn’t expect to get any happier as the day wore on, either. She expected the opposite.

Behind the wheel of the full-sized sedan he’d selected at the rental counter in DC, Gaspar sprawled deliberately. His right leg was fully extended to reduce the pain that often hobbled him. Otto had stopped counting how many Tylenols he’d swallowed already, although she worried about his liver. One of many tacit agreements they’d fallen into during their brief but intense partnership. As if not asking meant not knowing, and not knowing meant not happening.

He glanced toward her and frowned, but his tone was quiet, perhaps annoyed. “I didn’t say we’d find him, Sunshine. We’re building a file, not conducting a manhunt. I said he was there yesterday . Big difference.”

She could tell Gaspar wanted to find Reacher today, though. “Do I want to know how you acquired that intel?”

In response, he flashed a quick stare before returning his attention to driving. Which probably meant he’d ignored their operating protocols. Again. Working a different case with different rules, he might have offered more or she might have asked. As it was, they’d agreed plausible deniability might save them if either was eventually forced to testify. Which they’d also agreed was more than likely where the whole Reacher mess was headed.

“How much farther?” she asked instead.

He glanced at the odometer. “Maybe fifteen more miles. Give or take.”

The rental was equipped with GPS and they had their own equipment, too. She could find the precise distance easily enough. But GPS acted like a tracking beacon for UAVs that crosshatched the country and she’d had enough of being watched. Instead, they did most things the old-fashioned way, making every effort to remain skinny straws in the very large haystack of surveillance data. The boss and too many others had unlimited access to their movements.

Maybe Reacher did everything the old-fashioned way, too. Maybe that was how he stayed far off the grid. It seemed if anyone saw Reacher it was not because they found him but because Reacher found them. Otto had begun to envy Reacher’s expertise in privacy protection. He was exceedingly adept at secrets, too. Otto’s experience said a guy that good at secrets had way too much to hide.

This county road would take them directly into town and no amount of reviewing their route would make the drive less desolate.

Kim murmured her thoughts aloud. “Why would Reacher come to New Hope, anyway? We’ve seen nothing but empty fields and this is the main road from the interstate into town. Not even a barn for the past fifteen miles. No diner with a good cup of hot coffee anywhere to be found. What the hell would he be doing here?”

Gaspar shrugged. “The guy’s a psycho. Nothing he’s done makes any sense so far. Why should today be different?”

Kim wagged her head slowly, as if clearing the cobwebs in an enclosed space to make room for better answers, but none appeared. “What’s your plan if we find him?”

Gaspar grinned, stretched, flexed his shoulders and his neck. “You worry too much. There’s no designated worrier achievement medal, you know.”

She’d have punched his shoulder, but her arms were too short to box across the Crown Vic’s wide bench while snugged into her safety restraint. “Just because I’m the one worrying about it doesn’t mean the question isn’t worrisome, Chico.”

He seemed briefly startled by the vibration of his personal cell phone. Gaspar patted his pockets, arched one eyebrow to accentuate his words, and asked in a playful tone, “You really think we’re gonna need a plan today , Susie Wong?”

Kim’s concern jerked several notches higher when he retrieved the phone, glanced at the caller ID, tapped the answer button, and simply said, “Hello.”

Gaspar’s wife was very pregnant and dealing with four kids already. Although Gaspar kept the phone close at all times, Maria had never called before. Cops’ wives rarely did because receiving the wrong call at the wrong time could cause disastrous consequences. No cop’s wife ever rang up out of the blue with good news; no cop receiving the call ever displayed his fear when the call came.

Kim turned aside to allow what privacy she could within the vehicle’s cabin. His side of phone conversations were mostly monosyllabic anyway. Kim easily tuned him out while she considered his point.

Even if Reacher had been in New Hope yesterday, experience told her to expect another dead end today. Perhaps she had missed something relevant. But what? She ran known facts through her head quickly.

Ten days ago, Otto and Gaspar were tasked with a routine assignment: build a file on a former military cop, applying standard background investigation techniques. The file would be used to vet him for an undisclosed classified project. Otto and Gaspar worked similar investigations as members of the FBI’s Special Personnel Task Force.

The job had seemed feasibly straightforward at first. Some snafu somewhere needed ironing out.

Reacher’s life was etched in bedrock government records like any other American from birth to age thirty-six, when he was honorably discharged from the Army. Up to that moment fifteen years ago, everything contained in Reacher’s file was as expected. Records for birth, school, health, military, passport, driver’s license, insurance, banking, and every other standard bit and byte of data existed precisely where it should have been.

The problem was that records simply stopped for Reacher at age thirty-six.