THE JACK REACHER FILES: HOSTAGE

by Jude Hardin

  Retro nodded, took a sip from his coffee cup. “You said you saw Officer Vaughan arresting the man who’d defaced the sidewalk and the fire hydrant out there. Did you get a good look at the guy?”

  “He had jeans on, I think, and a flannel shirt with no sleeves. Muscular arms, like maybe he did some kind of hard work at one time.”

  “Any tattoos?”

  “I didn’t notice any.”

  “What about his face?” Retro said.

  “He wasn’t what you would call handsome. But he wasn’t ugly, either. Just a regular guy. Kind of average, I guess. His hair was dark and cut short like yours.”

  “Facial hair? Piercings? Anything like that?”

  “I don’t think so. Oh, but there was something on his neck. Like a bandage or something.”

  “A bandage?”

  “Yeah. You know, gauze and surgical tape and all that. It was professional looking, like maybe he’d been at a doctor’s office or a hospital or something.”

  “You’re doing good,” Retro said. “Those are the kinds of details we need. Do you think you could describe the man’s features to a police sketch artist?”

  “I could try.”

  “What time do you get off?”

  “I should have been off already, but one of the servers didn’t show up for work this evening. I was just sticking around to make a little extra money, but it’s really not that busy. I can probably leave whenever I want to.”

  “Could you put my sandwich in a go box and ride over to the station with me?” Retro said.

  “I’ll have to call my babysitter and make sure she can stay for a while, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

  “Great. Go ahead and make your call, and then let me know.”

  “Okay.”

  Mira scooted out of the booth and walked back toward the waitress station. Retro was glad he’d taken the time to come back to the diner and question her some more. If she could provide enough details for the artist, maybe the state police could get a drawing out to the media in time for the ten o’clock news.

  And then maybe some calls would come in, and maybe they could catch this guy before it was too late.

  14

  Vaughan stared into the barrel of her own pistol, expecting Sozinho to pull the trigger any second. She thought about her mother and her father and her life as a little girl. Playing hopscotch and riding a bicycle and pretty shoes and dresses and scraped knees. She thought about chalkboards and erasers and the first day of algebra class and the first time she kissed a boy. She thought about her decision to become a police officer and how proud her parents had been when she graduated from the academy, even though they had tried to talk her out of it. She thought about her husband, and about how Jack Reacher had helped with that situation. She still owed Reacher a favor. A big one. She wasn’t afraid to die, but she didn’t want to leave the world with so much left undone.

  There was still too much work to do.

  “You’re not going to kill me,” she said. “You still need me.”

  Sozinho stared her in the eyes. Snarling. Every muscle in his face as tense as a fiddle string. Vaughan figured he was thinking it over. If he pulled the trigger, she would die, but by killing her, he would probably be killing himself as well. The man in the black leather jacket wanted Vaughan kept alive, to be used as bait for Jack Reacher. If Sozinho killed her before exploiting the full extent of her usefulness, the man in the black leather jacket would then kill Sozinho.

  Probably.

  Reacher might come to Colorado without hearing Vaughan’s voice over the phone, but he might not. Was Sozinho willing to take the chance that he wouldn’t?

  Vaughan didn’t think so.

  She didn’t think Sozinho would take the risk, and she was right. He eased the hammer down with his thumb, lowered the pistol and tucked it into his waistband.

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said. “But not yet.”

  He wrestled the motorcycle to an upright position and wheeled it out of the way. Now Vaughan’s leg was free. Her right leg. Her left foot, the one injured from stepping on a shard of porcelain, had started hurting again. It wasn’t numb anymore, which she supposed was a good thing. At least it was getting some circulation.

  Sozinho leaned over and picked her up and started carrying her back toward the archway. When they crossed the threshold, Vaughan caught a glimpse of something through the rectangular hole she’d cut in the vinyl swimming pool cover. It was red and shiny and the late afternoon sun was hitting it at just the right angle for the reflection to beam upward as they passed by.

  It was a tail light.

  Her tail light.

  Sozinho must have peeled back the vinyl swimming pool cover and pushed the police cruiser in nose-first.

  The pool had been dry for years. It was a good place to ditch a vehicle. Vaughan never would have thought about it being there. It was just a fluke that she’d seen it.

  Sozinho carried her back to the room. He set her on the floor and washed her injured foot with soap and water, sprayed it with something from an aerosol can that felt very cold, and wrapped it with a roll of gauze from a first-aid kit.

  “I’m sure you saw the signs on the boarded-up windows,” Vaughan said. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to hear another word from you for the rest of the night.”

  Sozinho wrapped her legs with duct tape, and then he walked back outside, presumably to deal with the motorcycle and the dead rider. Vaughan figured he would probably hide the man and his bike in the pool with her cruiser.

  Sozinho was gone for about thirty minutes. When he got back, he took the first aid kit to the bathroom to work on his own injuries. He was in there for a long time. Maybe two hours. By the time he came back out, the motel room was completely dark, but Sozinho had a flashlight he’d been using and he wanted to make sure Vaughan got a good look at what she’d done.

  He sat on the floor beside her, held the light a couple of inches under his chin. Harsh and dramatic shadows accented every line on his face, every wrinkle, every hairy pore. And there, on his left cheek where Vaughan had slashed him with the broken toilet tank lid, was a winding series of crude stitches, a ghastly S-shaped disfigurement that looked like something that had crawled out from under a rock.

  “It was not my intention to scar you for life,” Vaughan said. “I was going for your throat. I was trying to kill you.”

  “I thought I told you to be quiet. I can tape a rag in your mouth if that’s what you want.”

  Sozinho spoke from the right side of his mouth—the only side that was working properly at the moment—which made it seem almost as though he was trying to convey sarcasm. Also, he was having difficulty pronouncing certain consonants, which caused a phrase like I can tape a rag to come out as I can take a nag. Garbled and nonsensical, although Vaughan knew what he meant because of the context.

  “I understand they’re doing great things with plastic surgery these days,” she said. “Maybe you can use some of the money you’ve made from killing people to have your face fixed.”

  “You don’t understand. They’ll never be able to make it like it was. I’m ruined. One of my main assets was my ordinariness, my ability to walk the streets unnoticed. Now, because of this, I will be instantly recognized everywhere I go.”

  “Then I did good,” Vaughan said.

  Sozinho glared at her with a hatred that was palpable. He sat there in silence for a few seconds, and then he propped the flashlight against one corner of the bed, aiming it upward so that a cone of light reflected off the white ceiling. While he was doing that, his cell phone rang. He got up and walked over to the table, looked at the caller ID but didn’t answer. It rang again a minute or so later. Same thing. He didn’t take the call.

  “You know, I hardly ever use a gun for my work,” he said. “I prefer the intimacy of a nice sharp blade.”

  “Is this where I get to hear your speech about how much you�
�re going to enjoy killing me?”

  “Yes. This is exactly where you get to hear my speech about that. I’ve been rehearsing it in my mind, just for you.”

  “Save it. I’m not afraid to die. And I’ll go happy now, knowing that I did something—inadvertent as it was—to take one more scumbag out of circulation.”

  Sozinho got up and walked over to the bed. Vaughan couldn’t see what he was doing, but a few seconds later she heard the sound of cloth being ripped apart.

  “I warned you,” he said.

  “But I thought we were having such a nice conversation.”

  He knelt down beside her and forced a strip of the cotton pillowcase fabric into her mouth, tore off a piece of duct tape and pressed it over her lips in an arc spanning earlobe to earlobe. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pill bottle and rattled it over her face.

  “Narcotic pain tablets,” he said. “I bet you wish you could have one, but you can’t. I might have shared if you’d behaved yourself a little better. Now I’m going to keep them all for myself. I took one in the bathroom a few minutes ago, and I’m feeling better already. How about you? Is that foot hurting you? That’s nothing compared to what’s coming. As soon as the man in the black leather jacket gives me the go-ahead, I’m going to inflict more pain on you than you ever thought possible. You’ll be begging me to let you die, but I won’t. Not until every last nerve has been tapped.”

  The cell phone rang again. Sozinho got up and walked to the table and looked at it. A contorted smile curled up on the right side of his mouth as he lifted the device and clicked on to answer the call. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there and listened for a few seconds, and then he walked back over and knelt down and peeled the duct tape off and pulled the rag out and held the phone up to Vaughan’s lips.

  She figured there was only one person Sozinho would allow her to talk to.

  “Don’t come,” she shouted. “It’s a trap.”

  Sozinho clicked off before anything else could be said.

  Vaughan never actually heard Jack Reacher’s voice, so she wasn’t a hundred percent certain that it was him on the other end. But if it was, she hoped that he would heed her warning and stay far, far away from Colorado.

  She hoped that he would stay away, but somewhere deep in her heart she knew that he wouldn’t.

  15

  Retro’s shift was almost over. He could have filed his written reports for the day, and he could have relayed any pertinent information about Vaughan’s abduction to the oncoming patrol officer, and then he could have gone on home.

  But that wasn’t what he wanted to do.

  He wanted to find Vaughan.

  Not that he thought he could do it singlehandedly. He had to be back on the job at seven the next morning, and he couldn’t work around the clock, but he wanted to see what Mira came up with for the sketch artist before he called it a day.

  He took a sip of his coffee, glanced over and saw her walk back out from behind the partition holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a denim jacket in the other.

  “Here’s your sandwich,” she said, placing the bag on the table beside Retro’s coffee mug.

  “Thanks,” Retro said. “Ready to go?”

  “Yes. I have to be home by nine, though. My babysitter has school tomorrow.”

  Retro nodded. He slid out of the booth, grabbed the brown paper bag. It was warm, and some grease had soaked through to the bottom. He wondered if it would make it to the parking lot without falling apart.

  Mira shrugged into her jacket and started walking toward the exit.

  Retro followed.

  “I’ll be out in just a minute,” he said, stopping at the front counter.

  “Okay.”

  Mira walked on outside. Retro got the attention of another waitress and asked for a plastic bag for his sandwich.

  “We’re out of the small ones,” she said.

  “That’s all right. Whatever you have.”

  She brought him a big white thing with handles that could have held dinner for ten. He thanked her and dropped the greasy paper bag into the huge plastic bag, shouldered his way through the door and walked around the side of the building to the parking area.

  Mira was standing beside the cruiser, on the passenger’s side, looking at the identifier painted on the front fender.

  Unit Two.

  “Is this the car you’ve been driving all day?” she said.

  “It’s the car I’ve been driving all year.”

  Mira walked around the engine compartment and looked at the fender on the other side.

  “But I thought you were in Unit One this morning,” she said.

  “I wasn’t. Unit One is Officer Vaughan’s car.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m pretty sure I saw it going that way,” she said, pointing west.

  “When?”

  “Probably about fifteen minutes after Officer Vaughan walked out of the restaurant this morning.”

  That changed everything. Retro opened the passenger’s door for Mira, and then he ran around to the driver’s side and climbed in and started the car and sped toward the station.

  16

  Vaughan knew exactly where she was now. She couldn’t believe that Sozinho had agreed to stay here, although it was obvious why the man in the black leather jacket had chosen the location.

  It was the last place anyone would ever think of looking.

  Except maybe Jack Reacher.

  Only he and Vaughan knew the exact story behind what had really happened in Despair, Colorado.

  And it was a secret that they would take to their graves.

  Vaughan thought about it as she shifted her weight from one side to the other, trying to ease the pain that had crept into her lower back. Sozinho had switched off the flashlight, maybe about an hour ago. It was completely dark in the room now, and eerily quiet. And hot. There was no ventilation. The outside temperatures had been pleasant over the past few days, but the motel room was stuffy and stagnant and it smelled bad.

  Vaughan closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, but the floor was uncomfortable and she was hungry and she was sweating and her foot still hurt and she kept thinking about all the poison that might be floating around in the air.

  She couldn’t sleep, so she just stared up into the blackness and tried to think of another way to escape.

  But there was no other way.

  Sozinho wasn’t going to let her out of his sight again, not even to use the bathroom.

  She’d given it her best shot.

  But her life was over now.

  She was going to die in this wretched abandoned motor court.

  There was nothing else she could do. She’d already tried to convince Sozinho that she was on his side, that the man in the black leather jacket was the enemy in this situation.

  She’d already tried, but maybe she should try again.

  Maybe Sozinho would listen this time.

  “He’s never going to let you live,” she said.

  The bedsprings squeaked.

  “You must want the tape back on your mouth,” Sozinho said.

  “Think about it. The man in the black leather jacket wants you to kill Jack Reacher. Once you do that, he’ll have no further use for you. He has treated you badly, first by putting that thing in your neck and then by sending you into this potentially lethal environment, and he knows you’re going to be out for revenge. Why would he allow—”

  Before Vaughan could finish her thought, someone came crashing through the motel room door.

  17

  There was a fat yellow moon rising over the Colorado prairie, and immediately after the frame splintered and the lock parts scattered and a wall of cooler air came whooshing into the room, the silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway.

  Maybe it was a combination of the lighting and the abrupt and violent nature of the entrance, but the man appeared to be about ten feet tall. Arms fashioned from tree trunks, chest as broad as a ‘58 Cadilla
c.

  And he had gun.

  Sozinho rolled off the bed, expecting a barrage of hot lead projectiles to come tearing into the mattress and maybe into his flesh, but all he got was a rapid series of metallic clicks. Apparently the man’s weapon was jammed.

  Officer Vaughan’s pistol was still on the table by the window, several feet away and well out of Sozinho’s reach, but he’d slid his folding straight razor into his pocket before lying down on the bed. He pulled it out and snapped it open as he waited for the intruder to advance.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  The man came charging forward, jumping over Vaughan and lunging toward the space on the other side of the bed where Sozinho had landed. The man reared back and came down hard with his fist, a blow that would have crushed Sozinho’s skull if it had connected. But it didn’t. Sozinho managed to dodge the punch, and before the man could deliver another one, Sozinho swiped the sharp steel edge of his expensive professional shaving tool across the man’s abdomen, ripping through the fabric of his shirt and opening a gash at least eight inches wide.

  Frantic, moving quickly and fiercely to avoid a second assault with the blade, the man grabbed Sozinho’s arm, banging his wrist and hand against the top edge of the nightstand until the razor skittered away.

  Then the man wrapped his fingers around Sozinho’s throat.

  Sozinho struggled, clawing at the man’s face, trying to push him away, but he couldn’t. He grunted and gurgled and bucked and twisted, but it was no use. The man was too powerful.

  It quickly became apparent to Sozinho that any effort to resist was a waste of energy, so he made a conscious and rational decision to stop fighting and let his body go limp.

  Silence.

  “What’s going on?” Vaughan shouted.

  The man didn’t say anything.

  Sozinho’s airway was occluded, but he’d decided not to panic. He’d decided to relax. He was an excellent swimmer. He could hold his breath for three minutes, no problem. And the man would bleed to death long before then.

  It was still dark in the room, and Sozinho couldn’t see much of anything, but he knew that the cut to the man’s abdomen had gone deep. He’d felt it. He was surprised that the man had lasted this long. Soon he would collapse and Sozinho could breathe again.