by Diane Capri
She switched to the flood beam mode. The flashlight provided a consistent circle of illumination seven feet in diameter at a distance up to six feet, which didn’t help much. The blizzard conditions all but eliminated the light’s effectiveness in both modes, even if she’d been tall enough to see around the big truck.
All of which meant she couldn’t see the approaching bear, but she could smell him. A wall of stink too thick to ignore.
She ducked back into the cab.
“He’s got to be close and headed directly toward the team. The stench is so thick out there I could hardly breathe without gagging. We need to stop him before he attacks them,” Kim said. She located her service weapon, which should fire normally under the weather conditions because it had been kept warm inside.
Smithers grabbed the rifle. “Tranq darts are fine under the right circumstances. But not against a hungry black bear defending its carrion.”
Kim climbed down to the cold ground, flashlight in one hand and her service weapon held ready in the other.
Smithers stepped out on the other side of the truck with the rifle.
Kim directed the flashlight into the dense trees on the west side of the vehicles.
The team was located about a mile east of the truck.
The bear could be approaching from any direction, but if he was headed toward the two bodies in the clearing, he’d most likely be traveling from west to east. He’d cross the two-track somewhere near where she was standing.
She sharpened her concentration, straining to hear him in the night. Even if he roared out from a distance, she might miss him because of the truck’s big diesel engine noise right near her.
The only advance warning she’d had so far was his scent. He was upwind from her and she was downwind from him, which gave her a slim advantage.
She hoped.
Smithers closed the door to the truck and moved north, rifle at the ready.
Kim walked a few feet south toward the SUV behind the truck, her back to Smithers. Made a wide arc with the flashlight. Inhaled again. The animal’s stink seemed to diminish. Maybe.
She turned toward Smithers. She saw him up ahead, standing in the diesel’s headlights beam. He peered into the darkness along the two-track. He paused a few seconds and then turned to walk back.
Everything happened so damn fast after that.
The animal came out of nowhere.
A big black shadow at first. Longer than Kim’s full height. Heavier than her by more than a hundred pounds.
She opened her mouth to warn Smithers.
Which was when she heard the huffing noise. The noise was like nothing she’d ever heard before. Instantly, she understood.
Smithers must have heard it, too, because he started to pivot on his right foot and raise the rifle, in one smooth, practiced motion.
Before he could turn around to get off a shot, the bear charged forward, landing on Smithers with his full weight.
The bear knocked Smithers to the ground and the rifle discharged into the air. The noise startled the bear and he huffed louder as he mauled Smithers about the torso through his heavy coat.
The two wrestled on the ground. Kim’s superior marksmanship was a moot point. The blinding snow and poor lighting combined so that she could barely distinguish the bear from the man in the darkness.
The last thing she wanted to do was miss the bear and hit Smithers. But if she didn’t shoot soon, the bear would do serious damage to them both.
She waited for what felt like an eternity.
Finally the bear lifted up on his hind legs and she had a clear shot.
“Get out of the way!” she warned Smithers.
Smithers struggled to roll aside, putting as much distance between him and the bear as the moment permitted.
She aimed her Glock and emptied the full magazine into the bear’s body.
She was sure the bullets landed somewhere in all that fur. But visibility was so bad that she couldn’t see entry points or exit wounds.
Fifteen rounds seemed to make no difference to the bear for a full second that lasted forever.
Smithers crabbed further away, out of the cone of weak light, into the blackness. She heard him scrambling to his feet. He stood off to the side, breathing heavily.
Her mind raced to locate another weapon.
Smithers had dropped the rifle in the snow somewhere.
The others were in the truck.
She’d never reach either in time to make a difference.
She looked around frantically for anything she could use to defeat the bear that was more than twice her size and mad as hell.
Which was when she caught a break.
The bullets had done their job.
The bear’s bloody body simply collapsed onto the snow.
The noise of gunshots reached her ears from the direction of the clearing in the woods where the team was working on the bodies.
She could think of only one reason they’d be firing out there tonight. They must have seen another bear. If it came running this way, she had no weapon available to defend them.
“Smithers!” Kim called over the noise. She shined her flashlight in the direction she’d last seen him.
He was upright but bent over, holding his torso, not moving. She struggled toward him through the deep snow. “Get back in the truck!”
She directed her flashlight around, but didn’t immediately locate the rifle.
She met Smithers ten feet away and he leaned on her the rest of the way back. She’d have made a joke about the petite woman supporting the huge man, had the situation not been so unpredictably frightening.
They scrambled into the cab of the truck, closed the doors, and collapsed against the seatbacks, breathing hard.
“Smithers, are you okay?”
“I think so.” He pulled the shredded gloves off and unzipped his torn coat to examine his body. “No bleeding anywhere. But I’ll have some bruises and be plenty sore tomorrow.”
“You can breathe normally? No sharp pains?” Ribs were easy to break and could puncture a lung or other internal organs. He could have internal bleeding and not recognize it immediately.
He continued patting himself down, checking for pain points. “I’m good. I’ve been in worse fights over the years, Otto. Relax, will you?”
Kim was about to give him a snappy rejoinder when she heard gunshots from the direction of the clearing.
She adjusted the video feed screens and watched as Amos fired the rifle again. Kim’s eyes were drawn to a second black bear, even larger than the dead one lying outside the truck.
The bear rushed Amos and knocked her to the ground with a mighty roar. His powerful jaws clamped down on Amos’s body, tearing her flesh through the yellow jumpsuit.
Deputy Gonzalez took aim and fired, hitting the bear’s thick skull with enough force to rip the bones apart.
This one died quickly.
Gonzalez and the two agents shoved the dead bear off Amos. They lifted her onto one of the snowmobiles and fired up the machines to return to the two-track.
Detective Amos needed medical care as quickly as they could get her to the hospital.
DNA collection from the bears would have to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Saturday, February 26
7:15 p.m.
Laconia, New Hampshire
Gonzalez and the two FBI agents from Smithers’s team got Amos into the SUV and then stayed behind to load up the snowmobiles on the trailer hitched to the big truck.
Smithers was in no shape to drive, so Kim got behind the wheel of the SUV. She could barely touch the accelerator and the brake pedals. She’d pulled the seat all the way up and raised it as high as it would go, but she still felt like a child in a booster seat at a high-topped bar table.
Kim drove the SUV slowly and carefully back to Laconia with Detective Amos laid out on the back seat, moaning. The blizzard had deterred most people from braving the roads.
&nbs
p; Amos had been unconscious the whole way, which was probably better than being awake to feel every jab of pain along the road. The ride had been harrowing and several times, Kim worried they might slide off the road into a ditch and not make it back tonight.
Kim finally pulled up in front of the emergency room. She jumped out to get the paramedics and then stood aside as Amos was wheeled into the hospital on a stretcher.
The paramedics had insisted Smithers come in for tests the moment they’d seen his clothing and guessed he’d been mauled, too. He’d objected, but the doctor came out and escorted him inside.
Kim parked, collected her laptop from the SUV, and followed them. She spotted Jim Shaw, the Laconia P.D. chief of detectives, in the waiting room. She poured two cups of hot, black coffee and offered one to him.
“Deputy Gonzalez called me from the road, but the connection was bad due to the weather. I didn’t get many details,” he said, his voice as tired as the look on his face. “You want to catch me up on what happened out there?”
Kim quickly recited the facts without embellishment. “No way for all six of us to get out to the victims, so Agent Smithers and I stayed back. Detective Amos led the team through the forest to the clearing. Amos and three others—two agents and Gonzalez.”
The images of what happened out there were still fresh in her mind. She paused to sip the coffee and inhale some composure. “They were attacked by a black bear. Probably about four hundred pounds, based on what I could see on the video feeds. Could have been larger. Amos got off a couple of good shots, but the bear didn’t go down. He attacked her and mauled her before Gonzalez killed him. Gonzalez is the hero in this. Without his quick thinking, Amos would be in a lot worse shape.”
“I see,” Shaw said wearily, kneading the tension from the back of his neck with one hand. “First thing Amos will want to know is did they collect good evidence samples from the victims?”
“I think so.” Kim nodded. “First, they confirmed what they’d seen earlier on the drone footage was actually two human bodies. No way to tell how long they’d been out there. They were decomposed, but they’d been mauled and frozen and thawed.”
Shaw let out a long stream of breath. “Bears would have to be really hungry to go for food that old. Any ID on the vics? Wallets or dog tags or anything?”
“Dog tags?”
“We have a lot of military types out here in the summer months and during hunting seasons in the fall, too,” Shaw explained.
Kim shook her head. “No dog tags. DNA and dental records will be all the medical examiners will have to work with. The agents took photos, but the faces are gone. No fingerprints or anything, either.”
“Nothing they could tell about the bodies at all?” Shaw drained his coffee and rolled the empty paper cup between both palms.
“They were probably males, guessing from the size. Tattered synthetic black clothing suggested they weren’t hunters. At least they weren’t worried about being shot accidentally by other hunters. If they’d been worried about that, they’d have worn orange or another visible color,” Kim said.
“Meaning they didn’t die during hunting season when every hunter out there is probably drunk and could have killed them without even realizing it,” Shaw replied with a wry, sad grin.
Kim nodded. “You have any missing persons reports for two adult males, gone from twelve to twenty-four months or so?”
Shaw replied, “Not that I recall off the top of my head. But now that we know what we’re looking for, we’ll check it out, for sure.”
Kim nodded. She poured herself another cup of coffee and opened her laptop to write her reports and upload them to her secure server. Paying her insurance premium, she called it. Like all insurance, she hoped she’d never need anything she included in those reports. But with Gaspar retired and only the Boss and Finlay knowing what she was working on, it felt safer to have a written record somewhere. Just in case.
When she finished, Smithers and Amos were still inside the bowels of the hospital somewhere. She wandered over to the visitors desk and asked about Old Man Reacher. As Myrna had guessed would happen, Reacher had been treated and released. Probably back home now in front of his cozy fire eating whatever the neighborhood meals-on-wheels brought him for dinner tonight. He was a tough old bird. They both were.
The Boss’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket on her way back to her seat in the waiting room. She took a detour to an empty office and closed the door for privacy.
“Otto,” she said when she answered, as if anyone else ever picked up this particular phone, or that he didn’t know precisely whom he was calling.
“Reacher’s not there,” The Boss said without greeting. It wasn’t a question. Because he already knew. Either he’d been watching her or he’d used other resources, or both.
“Some are. Some aren’t,” she replied. Long gone were the days when she’d responded yes, sir, and no, sir, to him. He didn’t like it. She didn’t care. He had no leverage to change her behavior and no desire to change his own. The relationship was what it was.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning at least two Reachers are still here in Laconia. Margaret and the old man.”
“Right,” he replied. He wasn’t interested in them. “Sounds like Jake Reacher is headed toward San Diego. Looking for his uncle.”
Which answered at least one question. The Boss had been listening in on her conversations. Otherwise, he wouldn’t know what Mr. Reacher had told her.
“Maybe,” she replied.
“Commercial jets will get you there faster. Can you get to Boston Logan tonight?”
“Absolutely not.” Fly tonight? He had to be out of his mind. She hated flying under the best of circumstances. Which was not what she was enjoying at the moment. No way in hell would she get in a plane tonight, even if she could make it to Boston. Not for a million dollars. “We’ve got whiteout conditions here. I’ll be lucky to find a bite to eat and get back to my hotel.”
“Tomorrow then. Call if you need transport. Instructions in the usual place,” he said before he hung up.
“I’m perfectly fine. Thanks for asking,” she said sarcastically into the dead air, resisting the urge to throw the phone in the trash can. As it was, she scowled and dropped the offensive plastic rectangle into her pocket.
She returned to the waiting room. Detective Shaw was still there, still waiting, still worried.
“Amos will be in surgery for a while and Smithers isn’t out of the exam rooms yet, either.” He paused. “Buy you dinner while we wait? Hospital food isn’t terrible here.”
She figured he wanted nothing more than to pass the time, but the adrenaline that had been coursing through her since she’d first smelled the bear was gone and she suddenly realized how exhausted she was. A good night’s sleep was all she wanted at the moment.
He must have sensed her resistance because he sweetened the offer. “While we eat, you can ask me whatever questions you like. How’s that?”
“Sure. Sounds like a plan.” She wanted to talk to Smithers again before she left town in the morning and he was still back there somewhere. She’d wait for him anyway. Which meant she didn’t have anything better to do at the moment and she actually was hungry. She tossed the strap of her laptop case over her shoulder and walked along with Shaw.
The hospital was small but surprisingly new and well equipped. The corridors were wide and clean and well lit and mostly unoccupied. Given the blizzard, only seriously ill patients or those with true emergencies were likely to show up tonight.
Shaw led the way around a few corners and through a couple of doors until they reached the cafeteria. They split up to order hot food. Her hamburger took a little longer to cook than dishing up his hot beef stew. By the time she’d collected her food, he’d found a table by the window. She joined him there.
“We have a front row seat on the blizzard, and we don’t have to freeze to death to get it,” he joked.
“That’s just
swell, isn’t it?” She offloaded the contents of her tray onto the table and sat across from him. After a couple of minutes, she said, “What didn’t you tell me about Jack Reacher?”
He cocked his head. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m completing a background check on him for the FBI’s Special Personnel Task Force. He’s being considered for a classified assignment,” she said by rote. It was a question she’d answered dozens of times by now. And it was only a sliver of the truth.
“What kind of classified assignment?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. My clearance isn’t high enough.” She took a big bite of the hamburger to fend off any need to answer further questions. He took the hint.
In the short silence, Kim swallowed her mouthful of burger and asked, “Was Amos telling me the truth? She didn’t have a sexual relationship with Reacher when he was here?”
Shaw blushed from his collar to his receding hairline. He cleared his throat. “Uh, well, not that I’ve asked her. But you do know Brenda’s married, right? Husband’s a good guy, too. Newlyweds. Your guy Reacher the kind of officer who’d move in on another guy’s wife?”
Kim thought about it briefly and then shook her head. She thought Reacher made his own rules in every arena. If he wanted another guy’s wife, he’d probably find a way to justify the affair. But each one of the women that Kim knew about had been single when she’d hooked up with Reacher.
She replied truthfully, “I’ve seen no evidence that Reacher’s done so before.”
Shaw nodded. “So I’d say that’s a hard no to any sort of affair between Reacher and Amos, then. Next question.”
“What kind of trouble did Reacher get into while he was here?”
“No complaints were filed as far as I know,” Shaw replied using the same dodge he’d offered before while spooning up his beef stew with a biscuit.
He didn’t quite lie. But he hadn’t told the whole truth, either. He’d finessed the question. Probably for the same reason others she’d asked in police departments in other small towns had sidestepped the Reacher questions. Every time, Reacher had been involved in questionable behaviors. Sometimes, he’d have ended up in jail or worse if he’d been arrested and prosecuted.