by Diane Capri
Nothing was amiss.
She unlocked the entry door, walked through, closed and locked it behind her. Just in case.
Then she made her way down the stairs, listening for intruders.
She heard none.
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused and listened harder. Silence.
She turned the flashlight’s beam on again and investigated every inch of the shop. It was a relatively small place, filled to capacity with windsurfing paraphernalia. She spent a full fifteen minutes looking in all of the dark places.
She unlocked the front door and stepped out onto the sand. She inhaled the cool salty air. The moon was full tonight. The brilliant orb illuminated the darkness better than a klieg spotlight at the county fair back home in New Brunswick. She watched the waves crash against the Siesta Beach Pier for a couple of minutes. The moon cast a bright light on the crests of the waves giving them a magical quality that never grew old.
She walked all the way around the small building, shining the light on the sand near the windows. No footprints, big or small. No indication that someone tried to obliterate footprints, either. The windows remained closed and locked.
Patty returned to the front entrance having found no evidence of a break-in or indication that a burglar had tried to enter and failed. She should have felt better. She didn’t.
Because she’d heard something that had awakened her at three-fifteen. She was sure of it. So she made the rounds once more, just to calm her nagging worry.
When she’d eventually satisfied herself that no home invasion had happened, and no proof that a burglary was imminent, she reversed her steps, locked the door securely, and trudged up to the flat. She unlocked the door and locked it again when she went inside.
In the corridor, she turned the flashlight off, opened the bedroom door, and slipped into the warm bed next to Shorty.
If Shorty had noticed her absence, he gave no sign of it. He slept as peacefully as any baby Patty had ever seen.
She listened to his gentle snoring, focusing on the rhythm like a metronome, until she fell into an uneasy sleep.
Patty awakened again four hours later. The sun’s early rays brightened the bedroom through the closed window blinds.
Before she was fully conscious, she knew Shorty was not there. She reached across the bed and touched the cold sheets to be sure.
He’d gone windsurfing, probably. Nothing to be alarmed about. He went out early most mornings to take advantage of the waves and the mostly deserted beach. He’d be back in a few hours.
She stretched and looked at the clock across the room on Shorty’s dresser. It was seven thirty. Which would be ten thirty on the east coast. Her body clock had finally adjusted to the three-hour time difference, but her brain still did the quick calculation several times a day.
The shop opened at ten o’clock and her windsurfing lesson with a tourist wasn’t until noon. She could sleep another hour. So she did.
Strange dreams invaded her sleep this time. The man she’d met that night in Laconia. He was tall and broad. Fair hair and steely blue eyes. Not quite handsome. He’d been dressed in work clothes. Brown work boots. He’d appeared out of nowhere just when she’d needed him most. She might never have found Shorty, let alone saved his life, without him.
He’d helped her get Shorty into the car and the money into the car. Then he’d sent them on their way. Reacher, he’d said his name was.
She’d never seen him again or tried to find him. No reason to. She’d tried to put that entire Laconia experience behind her. And Shorty had been out of his head with pain that night. He didn’t remember Reacher at all.
In her dream, he was there. In Siesta Beach. Watching them. Menacing.
She sat bolt upright in bed, her back wet with sweat.
In the weeks and months that followed Laconia, she’d half persuaded herself that she’d imagined him.
Why the hell was she dreaming about Reacher now? After all this time? She’d never done that before.
But she knew the answer.
Because of Shorty’s story about meeting a big man on the beach. A big man dressed in work clothes and work boots. A man who could have been Reacher.
Which was crazy, wasn’t it? Why would Reacher approach Shorty here and now? She’d told him they were going to Florida, not San Diego. What could he possibly want?
Whatever it was, she’d give it to him. He’d saved her life, and Shorty’s too. She owed him. Where she came from, people paid their debts. Simple as that.
CHAPTER TEN
Saturday, February 26
6:30 a.m.
Laconia, New Hampshire
A hard knock on her door followed by a male voice proclaiming, “Room Service!” loud enough to be heard on the street jarred Kim awake. She jumped out of the warm bed onto the icy floor and belted the inn’s plush fleece robe around her on the way to the door.
The peep hole was positioned above her head, but she grabbed her gun, stuffed it into her pocket and took a chance. She opened the door, secure in the knowledge that the Boss would eventually see the whole scene on video if anything went awry here.
A tall young man stood holding a heavy tray.
She waved him inside, let him set up, signed the check, and he left. The whole business didn’t take more than sixty seconds, which was long enough to start her teeth chattering. Apparently the inn tried to save fuel costs by lowering the heat at night. The room didn’t have a separate heating system, so she couldn’t turn up the thermostat. She glanced longingly toward the still warm bed, resisting its magnetic field only with superhuman effort.
Kim poured a cup of hot black coffee and took it to the sofa out of range of the bed’s field of attraction. She folded her legs under her body, opened her laptop, checked her encrypted messages, and located her phone to return Gaspar’s call from yesterday.
Gaspar had taken a job working for a hotshot private investigator based in Houston that paid about five times his FBI salary. But that didn’t mean he’d changed his sleeping habits. Or rather, his nonsleeping habits. Gaspar slept whenever he could, but never for very long. He’d probably been awake at least a couple of hours already.
He answered on the first ring. “Good morning, Sunshine.”
“You sound tired, Chico,” she replied, falling back on the easy banter they’d enjoyed when they were teamed on the Reacher case. Truth was, she missed him. They hadn’t been partners for long, but they’d been through some tough times. She trusted Gaspar, and that was a rare thing for her.
She heard the weary grin in his voice when he replied, “Yeah, well, I’m always tired. You know that, Suzie Wong.”
Gaspar had been wounded in the line of duty, more than once. He was collecting disability pay before she’d met him. But he never gave up or gave in to the pain, and he’d never left her without backup, either. As he’d put it, he had five kids and twenty years to go before he could rest.
But all of that was before he’d retired and left her without a partner.
“So what’s up?” Kim pulled the heavy robe closer, took a big swig of the coffee, and waited.
“I heard you got called out to New Hampshire,” he said quietly.
Kim frowned and her tone notched over into annoyance. “How the hell?”
Did she have a leak to worry about now? Since her Reacher assignment was so far off the books even the FBI’s black ops people couldn’t find it, the only person who might have told him where she was and why was the Boss. Which was not the least bit likely. She felt her resting heart rate kick up about twenty beats a minute.
“Climb down off the ledge, Otto. Smithers called me from the Laconia airport yesterday. Said he’d be picking you up and wanted to know whether he should wait for me,” Gaspar replied patiently. He paused to let his explanation sink in. “I called to offer my help. Long distance. Such as it is.”
Kim’s pulse slowed and after a couple of steadying breaths, she said, “Thanks. I may need to take you up
on that. You have all that pricey tech at your fingertips now. Could come in handy.”
“Exactly. And I’m not constrained by FBI rules or unbridled ambition or any sort of neurotic need to please the Boss,” he said, suggesting she was laced tightly into a straitjacket by all three.
Which she was. No way around it. Not until she found Reacher and could claw her way out. And maybe not even then.
She did have a driving ambition and she wouldn’t apologize for that. Even though she’d need a miracle to make it to the FBI Director’s job after everything that had happened. She’d bent a lot of FBI rules and broken a few more since this assignment started, all of which would hound her indefinitely.
But she’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of making Director if she quit the bureau. Not that she’d quit. Except for her marriage, which was not her fault or her choice, she’d never quit anything in her life. She wouldn’t start down the quitter’s road now.
“How long are you going to keep me hanging here, Sunshine?” Gaspar asked in that low, lazy way that meant his wife and kids were still sleeping.
Gaspar’s fifth child and only son had been born a few weeks ago. The latest arrival proved to be the last straw for his FBI career. He’d said he needed a better paying job and that’s why he retired. Which was probably true. Or at least, the desire to take care of his family was a big part of his motivation.
He’d promised to keep helping her until she found Reacher. Neither of them were sure exactly how he could help without being physically by her side, though.
“I can’t send you the files now that you’re no longer on the team,” Kim said, and he picked up the bait just as she’d hoped. Every conversation taking place on this phone was recorded.
“10-4, copy that.” He hesitated as if he had more to say, and then she heard a baby crying in the background. Instead, he rang off. “Gotta go. Keep in touch.”
The next thing she heard was dead air. Which lasted about five seconds before she got confirmation. A padded envelope on her breakfast tray that she hadn’t noticed earlier began vibrating. The envelope was exactly like several she’d received before.
She picked up the envelope, tore it open, dumped the burner cell phone onto the sofa beside her, and stared at its dancing for a while.
“Otto,” she said when she answered, whipping her head around. She narrowed her eyes, looking for devices the Boss might have commandeered to spy on her.
There were several options. The television, the phones, and her laptop could all have been remotely programmed to do the job. Hell, about a zillion flowers on the ridiculous wallpaper could hide almost anything.
“You’ve become exceedingly paranoid lately,” the Boss said, confirming her suspicions. He could see her. Otherwise, why say something like that?
She said nothing.
“You’re interviewing Shaw and Amos this morning,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And after that?”
“Nothing in the files you sent me would have attracted Reacher to Laconia.” She picked up a well-worn flimsy booklet, not many pages, maybe about the size of an L.L. Bean summer catalogue but not nearly as sophisticated. It wasn’t dated, but the yellowed pages suggested it was a few years old, at least. It looked like someone had created it on a home computer for locals to use and passed a few copies around. She flipped it open to the correct page. “But I found four Reachers living in this general area. If Jack came anywhere near Laconia, he probably had a good reason to look them up.”
“Such as?”
“You tell me.”
The silence lasted awhile. She waited.
“Give me the names. I’ll get whatever intel we have,” he said, finally.
“David Reacher, Mark Reacher, William Reacher,” she said, reading the addresses and phone numbers from the page slowly enough for him to jot them down.
“I thought you said four?”
She smirked. “So I did. The fourth is listed as Old Man Reacher.”
“And you think there’s some significance in that?”
“You tell me,” she said again.
He sighed, as if he’d long ago resigned himself to her insubordination. “Call me back after you interview Shaw and Amos.”
Once again, she was holding nothing but dead air. She’d have called him a few choice names, but she knew he could see her and hear her and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
She dropped the burner phone onto the sofa, grabbed her toiletries, and walked into the bathroom. He might have listening devices planted there, too, but even the Boss wasn’t crude enough to put cameras inside her bathroom.
She hoped.
She brushed her teeth, flushed the toilet, and turned on the shower. Before she stepped into the hot water, she sent a text to Gaspar. He’d know what to do.
It was already after seven o’clock. Smithers would be here in forty-five minutes.
She took a brief hot shower, toweled off, and dressed quickly in black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. Heavy socks and boots on her feet and a wool blazer completed her outfit, which was pretty much the same as yesterday’s. She swept her hair back into a tight bun and pinned it to the base of her neck.
Kim rummaged in her laptop bag until she found what she wanted, snagged her parka, and moved into the corridor. She’d bought three burners from three different locations at the Detroit airport, just in case. She’d also sent three burners to Gaspar by overnight delivery service. She’d labeled them to be sure she called the correct numbers.
Seven-thirty. She barely had time to leave the building, place the call, and get back before Smithers showed up asking too many questions. She slid her laptop into the bag, tossed the strap over her shoulder, and hurried down the front stairs to the lobby, prepared to do battle with the sticky front door.
A couple of agents on Smithers’s team were on their way out. Kim wasn’t a particularly religious person, but she gave a little prayer of thanks when she saw they’d opened the front door. She hurried up behind them and slipped through before they closed the door behind them.
On the porch, she pulled out the first burner and dialed the number she’d memorized. Gaspar picked up immediately.
“I don’t have much time,” she said, as she hurried to the sidewalk, trusting him to understand the situation.
“Tell me what you need.”
“I’ll text you four names, addresses, and phone numbers on burner number two. I need everything you can get as soon as you can get it,” she replied.
“Is this going to get me killed, Suzie Wong?” he teased, with a hint of seriousness.
She squeezed her eyes shut and crossed her fingers and forced a lighthearted tone into her voice. “After all the times I’ve saved your ass, Chico, you think I’d want your corpse on my conscience now?”
He rewarded her effort with a genuine laugh before he hung up. She pulled the second burner from her pocket and texted the data she had available on the four Reachers as she made her way back to The Laconia Inn.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Saturday, February 26
7:05 a.m.
Syracuse, New York
Last night when Jake returned to the room, Julia was already in her bed. She hadn’t spoken to him, which probably meant she was really pissed off. Not that he’d expected her to be grateful or anything. Especially after she’d called him Sir Galahad in that sneering tone.
He’d ignored her.
She might have lain awake for a while, but Jake had been blissfully unaware. The tension of driving through the blizzard, beer drinking, and fighting Carl, had compounded his exhaustion. He had slept eight hours and twelve minutes without interruption.
When he opened his eyes lazily he heard a noise. He turned his head toward the closed door. Maybe maids outside his room.
He stretched and yawned loudly enough to be sure Julia heard, just in case she awakened disoriented or something. He needn’t have bothered. She was already gone. Her backpac
k was gone, too.
Which suited him just fine.
He was in no rush to leave. But his stomach growled and he realized he was hungry. Coffee would be good, too. This wasn’t the kind of hotel that provided room service, but there was a do-it-yourself breakfast set out downstairs, he recalled the desk clerk telling him last night.
Jake threw back the covers and pulled on his jeans. He slipped his torso into yesterday’s sweatshirt, stuffed his feet into his boots, and grabbed his coat off the desk chair near the door. Which was when he noticed Julia had written something on the notepad by the phone.
Thanks for the lift. Sorry about Carl. Drive safely. And almost as an afterthought, she’d dashed off Don’t pick up hitchikers! Julia.
The note made him grin. He crushed the paper in his big paw and tossed it into the trash can on his way out in search of breakfast. He’d come back to shower and then get on the road. He was going to Cleveland by way of Buffalo, which was where Julia was headed. If he saw her on the road, maybe he’d pass her and wave before he backed up to offer her a ride.
He tired of waiting for the elevator and hoofed it downstairs in search of the advertised free breakfast in the lobby. The best thing about the setup was a two-gallon urn of hot coffee. The rest was pastries and bite-sized muffins. No eggs or toast or bacon. He filled two large cups with the coffee and grabbed a paw full of muffins to quiet his rumbling stomach, wondering how far he’d need to travel to find a good diner.
Jake went back to his room for the shower, dressed in clean jeans and a clean sweater, stuffed the dirty clothes into a plastic bag and made a mental note to find a laundry at some point. He donned his coat again, collected his backpack, and glanced around the small room to be sure he hadn’t left anything.
He’d paid the bill last night, but he stopped at the registration desk to drop off the keys and formally check out. These roadside hotels had been known to add a few extra charges to the credit card. He wanted a receipt to prove the extras weren’t his. Just in case. He didn’t have money to burn. Briefly, he wondered what that would be like.