Get Back Jack (2 page)

Only one person could be calling and he wouldn’t give up.

Her assignment was off the books—not stated to her as a mere preference, but hammered home. He wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to use his secret phone inside or outside the Agency.

Kim slid her arm outside the cozy warmth of the down comforter, and brought the viper to her ear. “Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked, not caring about the edge in her tone.

The Boss ignored her question and her foul mood. “How many times have you seen him in DC this week?”

“Why?” Not even bothering to ask whom he meant or how he knew she’d seen Reacher at all. She’d found staying under the radar a monstrous challenge in the era of constant surveillance, and had experienced the consequences of failure too many times already. She kept her conversations to a minimum; her face turned away from cameras, and used only the most secure connections possible. Even so, she was only too aware that more than one pair of eyes was watching her every move.

“Get in and get out today,” the Boss said. “And watch yourself. He knows who you are and what you’re doing now. He won’t like you messing with his team.”

Kim had already seen the results of things and people Reacher disliked. Not pretty. “Can’t see that we have a choice, given what you’ve supplied us to work with.”

Ten days ago, they’d been tasked with completing a background check on a subject being considered for a special assignment. Routine. Except the assignment was classified above her clearance and the subject was Jack Reacher and someone had worked very hard to ensure every paper trail ended with his discharge from the Army fifteen years ago.

For the first five days, she and her partner believed Reacher dead. For the next five, they’d learned so little about him that he might as well have been. Today, they planned to change their luck.

“You could tell me what you know,” she said. “Or give us access to his existing files. Or do anything remotely helpful.”

She listened to silent breathing for a moment, then tossed off the duvet and shivered with the cold shock. High-tech microfiber pajamas might be great for travel packs, but they certainly weren’t warm. If she didn’t get back to her Detroit apartment soon, shopping would be unavoidable.

“Check your mail,” the Boss said at last, as if he’d only made up his mind to send her something during the call. “And be guided accordingly.”

After that, she heard nothing at all. She threw the cell phone across the room, where it hit the wall and bounced onto the carpet. With luck, maybe the damn thing would never ring again.

Sleep was now impossible.

Three hours later, showered and dressed and fully briefed on the short report the Boss had sent, Kim opened her door after the first knock. Room service. She signed for her meal, ushered the server out, and poured more strong black coffee. She snagged a piece of toast and spread a bit of jam over it. She wasn’t really hungry, but bread would soak up the two mini-pots of coffee already in her stomach and reduce her antacid consumption. Maybe.

The next knock on her door marked the arrival of her new partner, Carlos Gaspar.

“Let’s ignore the dead ones for the moment,” she said as he walked in. “Any brilliant ideas about the others?”

Both had dressed for the same work day—hours of interviews in the business districts of DC and New York—but Gaspar’s relaxed khaki was all casual Miami, and Kim’s tailored black suit was pure, stodgy Detroit. They looked exactly like what they were, Kim thought. She found that refreshingly unusual.

“Look on the bright side,” he joked. “Fewer interview subjects means less work. We’ll make it home for Thanksgiving.”

Kim’s relationship with Gaspar mirrored the paradox of their assignment. Straightforward, but complicated. Easily stated, but impossible to predict. Reliable, but dangerous. In some ways, Kim felt she knew Gaspar well because of everything they’d already survived. In other ways, Gaspar remained nearly as much a mystery to her as Reacher himself.

Gaspar stood facing the window, watching the cold, grey November sky, preoccupied. His wife was very pregnant and alone in Miami with Gaspar’s four daughters. Kim knew he wasn’t happy about being away from Maria and the girls. And something very negative had happened yesterday in Gaspar’s Cuban-American community while they were in Virginia following up a lead on Reacher. Something that worried him. Gaspar didn’t tell her about the problem and made it clear he didn’t want to discuss his personal business with her. She was glad. She had enough on her plate already.

“I’m waiting for that brilliance,” she said.

Gaspar shrugged. “Brilliance? Such as?”

Kim watched him a moment. She was lead on this assignment and it was up to the leader to make sure all the players were fit for duty. Events had already proved the job was a challenge for Gaspar, given his injuries. Today’s plan was routine pavement pounding and interviews.

Before the Boss’s call, she’d thought she could afford to give him twenty-four hours to figure things out at home. After that, if the assignment continued, he needed his head (and as much of his body as he could muster) in the game. For now, she’d let that plan stand. But she’d do whatever she had to do, including replacing him, if it came to that. She wouldn’t work with Gaspar if he couldn’t do the job.

Like her mother insisted, when there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.

With exaggerated patience, Kim recapped what Gaspar seemed to be ignoring. “Reacher’s old unit had nine members, counting Reacher. We’ve spent two days trying to track them down. We were only able to locate three. We’re set to meet the first two of those this afternoon. You were supposed to come up with a can’t-miss approach for today’s two. What are we going to say?”

Gaspar’s tone was clipped, as if he were reciting the phone book. “We’re doing a routine background check on Jack Reacher for the FBI Special Personnel Task Force, updating his personnel file since he left the Army. We want to know, soup to nuts, what they can contribute to our almost non-existent data.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not? The guy’s a licensed P.I. and the woman’s a forensic accountant. Both ex-Army police. They’ll get it.”

Kim drained the coffee cup and refilled. She felt taut as a drawn bowstring.

“He didn’t call you?” she asked.

“Sure, he called,” Gaspar told the view out the window. “He warned me about Reacher coming our way. He sent the report. I’ve read it. Nothing worth getting our panties in a wad over. Let’s not get off course again just because he’s yanking our chains, okay? We tried that last week and it nearly got us killed.”

Now that they had at least an understandable plan, Kim wanted to stay on track, too. Despite running into dead ends everywhere they turned, they’d managed to uncover bits of Reacher’s Army file that the Boss had refused to supply. They’d already tracked down two of Reacher’s prior commanding officers. Both generals now, and both tight-lipped. Deliberately unhelpful, beyond suggesting they interview members of the elite special investigative unit Reacher had recruited and trained. For two years, the team had been inseparable, a force to be reckoned with, never messed with. If Reacher had kept in touch with anyone, the two generals said, it would be the eight other members of that unit.

Given what she knew about Reacher so far, Kim had her doubts. But a group of people once that tight could be a gold mine of information. Maybe. Besides, neither she nor Gaspar had identified any viable alternatives.

So, after unencrypting the Boss’s early morning e-mail, they had even fewer.

She asked, “I wouldn’t feel too optimistic about my life span if I were in Reacher’s old unit, would you?”

Gaspar shrugged again, distracted, still gazing out the window—or at his reflection. “Special investigative units are manned by soldiers with a death wish, Sunshine,” he said. “Volunteers for extremely hazardous duty. Natural risk-takers. Adrenaline junkies. They continue risking life and limb after discharge, too. Predictably, they don’t live long.”

She nodded. “True. But, Reacher’s team never lost a member while they were handling the Army’s extremely hazardous duty. They leave the service, and now four of the eight are dead, another is presumed dead, not one has died of natural causes, and their leader can’t be found.”

Gaspar shrugged. “The first one died in a car wreck. Car crashes kill plenty of Americans every year.”

As if he’d said one member of Reacher’s unit had died on a trip to Mars, she asked, “You believe that was an accident?”

At long last, he turned to her. “You don’t, I suppose,” he sighed.

“Let’s say you’re right. One car wreck. What about the others? Five years ago, one member of the unit disappeared and three more members died. All within days of each other. All three of the known dead tortured, their legs broken to immobilize them. And then each one dropped, still alive, from a helicopter miles above the desert floor. That is not normal risk-taking, adrenaline-junkie death-defiance, Chico. No way.”

The data they’d uncovered on Reacher’s army days had, as usual, revealed too little. He had never been popular with his peers. As a military policeman, Reacher was in trouble often and he’d made enemies.

But he’d been discharged fifteen long years ago and a lot of those enemies were dead or not interested in Reacher anymore. Unlikely Reacher would hide from anyone out to hurt him, anyway, based on the little Kim knew of the man. He was more of a confront-me-if-you-dare type.

So why was he living so far off the grid not even a sniffing bloodhound could find him? There had to be a reason, and the one she’d reluctantly reached was as good a working hypothesis as any.

Gaspar shrugged, wagged his head back and forth. “It bothers me that I’m starting to understand you. You’re actually thinking Reacher killed four members of his own unit? Oh, and maybe five while we’re at it, counting Jorge Sanchez, who hasn’t been found yet.” His tone conveyed precisely how preposterous he thought her suspicion was. “The Boss sure as hell didn’t tell me that. Can you prove it?”

She said nothing.

“That’s what I figured, Susie Wong.” He grinned. “And what about the remaining three? It’s inconvenient for your theory that psycho-killer Reacher didn’t off them, too, isn’t it?”

She replied, “We haven’t actually laid eyes on them yet, have we?”

Kim wasn’t joking. She’d believe they still walked the earth when she actually saw and spoke to them. All she could say for sure at this point was that she hadn’t located death certificates for them. Where Reacher was concerned, the absence of records proved nothing.

Dave O’Donnell was first on today’s interview list because he was located right in Washington DC. The other two, Karla Dixon and Frances Neagley, resided in New York and Chicago, respectively. Kim and Gaspar would be visiting Dixon as soon as they finished with O’Donnell, then back here tonight and head to Chicago for Neagley in the morning.

Gaspar turned from his window-gazing. “Don’t worry so much. Mucking around with 15-year-old contacts will probably be another waste of time. But I get it. Interrogating the last three unit members is the only plan we’ve got. Let’s just waste our time with O’Donnell and then we can move on wasting it with the last two. Have I mentioned lately how much I love this job?”

Kim didn’t expect to get much help out of O’Donnell or the others in tracking Reacher down, either, but she didn’t have any other ideas. They’d finish the interviews in forty-eight hours or less. At that point, she’d demand that the Boss give her the resources they needed to accomplish the job or relieve her of the Reacher assignment. She had better things to do with her time and Gaspar was practically desperate to get back to Miami. This was bullshit.

She glanced at her Seiko. 9:43 a.m. They’d booked a 3:30 flight out of National to New York City to interview Dixon. That gave them plenty of time to interview O’Donnell and get to the airport. She grabbed her overcoat and headed toward the door. “Come on, Cheech. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Yes, Ma’am, Boss Dragon Lady,” Gaspar said. His tone was light, but Kim noticed his limp was more pronounced this morning, which too often meant he hadn’t slept enough.

She was worried, even if Gaspar wasn’t. She didn’t for a moment believe the Boss had called this morning to warn her about provoking Reacher because he was concerned for their safety. Whatever the Boss was up to, her experience proved she’d need to keep her wits about her to deal with it. And she’d need a full-bodied partner, too.

She reached into her pocket for another antacid and held it in her mouth as the elevator dropped forty floors in twenty seconds.

CHAPTER THREE

Thursday, November 11

10:30 a.m.

Washington, DC

A small, square sign on the wall to the left of the doorknob proclaimed, “David O’Donnell, Discreet Inquiries by appointment only.”

Everything seemed quiet enough.

Gaspar turned the knob, pushed O’Donnell’s office door open and entered the interior lobby with Kim three steps behind.

A middle-aged woman, maybe about seventy, give or take a decade, was seated behind the reception desk. She glanced up from her computer screen and peered over the bright, orange-framed readers perched on her nose. The readers magnified her flawless complexion. Her eyes rounded and she hesitated a moment too long, shooting a quick whiff of discomfort through Kim.

The woman cleared her throat. In a voice that seemed to croak from disuse or maybe nerves, she said, “May I help you?”

Kim nodded. “We’d like to see Mr. O’Donnell, please.”

“Do you, uh, have an appointment?” Her left hand trembled as she reached to the side of her desk, maybe feeling for a calendar that wasn’t there.

“No,” Gaspar said.

“I’m afraid Mr. O’Donnell isn’t available.” The more she talked, the more Southern her accent became.

“No problem. We’ll wait,” Gaspar said, settling himself into the closest chair and adopting his usual waiting posture. Legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles, hands clasped over his flat stomach, eyelids sinking, if not yet closed. He wasn’t sleeping, but if he sat there more than five minutes, he would be.