by Diane Capri
GET BACK JACK
BY
DIANE CAPRI
Presented By:
AugustBooks
Praise for
Bestselling Author
Diane Capri
“Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too. Kim Otto is a great, great character. I love her.”
Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers
“[A] welcome surprise....[W]orks from the first page to ‘The End’.”
Larry King
“Swift pacing and ongoing suspense are always present...[L]ikable protagonist who uses her political connections for a good cause...Readers should eagerly anticipate the next [book].”
Top Pick, Romantic Times
“...offers tense legal drama with courtroom overtones, twisty plot, and loads of Florida atmosphere. Recommended.”
Library Journal
“[A] fast-paced legal thriller...energetic prose...an appealing heroine...clever and capable supporting cast...[that will] keep readers waiting for the next [book].”
Publishers Weekly
“Expertise shines on every page.”
Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award Winning MWA Grand Master
Get Back Jack 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.
Copyright © 2013 Diane Capri, LLC
All Rights Reserved
Published by: AugustBooks
Visit the author website:
DianeCapri.com
Get Back Jack 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.
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Published by: AugustBooks
http://www.AugustBooks.com
Visit the author website:
http://www.DianeCapri.com
eISBN:
978-0-9882346-9-7
Original cover design by: CoryClubb.com
DEDICATION
For Lee Child, with unrelenting gratitude
CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS
Kim L. Otto
Carlos M. Gaspar
Charles Cooper
Frances L. Neagley
Karla Dixon
Jorge Sanchez
Marion Morrison
Margaret Berenson
Edward Dean
Jacqueline Roscoe
and
Jack Reacher
GET BACK JACK
BY
DIANE CAPRI
Presented By:
AugustBooks
CHAPTER ONE
Friday, November 5
11:10 p.m.
Washington, DC
What would Jack Reacher do?
Sanchez considered the question again for a moment before he ignored orders and executed the scumbag with a single shot to the head.
At close range, any gun might have done the job. Sanchez had chosen a Glock 19, Gen 4. Utilitarian, tough, reliable. Comfortable grip, controllable recoil, easily concealed. Used by law enforcement because of its stopping power.
A perfect choice for a man anticipating precisely this situation.
Six and a half long seconds later, Sanchez punched the off button on the military grade speakerphone.
Connection terminated.
Twenty-two floors below, the gunshot exploded through the eavesdropper’s equally high-tech headset, traumatizing her eardrums almost as if she’d been standing in front of the bullet.
The crisp audio feed she’d appreciated for the past eighty-seven minutes and seventeen seconds was gone, as though she’d been dropped head first into a vat of clammy marshmallow cream.
Could Sanchez have gone off the rails at the very first obstacle?
She increased the audio to maximum volume and strained to hear his explanation, but heard only the severed connection’s silence.
She jumped up, ripped off her headset with one latex-gloved hand and flung it to the floor of the four-by-four janitor’s closet.
Christ!
She might have screamed.
Thoughts slammed like racquetballs inside her skull as she stormed back and forth in the hot, tiny closet. Even if she could’ve heard them, her sweat-soaked coveralls and paper boots no longer rustled crisply with each step as they had earlier in the evening. Behind her surgical mask, she sucked deep breaths and shouted silenced, frustrated curses.
She forced herself down into her guerilla training. Allowed fifteen more seconds to assess, analyze, plan, and perform.
Assess and analyze.
O’Donnell should have seen it coming. She felt slightly less stupid because O’Donnell had missed the obvious, too. Sanchez was far wilier (and certainly far crazier) than she’d believed. But O’Donnell had known Sanchez better than she did and O’Donnell was now dead. It was entirely possible that O’Donnell had committed suicide by allowing Sanchez to kill him now instead of torturing him later.
The two remaining targets could disclose what O’Donnell had refused to reveal.
Which meant her goal was still in play.
O’Donnell had made either a stupid blunder or a stupid choice, but his death didn’t compromise her ultimate mission. She could still acquire what she’d come to collect. Her plan was altered, but not irrevocably thwarted.
Still, Sanchez’s unsanctioned killing of O’Donnell was nothing short of disaster. For him. He had to know that, too. Which brought her back to the fact that Sanchez was far from okay. She must have missed something important about him. Something that might present a bigger problem. But what?
She hurried through her recall of the meeting she’d overheard. The erratic shuffling of Sanchez’s shoes as he paced O’Donnell’s office, pouring out his woes. At the time, she’d been impatient, stewing in her own sweat in the airless closet, willing Sanchez to get the hell on with it. She hadn’t paid close attention to his ramblings. Mere impressions stuck in her memory. She ticked them off rapidly.
Sanchez increasingly distraught as he explained his plight, his anger growing while he recounted his five-year ordeal.
O’Donnell expressing shock. (Maybe he wasn’t lying.)
Sanchez blaming O’Donnell, who claimed surprise. (Maybe he’d been a bit contrite.)
She cringed, recalling Sanchez’s sudden switch from rage to whining pleas, begging O’Donnell to save him this time, as O’Donnell and the rest of their crew had failed to ma
ke the smallest effort to do five years before.
O’Donnell claimed he couldn’t supply what Sanchez needed. (Almost certainly lying, of course, as thieves everywhere do.)
Sanchez’s ordnance replied.
Then what?
Seven seconds before she’d recovered her wits enough to check the timer.
What happened next?
She’d been partially deafened by the blast. Her experience told her bullets blasted predictably into bony skulls, through gelatinous brain and out again, carrying moist soft facial tissue along with them. She could almost smell the gunshot, the metallic scent of blood.
Now, the office was no doubt a gooey mess, Sanchez was gone, and their perfect plan compromised. She’d failed. She’d need a plausible solution before she reported the damage, but that would come later, when she’d removed herself far enough away from the scene.
Now she was pacing again like an outraged tiger. She rubbed her face, and memory-pain sliced afresh; she jerked both palms away from the long-healed scars as if they’d been inflicted again by Sanchez’s betrayal.
She sat on the janitor’s stepstool, becalmed, ignoring the timer, backhanded the sweat from her brow and then stroked the narrow scar that stretched from the corner of her left upper lip to the outside corner of her left eye. Her index finger rested on the bump of keloid above her cheekbone, massaging absently, seeking comfort and clarity.
Rehearsals proved she could disappear in ninety-five seconds leaving no trace evidence. She should be outside the building in less than three minutes. But then what? Her escape plan was compromised because Sanchez couldn’t be trusted.
Plan and perform.
Eliminate the hostages in Mexico. At least one. Immediately. Sanchez needed to know she was a woman of her word, to believe she’d kill the others if he stepped out of line again.
She’d intended to kill all of the hostages anyway. Right after Sanchez collected what he’d been sent to retrieve. His wife and brats would be of no use then. Sanchez’s failure meant she was forced to revise—terminate one hostage a little early—and delay progress toward the goal, but only slightly.
Damn Sanchez. He was too smart to have failed so spectacularly. He’d no doubt planned everything. What about her hostages? Had Sanchez planned a rescue? Changes were now required there as well.
Sanchez should never have betrayed her. She knew precisely how to deal with him. She challenged herself to remain still, kneading the pea-sized keloid like a prayer bead, while her mind raced methodically as if the devil himself snapped her ass.
Go now. Go now, her intuition prodded with each beat of her pounding heart inside the steamy, sweat-soaked cocoon that enveloped her.
Forty-two seconds after the gunshot, she was ready. She pulled off the wet protective gear, ripped the paper wall coverings down, stuffed it all along with the listening equipment into her oversized litigation bag.
A soaking wet woman fleeing a murder scene would be noticed and remembered in this neighborhood. She’d need fresh clothes immediately. She had none. She shrugged into her overcoat and turned up the collar. For now, she’d alter her planned route as she could and her overcoat must suffice.
She took one last look around the room, satisfied she’d sanitized as well as possible. She flipped off the lights, pressed the knob’s center button to lock the door from the inside, and closed the janitor’s closet solidly behind her. Sliding her gloved hand into her pocket, she slipped down the hall into the lobby and out into the Friday evening pedestrian traffic less than three minutes after Sanchez killed O’Donnell.
Six blocks away, cloaked by the late night crowd waiting for traffic to clear before entering a crosswalk, she heard her own voice murmur, “What the hell was that soldier thinking?”
Her chance to ask him came sooner than she’d expected.
CHAPTER TWO
Thursday, November 11
5:07 a.m.
Washington, DC
The untraceable cell phone vibrated itself almost to the hotel’s bedside table edge before FBI Special Agent Kim Otto awakened. She watched the wretched thing snag against the table’s lip and let it dance an unrelenting jig for a few more moments before she chose to answer.
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. E
asily 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.