by Diane Capri
“Why do you think he did it?” Gaspar asked.
“Why did Kent kill both Westons using the same technique the shooter used to kill Weston’s family?” Kimball replied. “Or why did Weston offer himself as a human sacrifice to kill Reacher?”
“Both, I guess.”
She shrugged. “Who knows?”
“What’s your best guess? That’s a place to start.”
“The first attack on Weston today was pretty straightforward. Weston was a cat with nine lives. Michael Vernon, the poor dead veteran who tried to kill him, had to be a guy Weston screwed over, like Agent Crane said.”
“Makes sense.”
“From there, though, it gets tangled. Like I told you, Jenny Lane said Samantha had filed for divorce and offered to testify against her husband to save as much as possible of her assets. Probably a ploy to keep herself out of jail, too.”
“Did Lane share any of that testimony with you?” Gaspar asked.
“Not yet. Tangle number two: Weston got a death sentence when he was diagnosed with advanced small cell lung cancer a few weeks ago.” Gaspar knew of the cancer, but let her talk. It was almost always a good idea to let people talk themselves out. “Untreatable. He was living on borrowed time. If he’d been conscious when they brought him in here this afternoon, he’d probably have refused those surgeries. It’s a miracle he survived them.”
“What’s your theory on Kent? Why the hell would he do it? Weston was loony enough to hire his own hit just in case Reacher failed to kill him.”
“Lung cancer is a nasty way to die,” Kimball pointed out. “Weston was a soldier. He would have preferred a quick bullet to the head.”
“And then he finds out his wife is about to betray him, so he orders up a two-for-one hit?”
Kimball nodded. “I got about that far down that rabbit hole, myself,” she said. “But then—”
“What self-respecting hit man would do his work, then just stand there and let himself be taken into custody?”
Kimball nodded. “Exactly. Not much of a business model. Unless that was part of the deal. Because that’s effectively what the first shooter did, too. He left the Weston house, but he was easy to find.”
“Or it could have been bad timing. Maybe Kent thought he’d have time to get away and we returned too soon,” Gaspar sighed. “Either way, it leaves us nowhere that makes any sense.”
“I wish that were true,” Kimball said, her mouth had pressed into a grim line. “Because now I’m thinking I dropped the ball.”
“How do you figure?”
“I should’ve remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“Weston’s first wife. Meredith Kent Weston. She was Steven Kent’s sister.”
So it could have gone either way. Vengeance or contract. Gaspar had stopped trying to find logic in criminal behavior long ago. Life wasn’t like fiction. Most of the time, he never learned why. Not that it mattered, really. Weston and his wife were just as dead either way.
18
Tampa International Airport had to be one of the easiest airports in the country. Returning the sedan was quick and simple. Security lines were short. For once, they were at the gate without having to run.
Gaspar figured none of this was good news to Otto. She hated flying. The process went better when she didn’t have time to change her mind about boarding.
The seats in the gate area were standard black and silver sling seats. Knockoffs of a contemporary design that most normal people had never heard of. All filled with tourists and kids and wrinklies headed in or out of the Sunshine state to avoid winter weather or celebrate Thanksgiving.
Otto seemed unusually preoccupied, even for her. She had her laptop open, her smart phone at her ear. She’d checked in with the Boss. Working. Always working.
She was number one. He was number two. He was only mildly surprised to realize now that he liked it that way.
Gaspar stretched out, folded his hands over his flat stomach, and closed his eyes. He had about thirty minutes to doze. A rare gift.
Otto pushed his arm to wake him up from sweet oblivion ten minutes later.
“What?” he said, not opening his eyes.
“Kimball sent me a file. Take a look,” she said.
He glanced over to her laptop screen. Two photos. Each of a brown envelope. One larger than the other.
The larger was hand addressed in block printing to Samantha Weston, c/o Jennifer Lane, Esq. The postmark was Washington, D.C. ten days ago. No return address. Apparently, the large envelope had contained the smaller one.
The smaller envelope looked a little worse for age and wear. Dirty smudges around the edges of a square about the size of a deck of playing cards suggested its contents. Black letters that looked like printing on a police report were placed across the flap to show they were written after the envelope was sealed.
Thomas Weston Recorded Statement
10:04 p.m. 9/1997
The envelope’s seal had been broken.
Otto scrolled up the screen to the email from Kimball. The subject line was Received tonight from J.L.
Gaspar said, “Kimball said Lane had offered to share Samantha Weston’s evidence against her husband. That must be it.”
Because Otto would have already noticed, he didn’t mention the handwriting on both envelopes looked like Reacher’s. They’d seen several examples from his old case files where he printed the same way.
Otto nodded. “Kimball attached an audio file of the contents of the cassette tape in the envelope. I’ve listened to it. It’s a full confession. Definitely from Weston in his own voice. He admits everything Reacher said at the time about how and why Weston’s family was killed. And a little bit more.”
“Such as?”
“Two big things. He and Samantha were having an affair at the time of the murders. And Weston knew the gang would kill his family, but he put everything in place and then just let it happen. Like a kid choosing to let his dog sleep in the middle of the road, even though he knows he’s bound to get run over. He knew they were going to die. He simply didn’t know when.”
“So you figure Kent found all of this out somehow and that’s why he killed them both today when he had the chance?” Gaspar asked.
“I don’t have to figure anything. I know he found out today, because Weston told him. Jennifer Lane was right there.”
“Weston’s plan to get Reacher was a bit more clever than we realized, I guess. He had a Plan B if the suicide by Reacher didn’t work at the memorial service.” Gaspar resettled himself in his chair and nodded at Otto to go on.
“Weston was defeated,” she said. “But he had one last chance. When they loaded him into the ambulance at MacDill, he asked to be transported to Tampa Southern. And he asked for Steven Kent, too. Kent told me it was because he had the necessary clearances. But like you said, what clearances would he need to care for an ex-officer?”
“Weston asked for Kent because he knew him. I can buy that,” Gaspar said.
“All Weston had to do was point Kent and let him fire, and make sure Samantha went down with him. He manipulated Kent by telling him what was on that recorded statement and demanding that Jennifer Lane play it.”
Gaspar wasn’t sure all of this held water, but most of it was plausible. And he didn’t want to spend his next twenty minutes arguing with her. Weston wasn’t their case. Never had been.
He closed his eyes again. “Good to know. But I never doubted Reacher’s evidence against Weston anyway. Did you?”
“That’s not the most interesting part though,” she replied.
He felt her place one of her earbuds to his ear and turn up the volume on the recording. “This was on the end of the Weston taped confession.”
For the first time, relaxed in the Tampa airport, eyes closed, almost asleep, Gaspar heard Reacher speak. It had to be him.
The voice wasn’t what he’d expected. Range was higher, for one thing. Tenor, not bass. Speech clipped.
Accent sort of non-descript Midwest American. If Gaspar had been pressed to describe it to another officer, he’d have said Reacher sounded less dangerous than he knew him to be. Maybe that’s how he got close to his targets.
The words were about what Gaspar had guessed, though.
Reacher said, “You got lucky, Weston. You ever step out of line again your whole miserable life, I’ll find you. And I’ll make you sorry. Count on it.”
Gaspar felt his lips turn up of their own accord as he wondered whether Kent had pulled the trigger on that .38 this afternoon at all.
THE END
More adventures with Otto and Gaspar on the Hunt For Jack Reacher coming soon!
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The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:
Jack in the Green
Get Back Jack
Don’t Know Jack
Jack in a Box
Jack and Kill
The Hunt for Justice Series:
Fatal Distraction
Fatal Enemy
Due Justice
Twisted Justice
Secret Justice
Wasted Justice
Raw Justice
Mistaken Justice
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Capri is the New York Times, USA Today, and world-wide bestselling author.
She’s a recovering lawyer and snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, Alliance of Independent Authors, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.
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FROM LEE CHILD
THE REACHER REPORT:
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: “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.
“I love the way the author handled the entire story. The pacing is dead on (ok another pun intended), the story is full of twists and turns like a Reacher novel would be, but it’s another viewpoint of a Reacher story. It’s an outside-in approach to Reacher.
“You might be asking, do they find him? Do they finally meet the infamous Jack Reacher?
“Go...read...now...find out!”
Sounds great, right? You can get it HERE. Check out “Don’t Know Jack,” and let me know what you think.
So that’s it for now ... again, thanks for reading THE AFFAIR, and I hope you’ll like A WANTED MAN just as much in September.
Lee Child
Table of Contents
Reviews
Additional Works
Copyright
Dedication
Cast of Primary Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Lee Child: The Reacher Report