by Diane Capri
Alpha Dog stared forward and said in a gravelly four-pack-a-day voice, “Where’s Price? He didn’t get home last night and we can’t find him.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Perry replied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who is Price?”
“I’m not askin’ you, pretty boy,” Alpha Dog growled, turning his stare to focus squarely on Kim.
The drunk one ordered, “Keep quiet. We want crap from you, we’ll ask.”
Perry shrugged. Apparently, it was the wrong thing to do.
The drunk McKinney moved more quickly than Kim had thought possible. He pushed directly toward Perry, right arm extended with his full body weight behind it, meaning to land a solid punch.
But his balance was off and his momentum was wrong.
Perry moved aside, stuck out his foot, and tripped McKinney as he came in to deliver the blow.
His arms pinwheeled rapidly in an almost comical effort to stay upright on the sidewalk.
He might have managed it, given enough time. But Perry didn’t wait. He gave McKinney a hard shove with his body weight behind it.
The drunk collapsed and fell flat on his face. Mashed his nose to a pulp.
Blood squirted everywhere half a moment after Kim jumped out of the path of the spray.
McKinney never felt the busted nose because he’d slammed his forehead on the concrete hard enough to knock himself out.
“Oh, look. Your buddy fell down,” Perry said, giving the drunk a little nudge with the toe of his boot.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Slugger snarled. He raised the baseball bat over his head and moved toward Perry with a sneer and a gleam of pure outrage in his eye.
He prepared to swing the bat with enough velocity to crack Perry’s head open.
Before he had the chance, a loud pulsing “whoop” of sirens sounded on Main Street. Instinctively, Slugger turned his head toward the noise and loosened his grip on the bat.
While he was looking in the opposite direction, Kim moved in, grabbed the bat, and jerked it from his hands.
Slugger turned toward Kim, ready to brawl.
She gripped the bat with both hands, raised it to her shoulder, and swung for the fences.
The end of the bat caught Slugger right in the solar plexus. He howled and doubled over, holding his belly, moaning as if he’d been kicked by a mule.
Alpha Dog had glanced toward the siren’s blast. He grabbed Slugger’s arm and tilted his head toward their buddy on the ground.
“Help me get him up. We gotta go. Sheriff’s comin’.”
“I ain’t done yet,” Slugger complained, still holding his belly, red-faced and ready to brawl.
The sirens whooped again, moving closer.
“You know what Greyson said about sending us to Parchman Farm,” Alpha Dog warned.
Parchman Farm was Mississippi’s maximum-security prison. They believed Chief Greyson’s threat was credible. Which meant the McKinneys had criminal records and violent tendencies beyond bar brawls and street fights.
Good to know.
“We’re not finished with you two,” Slugger growled, adding another sharp stare for good measure. Spittle ran down his beard and his eyes were wild, but after a moment of glaring, he gave up.
The two McKinneys bent to collect their drunk cousin, each one grabbing an elbow. He was heavy and still out cold. Dead weight, and a lot of it.
After some tugging and grunting, they managed to drag him to the pickup. They lifted him off the ground and flopped him into the flatbed. He didn’t make a sound.
Slugger turned back to Perry and Kim, giving them each a final hard glare. “Watch yourself. We’ll be back.”
Kim said nothing.
“Come find me when you’re ready,” Perry replied. “And bring your friends. Clearly, three of you aren’t enough.”
Chief Greyson punched another whoop on his siren.
Slugger’s nostrils flared and his breath came in ragged gasps.
“Come on,” Alpha Dog called from the driver’s seat. “We gotta go. Now.”
Slugger didn’t want to give up, but he got into the cab with his cousin. He rolled down the window and hung his head out to deliver one last warning. “Watch yourself. You won’t see me coming next time.”
Alpha Dog slid the transmission into drive and peeled out across Main Street and kept going.
Kim watched as Sheriff Greyson’s SUV rolled through the intersection and kept his course, not following McKinney’s red truck.
The light changed and Kim started forward, still holding the bat and looking for a place to leave it.
“I don’t mind a good fight, but I like to know why I’m fighting. Want to tell me what all of that was about?” Perry stepped around the rapidly drying blood on the sidewalk.
“Some guy named Price, I guess,” Kim replied as they crossed the street and continued toward the diner, which was at the end of the next block, past Toussaint’s.
“Yeah, I got that,” Perry said.
They walked in silence until they reached their destination. Kim dropped the bat into the trash can out front, then reached for the door handle, and Perry laid a hand on her arm.
“Those guys in the truck. If anybody asks, you don’t know what they were talking about. You have no idea who this guy Price is,” he said as if he was establishing facts instead of asking questions.
Kim shrugged and pulled the door open. “You’ve got blood on your shoe. You’ll want to clean that off before you go inside.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Thursday, May 12
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
11:25 a.m.
The diner was a little busier today than it had been last night. Kim found an empty table for four in the corner and sat with her back to the wall. Perry was forced to choose his angle of exposure. So he put his back to the front window, which made him a visible target to anyone on the street but gave him an unobstructed view of the diner’s entrance and the kitchen door.
Barely a minute later, Libby brought a brown plastic thermos pot of coffee and two brown plastic mugs. There was cream and sugar on the table. She looked as exhausted as she’d seemed last night.
“We can pour for ourselves,” Kim said, taking the pot and the mugs. “Did you get any rest at all?”
“Not much, I’m afraid. My day shift girl’s gone. No choice but to do the job myself until I find a new one. We’ve got a full-employment economy here, the mayor says. Hard to find people to work.” She left the menus and turned back toward the kitchen.
Perry poured the coffee. He sipped while it was hot. He didn’t pollute his java. Gaspar usually added so much cream and sugar that the spoon seemed to stand up in the thick liquid by itself.
“Enough about me. How long have you been in town, Otto?” Perry asked as he perused the plastic-coated menu.
“I can recommend the muffins and the cheeseburger. Pie’s good, too,” Kim replied, glancing at the choices.
“You’ve been here a while, then. Long enough to eat a couple of meals,” Perry nodded and put the menu down. “Why is the FBI interested in the Bonnie Nightingale case?”
“What makes you think we’re interested?” Kim replied, scanning the menu. She wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t know when she’d get the chance to eat again. Gaspar’s rule was always to eat when you can. He’d rubbed off on her in more ways than one.
Perry said, “Because you’re here. And I’m sure the FBI has plenty of other things you could be doing instead.”
She glanced at him over the top of the menu. “As it happens, I’m not here about the Bonnie Nightingale case, but no matter how many times I say that, no one believes me.”
He gave her a frankly appraising gaze that lasted a full minute as if he were some sort of human lie-detector.
She didn’t bother to fill the silence. She chose a spinach salad for lunch and folded the menu to signal Libby that they were ready to order. Then she tried the coffee, wh
ich was just as good as it had been last night.
Perry seemed to be trying to wait her out. So she threw him a bone. “You said you were previously with the 110th Special Investigations Unit, and now you’re 46th MP, Criminal Investigations.”
“That’s right,” he replied warily. “What about you?”
“I’m assigned to the FBI Special Personnel Task Force at the moment.”
“I have a vague idea what that is. When the government needs special expertise from the private sector, the SPTF finds the right butt for the chair,” he said, glancing around the room as if he was looking for someone in particular. “And what’s the specific assignment that brings you to Carter’s Crossing?”
Kim nodded as if he were an apt pupil. “As it happens, I’m tasked to complete a thorough background check on a former member of your unit. He was a major, too. A little older than you. But maybe you knew him.”
“It’s a big army. But I might have. What’s his name?”
Without taking her eyes off him, she said, “Jack Reacher.”
He blinked. Then he moved back in the chair as if he wanted to put some distance between himself and the question.
“Do you know him?” Kim asked, deliberately asking about the present instead of the past. Reacher lived off the grid, but he’d also had contact with people for the last fifteen years. That much she knew for sure.
“I did. Back in the day. Haven’t seen him in years, though.” He cleared his throat. “Tell you the truth, I figured he was dead by now.”
“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”
“Dunno.” He shrugged. “Just that guys at a certain level or who served in the same unit tend to know each other. Vaguely, if nothing else. And you sort of hear things from time to time after they move on.”
“Hear things like what?”
“Well, I heard his brother died years back. In the line of duty, they said.” Perry paused as if he was searching his memory. He shook his head. “But no. I’ve heard nothing at all about Reacher himself. Not a word of any kind. That usually means only one thing.”
“Which is?”
He gave her a level stare. “That there’s nothing to say, nothing to hear.”
The diner had filled to capacity with the lunch crowd. All the tables were full now, and a low hum of conversational noise had settled over the place. At least two tables were occupied by men wearing army garb.
Libby came back and took their orders. Perry wanted the cheeseburger. And the pie. She scratched a few pencil marks down on an old-fashioned green order pad and wasted no time on small talk.
“Right away,” Libby said before she hustled toward the kitchen, passing their menus to another table as she moved along the aisle.
Kim asked, “So, Jack Reacher. Tell me what you’d want to know if you were in my shoes.”
“I connected with him maybe once or twice. Just in passing, mostly. He was way ahead of me up the chain of command,” Perry replied.
“What kind of reputation did he have back then?”
“Reacher? In the 110th, the guy is a legend, I guess. In the 46th, too. He had skills. Not just combat skills and medals and stuff like that. We all have some of that stuff. Reacher was also sharp.” Perry tapped two fingers to his temple. “He had brains, you know?”
Then he finished his coffee and poured another mug full from the pot. He topped off hers, too. He seemed like he had more to say, so she waited, giving him a chance to figure out how he wanted to deliver the news, whatever it was.
After another moment, Perry said, “Reacher could really figure things out. When he caught a case, he never gave up until he got to the bottom of it. It didn’t usually take very long. The bad guy paid for his crimes. Every time. No matter what. That was Reacher’s way.”
“I see,” she said, attempting to draw him out.
Perry grinned as if he’d thought of something else. Something amusing. “He had what we called Reacher’s Rules. People talked about them. Made jokes, you know? Some of them were kinda funny, I guess, in retrospect.”
“What kind of rules?”
He cocked his head as if making an effort to recall. He grinned. “One was, after a fistfight, the best cure for a sore hand is to wrap it around a cold beer.”
Kim smiled. “Sounds like he had a sense of humor.”
“Yeah, he did.” Perry grinned, too. “But some of it was stuff he’d figured out along the way and passed to the guys junior to him, and they passed it down to guys like me. Helped us solve some cases.”
“Such as?”
“Like, he said if a guy had money outside his salary, it would show up somewhere. Find it, and you’d know if the guy was dirty.”
Kim nodded. “That’s a pretty standard truth, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Reacher wasn’t much for fancy stuff. He made solid use of the basics, mostly,” Perry replied.
Kim cocked her head, considering. “You said Reacher never gave up until the bad guy was caught and dealt with, right?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. So?”
“So, is there anybody here in town that Reacher might still be interested in?”
“A civilian, you mean?”
“Maybe. Or somebody out at Kelham?” Kim asked.
Libby came back with the food and a fresh pot of coffee and placed everything on the table before she hustled off again.
He waited until she’d left to answer the question. “Could be. Reacher’s been gone a while. But there’s people still around who might have been sideways with him, one way or another.”
“Is there some easy way to check that out?” Kim asked.
“Maybe. I’ll make a call.” Perry fell on the cheeseburger as if he hadn’t eaten in a month.
Kim moved the spinach salad around with her fork, thinking about what he’d said.
He finished the food in half a dozen big bites and way less than six minutes, just like Gaspar. He was always hungry and never left so much as a morsel on his plate. She wondered if eating fast was a necessary army skill, too.
When he’d finished, and while she played with her salad, he said, “Something to keep in mind. One thing I recall about Reacher very, very clearly.”
She glanced across the table to look him in the eye. “Which is what?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Thursday, May 12
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
11:30 a.m.
Ignoring Major Hammer’s lockdown orders, he left Kellum. At an old gas station, he found a truck he could steal and drove ten miles on unpaved country roads to the abandoned barn he had rented months ago.
The barn stood alone at the end of a dusty two-track in the middle of an empty field west of Carter’s Crossing. The farmer who’d owned the barn and the acreage that surrounded it had died ten years before. His heirs were not interested in farming. Which meant no maintenance of the property or the barn in the intervening years.
The flat plank siding had been painted red once when the farm was prosperous. The paint was long gone now. The damaged and warped timber had weathered to a silver gray.
Gaps and missing boards allowed ventilation, which was okay because otherwise, last summer’s heat and humidity would have been stifling inside. But the open spaces also let the cold, wind, and rain infiltrate, which wasn’t okay because of its potential to damage the equipment.
He was hours behind schedule.
Most of his preparations were in place, but the trip to New York to deal with Pak had thrown his schedule off-kilter. The Bonnie Nightingale mess had not helped, either. And then there was Jasper. Add Nina calling to tell him she was pregnant, and he’d maxed out his patience.
All told, he was running seriously behind schedule. And that was before Major Hammer showed up at Kelham. Situation normal, all fouled up.
He sped along the dirt driveway, throwing dust up behind the truck until he reached the open front door of the barn. He braked beside the three trucks that were already there. Redmond and Her
n had arrived separately. Nina was here already, too. They were inside, working.
He slammed the transmission into park and climbed out.
Spring heat engulfed him instantly in the sultry Mississippi morning. His shirt stuck to his chest with sweat. Humidity had to be close to one hundred percent. The air was almost too heavy to inhale. He couldn’t wait to leave the oppressive weather behind.
He had intended to get here first, to set up his final preparations. Now he’d need to come back again to accomplish the things he needed privacy to complete. He grunted with annoyance. One more thing to slow him down.
He stepped into the cooler interior and heard the generator running in the back. But they need electricity to run the printers and the washing machines and the rest of the equipment. This place was completely off-the-grid. No electrical power lines within ten miles in every direction. Hence, the generator. He nodded approval.
Counterfeiting twenty- and fifty-dollar bills was relatively easy. He’d learned the techniques when he was posted to Peru a few years ago, which some called the counterfeiting capital of the world. Nina’s position at the casino helped to pass the counterfeits, which made the trickiest part of the operation simpler, too.
Inside the barn, Nina was standing near Redmond, watching the printer finish the fake currency, and then stacking it to one side.
Hern was in the other room where they had been packing up in preparation for departure. Four crates were ready to go. There were two more to fill.
Redmond, Hern, Nina, and he were each slated to take one crate. The other two were for Jasper and Bonnie. Both were dead. But the supplies had been acquired, and there was no reason to crate less simply because Jasper and Bonnie wouldn’t need their share.
That’s what he’d told Redmond and Hern last night at Brannan’s. No need to say anything to Nina.
He walked over and slid his arm around her. She tilted her face for a kiss. She looked as slender and beautiful as ever. If she hadn’t claimed she was pregnant, he’d never have guessed. Her body revealed no evidence of preparation for motherhood. Not that it mattered. Nina had become a liability, regardless of the pregnancy, if it existed.
