by Diane Capri
The RMP finally reached Toussaint’s and he parked out front in the angled slot next to her rented Lexus.
“Seriously, watch yourself,” Greyson said in a somber tone. “Price is a mean drunk like I said. Truth be told, he’s not all that pleasant when he’s sober, either. You embarrassed him in front of his pals. He won’t forgive or forget.”
“No problem.” She had a hundred questions she wanted to ask him, but they could wait until tomorrow. She reached for the door handle and pulled it to open the door. “I don’t need Price to forgive me or to forget what happened tonight. Just the opposite. He needs to remember. If he tries anything with me again, he’ll be twice as sorry.”
Greyson swept a steady gaze her way but said nothing.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “Any time.”
Kim stepped out and closed the door. The wind had passed and now the atmosphere felt like a hot steamy shower.
She hurried toward Toussaint’s front door, pulling her card key from her pocket.
Behind her, she heard Chief Greyson turn off the SUV’s engine. He pressed the key fob and the alarm chirped loudly.
He took half a dozen long strides and met up with her at the hotel’s front steps.
“You don’t need to walk me to the door, Chief,” she said. “Luke Price isn’t going to come after me tonight. He can’t even walk right at the moment. The McKinneys won’t either. The Cardinals game will keep them occupied until they’re too drunk.”
“You’ve definitely got those old rednecks pegged. Nothing will draw them away from the Cardinals.” He stayed right with her up the stairs and across the wide porch to the front door. “But tomorrow, they’ll be looking for something else to amuse themselves.”
“I’ll be careful.” She waved her key card over the sensor on the right side of the door and heard the lock click open. She grabbed the door handle and pushed.
When she went inside, Chief Greyson came in behind her.
Kim focused a surprised expression in his direction.
“Don’t worry. No need to demonstrate your self-defense techniques on me,” he said, raising both hands palms out in response. “I live here. Third floor. In the back, where it’s quieter.”
“Don’t you have a house somewhere?” she asked as they climbed the stairs to the upper floors.
“Wife got the house when we split. And it’s just easier to live here. Janine is a friendly proprietor. I can eat most days at Libby’s. I don’t even need to do my own laundry. The department does most of it and the staff here does the rest,” he said.
They’d reached the second-floor landing. Kim moved toward Room Seventeen. “I’d love to hear all about it, but it’s been a long day. Goodnight, Chief Greyson.”
“See you tomorrow in my office as planned, Agent Otto.” He kept climbing toward the third floor.
After he’d disappeared up the stairs, she used the key card to enter her room. When she opened the door, a blast of frigid air hit her in the face. Someone had cranked up the air-conditioning to what felt like sub-zero levels.
Kim closed the door behind her and hustled deeper into the room to adjust the thermostat. It wouldn’t budge. She could get maintenance on it in the morning. But what would she do tonight?
A wall of drapes reminded her that the room overlooked the street, which was still deserted. She opened the window to let the cold out and allow the steamy night air inside.
She kept her coat on while she waited to warm up.
The room was equipped with a minibar. She rummaged around inside until she found a small bottle of red wine and a plastic wine glass. After she changed into red microfiber pajamas, she slipped her coat on again to stay warm. She set up her laptop and her secure hot spot on the desk.
Kim wrote a few paragraphs briefly describing the day’s events and uploaded the pages to her private server. Paying her insurance premium, she called it. Someday, she’d need the reports to justify her actions. She’d long ago accepted that she wouldn’t come out of the hunt for Reacher unscathed. She hoped to come out alive and still employed, though. That’s what her insurance reports were for.
After she finished the secret document, she dashed off an official version of events and uploaded it for the Boss. He’d be on the phone in the morning before daylight if she didn’t update him now. The report would keep him out of her way for a few hours.
Then she sipped the wine and thought about Bonnie Nightingale, Carolyn Blackhawk, and Brian Jasper. She didn’t waste a moments’ worth of brain cells on Luke Price or his buddies.
She considered calling her former partner to get his view of the whole situation, but she worried that he might be sleeping. Sleep was precious to Gaspar. His painful right leg didn’t often allow enough peace for sleeping. He might have found a period of respite. She wouldn’t awaken him when she simply needed a sounding board.
Still, the situation was more than odd.
Chief Greyson had said Jasper, the motorcyclist who had hit that sedan head-on this afternoon, wasn’t likely to live through the night.
Which would mean three citizens from Carter’s Crossing, all died within a week. An oddity in itself. Kim figured three citizens from this town under the age of sixty wouldn’t normally die in an entire year. Statistics being what they were, the total population of this place just wasn’t large enough.
She cocked her head and took another sip of the sour wine, swishing it around in her mouth in a failed attempt to improve it by infusing some air. After a few moments, she gave up and swallowed the mouthful with a wrinkled nose, still musing over the details.
These three deaths were unusual.
Each life had been extinguished too young.
Each met a violent, unpredictable end.
What were the odds of a thing like that happening in a place like this?
Slim, for sure.
She opened an official website and searched the three names. As an afterthought, she searched for Luke Price, too.
Vital statistics appeared on all four.
She scanned the pages.
Aside from sharing a Carter’s Crossing mailing address, they seemed to have nothing in common. Different jobs, different ethnicities, different everything. If there was a pattern here, she couldn’t see it.
She’d put Gaspar on the search in the morning. He had access to intel she couldn’t hope to locate. Mostly because she was handicapped by the Boss’s rules and the law. Gaspar wasn’t.
Kim closed the laptop and finished the wine. It was late. She wouldn’t learn anything more tonight. Time to get some sleep.
She slipped out of her coat, climbed into bed, and fell into the deep oblivion of alcohol enhanced exhaustion. The kind of sleep Gaspar never managed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Thursday, May 12
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
3:35 a.m.
The roads were quiet at this hour. The rain had stopped. He’d made good time driving back to Carter’s Crossing. He’d only stopped once, at an all-night drive-through fast food joint for burgers and a strong black coffee to combat fatigue. The coffee helped. But not enough. He could barely hold his eyes open.
He rolled into town, driving under the speed limit, using the side streets, and backed the stolen SUV into the alley behind the grocery store. He removed the license plate and then wedged the SUV out of sight between the dumpsters.
Someone would notice it there sometime in the next few days and the vehicle would be towed. It would sit in impound for a while out in the county lot. By the time the Memphis owner claimed the vehicle, it wouldn’t matter anymore. He’d be gone.
He tossed the license plate and the keys into an alley dumpster and hustled along in the shadows through the residential areas and toward Main Street.
He glanced at his watch. He was due at Kelham soon. Which didn’t give him much time for shuteye.
One thing the army had taught him well was to sleep
when you can and eat when you can. He’d been well trained. Ninety minutes of sleep would suffice until he could steal another few hours later.
He felt like a warrior, returning home from a dangerous mission, triumphant and invincible. He was one of the best soldiers the army had ever trained. He had the medals and the scars to prove it.
Nothing could stop him.
Twenty-six hours from now, a few more loose ends to deal with, and he’d be free and clear.
Today’s rain had softened the ground and left puddles along the alley. He’d stepped in two or three holes already. His shoes and socks were soaked. But he stayed in the alley, avoiding CCTV cameras until he reached the side street and turned right.
He saw no one wandering around Main Street and didn’t expect to. All the citizens of Carter’s Crossing were asleep, inside their homes, buttoned up with the air-conditioning running.
They’d had a few tornadoes since he’d been here. He’d seen the devastation the families had suffered when they slept through the tornado sirens in the middle of the night.
Hell, they slept through the midnight train night after night for their entire lives.
Nothing short of a nuclear blast on Main Street would awaken any of them, and maybe not even that.
He walked along the sidewalk, a block north of Toussaint’s Hotel.
Everybody in town knew Sheriff Greyson lived there since he split with his wife and lost his house. He was even less worried about being heard by anyone inside the hotel. That thing was ancient and built like a fortress.
But the last thing he needed was to be seen by a sheriff wandering around, unable to sleep.
He had no idea whether Greyson suffered from insomnia. But an ounce of prevention was always better than a pound of cure. So he hugged the shadows close to the buildings and stayed well away from the hotel windows.
He reached Main Street and crossed quickly, looking left and right to be sure no one else was wandering around. He kept moving, headed toward the alley behind Brannan’s.
He’d left his vehicle there. He intended to retrieve it and make his way back to Kelham. He didn’t expect to see anyone, or to be seen.
He was almost in the clear.
The Cardinals’ game had ended, so Brannan’s would be closed up for the night. Even the McKinneys would be home by now and passed out, drunk.
He took another quick look over his shoulder, confirmed no one was following him, and ducked into the alley.
He didn’t see the lumpy form lying on the side of the pavement until it was too late.
The guy tripped him at just the right moment when his stride was off-balance. “Where ya headed in such a hurry?”
His left foot landed wrong on the pavement and slipped into a pothole. He turned his ankle and went down, landing on his left side in the filthy gutter near the dumpster. Rage pounded in his temples.
The lighting was dim and he didn’t get a good look at his attacker. But he recognized the voice.
Swearing as he struggled to climb out of the pothole on his sore ankle, he said, “What the hell is wrong with you, Price?”
“Ain’t nobody ever back here. Just gettin’ a li’l rest before I drive to Memphis to see Jasper.” Price staggered to his feet. He groaned as he stumbled and held his side. He was still drunk. The acrid smell of stale beer saturated the air around him.
Price had been sleeping it off in the alley and the footsteps must have rattled him.
“Get out of my way. You stink.”
Price replied, “You wanna be nicer to me. Jasper told me about you. Said he had somethin’ to show me. Said you owed him big time, after Bonnie. He was real tore up about Bonnie. He loved that girl you know.”
He felt the smoldering rage ignite and surge in an instant.
“Oh, yeah? What else did Jasper tell you?” His tone was deep and level and angry. Jasper never could keep his mouth shut. Why hadn’t he remembered that?
But Price was still too drunk to read the dangerous situation he’d put himself into.
“Jasper said we was goin’ to get up outta here. Head to paradise. Said he had plenty of money comin’ from you.” Price stuck his chin out and tried to poke a finger, but his aim fell two feet short of his target.
Jasper. Kid just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Bringing Jasper into the operation had been a mistake from the outset. Then Bonnie came along and things got even worse.
After Bonnie died, Jasper was a mess. He’d lost his focus. He’d expected his mistake to fix itself with Jasper’s crazy head-on collision.
When that didn’t happen, he’d gone all the way to Memphis and eliminated Jasper. Which was fine. But he was still angry about it.
But now here was Price, attempting to blackmail him. The very thought fueled his outrage to white-hot levels.
On a different night, he might have made another choice.
Infused with victory now that Jasper was dead in Memphis, annoyed because Blackhawk died and Nina was still alive, he allowed his fury to erupt.
“What else did Jasper say about me?” He didn’t bother to hide his anger or keep his voice down. No one would hear. And even if they did, he’d take care of them, too. He was beyond concern for the twits in this town.
Price finally seemed to register the danger. He tried to back up, but the wall was behind him. “Nothin’ else. Said he’d tell me when he got back.”
Liar.
He slipped his gloved right hand into his pocket and pulled out the gun he’d bought on the street last week. He’d already fitted it with the silencer. He moved closer to Price.
He held his arm out of sight until, in one smooth, practiced arc, he raised the gun, aimed the barrel directly at Price’s right leg, and shot him through the kneecap.
Price screamed. The pitch was high and piercing enough to belong to a woman. He grabbed his knee and went down, rolling in the alley’s filth.
Price’s screams ratcheted up a few hundred decibels and bounced off the walls in the narrow alley.
At close range, the screams seemed deafening. Like being in a walled cage with a dozen tortured vixens seeking to breed. Not that it mattered. In the distance, outside the alley, citizens might awaken and listen closer. But when they heard nothing more, they’d roll over and go back to sleep.
He moved in closer, pinned Price against the wall, and put a gloved hand firmly over his mouth.
“Shut up. Tell me what Jasper said.”
Price didn’t hear him or didn’t care or simply couldn’t make himself stop screaming.
He pointed the pistol directly at Price’s forehead, and said, “Shut. Up.”
Wild-eyed, Price saw the gun, realized what was coming, and gave up the struggle.
He pulled the trigger.
Instant silence.
Breathing heavily, he shoved Price’s body behind the dumpster.
He tossed the gun and silencer inside.
Then he stripped the gloves from his hand and stuffed them into his pocket. He’d dispose of them elsewhere.
Problem solved.
He didn’t spend even half a moment wondering if Price’s screams might have been heard.
He’d be long gone before anyone came looking for the miscreant if they ever did. And there was zero evidence to tie him to the murder.
Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.
He smiled, pleased, and kept walking around the dumpsters into the middle of the block.
He found his vehicle, started up, and drove straight to Kelham, with plenty of time to spare.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thursday, May 12
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
4:05 a.m.
From her vantage point on the tracks, Kim saw the train coming straight toward her through the moonless night.
The speeding engine shook the ground and the crossing lights flashed and warning bells sounded and the headlight blinded her.
A single whistle sounded long and loud and ear-splitting.
Kim was rooted to the spot, panting like a terrified animal.
The ground shook and bounced, lifting her off the ground, bouncing her along with everything else, over and over again.
She raised her forearm to shield her eyes from the headlight’s glare and braced against the inevitable impact.
The engine roared ever louder.
She screamed, but couldn’t hear her voice in her own ears.
The overwhelming noise of the monstrously huge train drew closer, washing over her as it threatened to slam into her fragile body, tearing her into a dozen pieces.
Her arms and legs and torso would fly through the air in all directions.
Yet, she couldn’t move.
She covered her ears with both hands, but still, the noise pounded like a massive explosion.
A deep gulp of air filled her chest and was stuck there, refusing to exhale. Pain seared her torso like a massive heart attack.
She squeezed her eyes closed and braced for the vicious, all-consuming impact.
The unrelenting train was so close she could almost reach out and touch it.
She wondered what would happen if she did.
Suddenly, a pair of hands as big as catcher’s mitts grabbed her.
Thick, strong arms enfolded her quivering body and jerked her off the tracks.
Momentum carried them out of the path of the charging locomotive just in time.
They rolled down the embankment and into the ditch on the east side of the rails.
Her back landed hard at the bottom of the ditch, pressed against the weeds and rocks and gravel on the ground.
The big man covered her with his body, lifting his weight onto his forearms, lying in the missionary position. As if he consumed her, here and now.
He’d saved her from the speeding train. All of her limbs were still intact. She could feel every inch of her body matched by the length of his, tingling from toes to fingertips to the crown of her head.
