“Ten-four.” Neagley grinned.
Kim smiled back.
Neagley offered a fist bump. Kim wanted to give her a hug, but she accepted the only touch Neagley had ever offered.
“You’ll never find Reacher until he wants to be found, you know.”
Kim shrugged. “Then we’ll just have to make him want to be found, won’t we?”
Neagley’s grin widened. “Good luck with that.”
“Take care, Frances,” Kim said. “Until we meet again.”
She stepped outside into Armageddon.
The ranch was indeed in chaos.
Frightened horses had galloped away from the explosions. Now they were scattered everywhere like a frustrated child’s toy set.
Rescue vehicles of every stripe were on the way or on the premises already.
Consuming fires burned hotter than funeral pyres, igniting smaller explosions each time the heat reached another fuel tank.
The noise of sirens and choppers and screaming horses and screaming people was deafening.
The stench of gasoline fires and billowing black smoke consumed the very oxygen Kim needed to breathe.
Four ambulances had pulled into the long driveway and were headed toward the extra bunkhouse, sirens blaring.
The Boss had kept his word once more.
Kim found herself a bit surprised. Despite the assurances she’d given Neagley, each time the Boss came through seemed like a fluke. But Kim was grateful he’d done it this time.
The first ambulance streaked to a halt in front of the extra bunkhouse. The driver jumped out and called to Kim, “Seven victims?”
Briefly, she considered correcting the count to eight, including Edward. But Neagley had been alone in the ward too long to be sure Edward was still alive.
“Inside,” she called back over the thunderous noise. “Hurry.”
And then she loped away toward the SUV, looking back, counting the seven gurneys as they loaded the ambulances and headed back the way they’d come, sirens blaring, dodging incoming vehicles along the way.
Despite what she’d said to Neagley, Kim wasn’t worried. Just the opposite. Kim felt confidant Neagley was not alone. Reacher was there to help clean up the mess he’d helped create. He was the kind of man who saw things through.
Neagley would finish her business and reach the van within her window of opportunity or she wouldn’t.
Either way, Kim would see them both again. Dixon, too.
For now, there was nothing more she could do here.
Unlike Neagley and Reacher, Kim had only one choice.
She had to go.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Tuesday, November 16
2:15 p.m.
Houston, TX
Hours later, they waited for flights at the Houston airport. Gaspar stretched out into his usual waiting position, ankles crossed, hands folded over his flat abdomen, eyes closed. Kim finished her reports and uploaded them to her own secure server, paying her insurance premium once again. Like all insurance premiums, she hoped she’d never need to collect on the policy. But better to be safe than sorry.
“What do you think happened to the rest of that $65 million?” Gaspar asked from behind closed eyelids.
“I’m guessing you were right.”
“What? You’re giving me credit for something?”
“We don’t know whether there ever was $65 million, really. But when Dixon recovers, she’s going to have some questions to answer. She’s the one who converted the funds and disbursed them, according to O’Donnell.”
“The Boss could have it,” Gaspar suggested after another couple of silent moments. “We know he’s got Swiss bank accounts. O’Donnell said some of the money was in Switzerland.”
“We’ll probably never know,” Kim replied, although she’d considered the possibility thoroughly in her secure reports. “Neagley’s convinced the Boss is her enemy.”
“Which means he’s Reacher’s enemy, too.”
“Probably.”
“That money could be more than sixty-five million good reasons, with the miracle of compound interest and all.” He grinned again, but ruefully this time.
“Pure speculation.” Kim changed the subject. “We learned a few things we can put into The Reacher File, though.”
“Such as?”
She shrugged. “He’s a good tactician. He inspires intense loyalty as well as intense hatred. From both sexes.”
Gaspar added, “He’s broke. Homeless. Uncommunicative.”
“He’s no Superman,” she said.
One of Gaspar’s eyebrows jumped up. “Based on what?”
“He didn’t bother to help Neagley keep her only brother alive, did he?” Kim knew the judgment was harsh, but for all the loyalty his unit lavished on Reacher, in the end, he’d failed them all.
In Kim’s view, Neagley was the superhero. Neagley had more heart and more courage than any of them would have ever needed. Maybe the SPTF should be recruiting her for whatever secret job the Boss had in mind.
Kim wondered whether Reacher’s unit had known all that about Neagley all along. Did Reacher know it? Then? Or now?
Gaspar stretched his shoulders by rolling them around a bit, extending his neck, too. “At least it doesn’t look like Reacher left Neagley or Dixon with any extra progeny.”
When she closed the laptop and slipped it into its case, Gaspar grinned and, mocking her question to him at the end of their first Reacher assignment, said, “Now what? Back to Detroit, complete your rotation, request a transfer, become Director, finish your thirty and collect your pension?”
She laughed, but repaid him in kind. “What is going on with Maria? Is she okay? Is the baby all right? You’re worried, I’m worried, Chico. That’s how it works.”
Gaspar’s grin faded, but only for an instant. “For a while there, I thought you and Neagley might have been separated at birth or something. But she’d never ask me anything the least bit personal.” He opened his eyes and raised his eyebrow. “You’re not so tough after all, are you Susie Wong?”
Her spine straightened. She felt her face heat up. Her tone was hard. “That’s not a theory you want to test, Chico. Trust me.”
The announcer called his flight. Gaspar rose, stretched his bad leg, straightened his jacket, pulled up the handle on his rolling suitcase. “Do you think Reacher was there? At Black Star this morning?”
She’d thought about this particular question while she finished her reports. In the moment, she’d been convinced that was why Neagley stayed behind. Maybe Neagley was a little in love with him, like the other women they’d met from Reacher’s past. Who knew?
Kim shrugged. “Dunno. I thought I smelled him a couple of times.”
“
Smelled him?
Literally?”
“Yes.”
“How could you possibly know what he smells like, for God’s sake?”
She shrugged again. “It’s not so much that I recognized his scent. But I noticed a scent that was different from the others. Several times. In different places. And each time, there was physical evidence that someone had been there, too.”
“Now who’s acting crazy?”
The announcer called his flight again and simultaneously she felt the Boss’s cell phone vibrating in her pocket. By now, she wasn’t surprised that his timing was always perfect.
She held up one finger to stop Gaspar’s departure, fished the phone out and clicked the connection open. “Yes.”
He said, “Just sent you both an encrypted file. You should have it in another few seconds. Download it now on the secure channel while you can.”
“My mother expects me home for Thanksgiving,” she said, even as she unzipped her case and rebooted her laptop.
“Thanksgiving is nine days away,” he replied. “And you’ve got no vacation time.”
“Gaspar’s wife is pregnant, you know. Baby due any minute.”
The silence lasted barely a nanosecond.
“Your flight leaves in ten minutes. Plane tickets are waiting at the United Counter. Call me when you get there,” he said before severing the call.
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Capri is a lawyer and multi-published author.
She’s a snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.
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Also by DIANE CAPRI
(Click each title to buy or download a sample)
Jess Kimball Series:
Fatal Enemy
(short story)
Hunt for Reacher Series:
Jack in a Box
(short story)
Jack and Kill
(short story)
Justice Series:
Mistaken Justice
(short story)
Lee Child says Thank You
March 2nd, 2012
....The other big news is Diane Capri—a friend of mine—wrote a book revisiting the events of KILLING FLOOR in Margrave, Georgia. She imagines an FBI team tasked to trace Reacher’s current-day whereabouts. They begin by interviewing people who knew him—starting out with Roscoe and Finlay. Check out this review from Amazon: “Oh heck yes! I am in love with this book. I’m a huge Jack Reacher fan. If you don’t know Jack (pun intended!) then get thee to the bookstore/wherever you buy your fix and pick up one of the many Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Heck, pick up all of them. In particular, read
Killing Floor
. Then come back and read
Don’t Know Jack
. This story picks up the other from the point of view of Kim and Gaspar, FBI agents assigned to build a file on Jack Reacher. The problem is, as anyone who knows Reacher can attest, he lives completely off the grid. No cell phone, no house, no car...he’s not tied down. A pretty daunting task, then, wouldn’t you say?
“First lines: “Just the facts. And not many of them, either. Jack Reacher’s file was too stale and too thin to be credible. No human could be as invisible as Reacher appeared to be, whether he was currently above the ground or under it. Either the file had been sanitized, or Reacher was the most off-the-grid paranoid Kim Otto had ever heard of.” Right away, I’m sensing who Kim Otto is and I’m delighted that I know something she doesn’t. You see, I DO know Jack. And I know he’s not paranoid. Not really. I know why he lives as he does, and I know what kind of man he is. I loved having that over Kim and Gaspar. If you haven’t read any Reacher novels, then this will feel like a good, solid story in its own right. If you have...oh if you have, then you, too, will feel like you have a one-up on the FBI. It’s a fun feeling!
“Kim and Gaspar are sent to Margrave by a mysterious boss who reminds me of Charlie, in Charlie’s Angels. You never see him...you hear him. He never gives them all the facts. So they are left with a big pile of nothing. They end up embroiled in a murder case that seems connected to Reacher somehow, but they can’t see how. Suffice to say the efforts to find the murderer, and Reacher, and not lose their own heads in the process, makes for an entertaining read.