Licensed to Thrill: Volume 1

by Diane Capri

  “Yes, thank you, sir,” Kim said. A tray delivered more than an hour ago still rested on the table top. The silver coffee carafe with sides of sweeteners and cream, bone china cups and saucers, silver spoons, crystal glasses, linen napkins and four green eight-ounce bottles of bubbly French water consumed the flat surface. Sparkled lamplight danced from a cut crystal pitcher as if fairies filled the room.

  Finlay was their host. This was his turf, his agenda. He displayed no concern. He had one knee crossed over the other. He had pinched the fabric to reset the sharp crease in his dark trousers. He had revealed bench-made cap-toe shoes and dark hose, not mere socks. Superior livery for a man with a government salary, Kim noted. She felt actual chest pain when she attempted to breathe, like an asthmatic.

  Stress.

  That’s all.

  Finlay waited, unconcerned. Both arms were folded across his lap. No rings on his capable fingers. A watch, for surely he wore one, hid under crisp white shirt cuffs. Cufflinks glinted with each spare movement. Even before seeing Finlay’s enduring influence on Chief Roscoe, Kim had formed a clear mental portrait of a competent man. Rumor suggested violence and fatal consequences for those who crossed him. His presence cemented every impression of the absolute power she’d imagined. She’d expected ruthless entitlement as well. He was all of that and more.

  In short, he scared Kim to death. Gaspar should be afraid, too. They were in way over their heads. They had eighteen minutes.

  And then they caught a break. Two breaks, really, in quick succession. First, Finlay spoke when he should have waited. He smiled and said, “I realize we don’t have as much time as you’d hoped. So let’s get right to it, OK?”

  But, second, he directed his question to Gaspar. He’d assumed that Gaspar was lead. He wasn’t fully briefed.

  Was that good or bad?

  “Of course,” she said, projecting her voice past her closed throat. “We certainly don’t want to waste your time.”

  His eyes opened a fraction when he realized his mistake. He corrected swiftly and directed his attention to her, as if he’d never erred at all.

  Ah, she thought, you’re one of those. But before she could integrate this new piece of data, he seized the advantage.

  “I understand you’re building a file on Jack Reacher for the Specialized Personnel Task Force. What job are you considering him for?”

  His question knocked her back. Finlay knew why they were here. So was he briefed, or not?

  “Reacher’s proposed use is unknown at this time, sir,” Kim said. She sounded more deferential than she’d intended. She sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward.

  “Hard for me to hit the target in the dark,” Finlay said.

  She didn’t believe he was in the dark. Smarter not to believe him.

  “We came directly from Margrave after speaking with Chief Roscoe,” she said, watching closely. No reaction. Unclear whether he already knew that, too. “Frankly, we didn’t have as much time with her as we’d hoped and we’re just getting started. Whatever you can add is more than we’ve got at the moment.”

  “You want me to fill in the blanks?” He seemed to relax a bit more, as if the mission was less than expected. “The Margrave files are comprehensive. Not much missing, is there?”

  Margrave files? What Margrave files?

  “We don’t have all the documents yet,” Kim said, covering as well as she could.

  Finlay pushed his starched cuff back with one finger and looked at the slender platinum timepiece on his left wrist. She’d guessed right about the watch at least.

  He said, “It would take several hours to brief you. Quickly, ask me your most pressing questions.”

  Several hours? Strike three. How could there be several hours worth of missing data?

  She couldn’t think about that now. She had a million questions based on the little bit she did know. Literally. Which topic was the most important? She needed to know what made Reacher tick. Could he be counted on when his country needed him? What was his particular expertise? Why had he been off the grid all these years? What was he doing? What was he running from? Had Reacher assaulted Roscoe? Was he violent? Unpredictable? Crazy?

  Gaspar cut directly to a question she was saving for later.

  He asked, “Do you know where Reacher is now?”

  Finlay said, “No.”

  “Do you know where he went when he left Margrave fifteen years ago?”

  “No.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  “No.”

  “Is he dead or alive?”

  Finlay flinched. A small flick of his right eyelid. Did it happen? Was it just a sparkle from the dancing fairies? She watched more closely.

  “I don’t know,” Finlay said.

  The flick again. Right there. She was sure.

  Definitely a lie.

  “Do you have any reason to believe Reacher’s dead?” Kim asked.

  “None.” That was true, at least. She could tell. Then he added, “But it wouldn’t surprise me. Do you have any reason to believe he’s dead?”

  “Only that he’s too far off the grid for any man alive,” Kim said.

  She heard movement in the anteroom. A toilet flushed.

  Finlay said, “Look at the files. You should find something.”

  What was he talking about? She had consumed those files. She could recite the contents by rote. Start over. Analyze. You’re good at this. You see the hidden relationships that others don’t see. What does he know that you don’t? He looks relaxed, but he’s not. Why did he come here at all? What does he want?

  Finlay had access to information well beyond anything Kim could acquire. Both official and unofficial.

  If he said there was something in the Margrave files they could use to locate Reacher, then it was there.

  But Finlay wouldn’t have more knowledge than the boss.

  So Finlay was wrong.

  Or lying.

  Or testing.

  Which was it?

  She took a pause, a breath, and Gaspar asked, “You’re saying you know how to find Reacher?”

  Finlay said, “I’m saying you should look at the Margrave files and then we’ll talk further. Roscoe and I testified back then. There’s a lot of material. Some of it is arcane and complicated. Foreign policy. Diplomacy. Chemical analysis. We can’t deal with all of that right now and it wouldn’t help you if we did.”

  He looked at his watch. They were losing their chance. They might never be alone with him again.

  Kim asked, “Do you know what Reacher’s hiding from?”

  “Is he hiding?” Finlay asked back.

  “If he isn’t hiding, why is he so far off the grid?”

  “When I asked him about his lifestyle, he told me he was traveling the country simply because he hadn’t seen much of it. He said he didn’t work because he didn’t have to. He lived off his army pension, he said. He’d been in the military, one way or another, his entire life. He told me he wanted to enjoy his freedom for a change.”

  “And you believed that?” Gaspar asked.

  “We’ve all heard wilder stories. His checked out. No law requires an American male to be an upstanding husband and father of four, right? He doesn’t have to hold a steady job and pay a mortgage until he dies, no matter how hard it is, and no matter how much he hates it, does he?”

  Gaspar went quiet.

  Finlay had been briefed.

  Kim said, “Chief Roscoe told us Reacher was arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. That’s how you met him, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did you like Reacher for the crime?”

  “Both the victim and Reacher were strangers we knew nothing about. Several witnesses saw Reacher walking in the vicinity of the crime scene during the relevant time frame. It made sense in context.”

  Kim understood. She’d been to Margrave. She realized how much a stranger like Reacher would stick out, how the coincidence woul
d be too much to ignore. She’d have figured him as the killer, herself. In fact, Reacher was still the best suspect based on the little bit she knew. She’d held suspects on less.

  “Who was the victim?” Kim asked.

  Finlay hesitated. “We didn’t know the name when Reacher was arrested. Victim had no ID on him and his body had been rendered unrecognizable. We identified him after we’d confirmed Reacher’s alibi and released him from custody. With apologies.”

  Gaspar repeated the question. “Who was the victim?”

  Again, the pause, but nothing with the eyelid. Kim saw Finlay didn’t want to say the victim’s name. But this was a guy who did what he had to.

  “It was Reacher’s brother,” he said, quietly.

  Kim stared. Finlay had arrested Jack Reacher for murdering his own brother, a crime he didn’t commit, didn’t even know had occurred. His only brother. A screw-up of monumental proportions. Finlay was lucky to be alive.

  And maybe he knew it.

  Finlay said, “I’m sorry to be in such a hurry, but I do have a plane to catch. Is there anything else you need right now?”

  “Was Reacher violent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he crazy?”

  “I didn’t think so at the time.”

  “Unpredictable?”

  Finlay laughed. The sound was deep, resonant, and it shook the room for what seemed like a full minute. Eventually he said, “Agent Otto, I’d say that if you looked up that word in the dictionary, you’d find nothing but a full color photo of Jack Reacher.”

  Then his handlers knocked on the door. Time to go. They accompanied Finlay toward the exit. He towered over Kim and he was a good four inches taller than Gaspar, too. When he reached the door, he turned and reached straight out and took her phone out of her pocket. Like a magic trick. He pushed the button to stop the recording and dropped the phone back into place.

  He said, “Let’s go off the record now.” He slid two business cards from his jacket pocket. He handed one to each of them. “I promised your boss I’d help you if I can. That’s my private cell. Call me with your questions after you’ve read the files. Let me know if you need anything else. If I can’t talk immediately, I’ll get back to you.”

  Then with his hand on the doorknob he added, “And when you do find Jack Reacher, give him my regards, will you? Ask him to call me when he has the time. You can give him that number.”

  Gaspar asked, “Did you know Harry Black?”

  Finlay thought and came up empty. “I don’t recognize the name. Who is he?”

  “Who was he. He’s dead.”

  Finlay shook his head. “Should I have known him?”

  “He was a Margrave cop. Killed last night. Roscoe was pretty upset about it.”

  There it was again. The eyelid flick. Finlay knew something. But he said, “Must have been hired after I left.”

  “His wife shot him, she claims.” Gaspar pulled out his smart phone and showed Finlay a picture. “Sylvia Black. Do you know her?”

  The flick came before the lie this time, and again afterward.

  “Never saw her before,” Finlay said.

  “Did Reacher kill Harry Black?” Gaspar asked.

  The aide knocked again, opened the door, stood aside.

  “You’ll have to ask him yourself,” Finlay replied. He turned and walked away. His entourage followed behind him like ducklings follow their mother.

  Chapter Fourteen

  KIM STARED AT FINLAY’S BUSINESS CARD. There was nothing on it except the phone number. No name. No title. She slapped it back and forth across her fingers. Gaspar said, “Roscoe and Finlay are both as nervous as hens in a fox house every time we ask about Reacher. They’ve got something to hide, and it’s big enough to bury them both. Don’t you think?”

  Kim said, “Whatever they’re hiding, it’s something the boss doesn’t know.”

  Gaspar raised his right eyebrow.

  She said, “Don’t give me that. You’re the one who said he’s not God. Obviously he doesn’t know. Think it through, Zorro.”

  “It’s a mystery to me how your mind works, Susie Kwan.” Gaspar moved over to the coffee and poured a cup for each of them before pulling out his laptop. “We’ve got about an hour before our flight to Atlanta. I’m not walking into Margrave again until I know everything Roscoe and Finlay are hiding. No more flailing around in the dark. I’ll find the files Finlay was talking about. Should be easy enough unless they’re sealed. You take Joe Reacher and Sylvia Black.”

  He bent his head to his task. She got her phone out. She sent the recording to her secure storage. Then she beamed a copy to her laptop. The audio would be transcribed and available on her laptop in minutes; she’d go through it again on the plane.

  She asked, “You still think the Blacks are involved in the Reacher situation somehow?” She wrinkled her nose. The coffee was tepid. She liked her coffee hot.

  “It would be stupid not to think so,” Gaspar said.

  “Agreed.” And Special Agent Kim Louisa Otto would not fail because she’d been stupid. Not now, not ever. She walked to the window and pulled the heavy drapes open and gazed into the pre-dawn. Airports were fascinating places. Little cities of their own. Then she turned away from the window and rubbed the tension out of her neck and refocused.

  She saw she had voice mail from Chief Roscoe’s cell phone. She pressed play. Only a fragment had been recorded due to fluctuating cell tower signals. Roscoe must have been out of range or in a vehicle when she called. “—couldn’t wait? I told you I would handle this. Where did you take her?—”

  “Sounds like Roscoe’s ticked off at us again,” Kim said. She put the message on speaker and played it again. Roscoe sounded angry. Gaspar didn’t look up from his screen, but he cocked his head like a wolf hearing distant threats.

  Kim played the message twice more. “Makes no sense. What’s she talking about? Did she call you at any point?”

  He pulled his phone out to check. “Nothing. What time did she call?”

  “Timer says her message came in at twelve-thirty-three a.m.” Kim felt herself squint, remembered the white lines around Roscoe’s eyes and made an effort to stop wrinkling her face.

  “I doubt she’d appreciate a call back at this hour. It’s got to be after four in the morning.” Gaspar worked his laptop as fast as any college kid. “I’ve got an ace analyst in my office. She could find this stuff in a Miami Minute.”

  “Which is what? Two hours?”

  “Funny. The point is: I’m getting nowhere. Are you?” He ran a hand through his hair, stood briefly to stretch, and restarted.

  “She’s talking about Sylvia, right?”

  “Who?”

  “Roscoe.”

  “Can’t imagine who else she’d be that pissed about, can you?”

  “Why would we take Sylvia? Why would anyone? That’s crazy, isn’t it?”

  Gaspar shrugged, not looking up from his work. “Our flight leaves in forty minutes.”

  “I haven’t been this confused since I tried to learn Mandarin,” she said, not joking.

  “What’s to learn? Little oranges in a can.” He glanced at her and said, “Look up Joe Reacher’s date of death. That’ll give us a way to figure out the exact date Jack Reacher arrived in Margrave, right?”

  Kim said, “Joe died Thursday, September 4, 1997, about midnight.”

  Gaspar stared at her. “Did you just pull that out of thin air?”

  She shrugged. “It’s in Jack Reacher’s file. I’ve got a good memory for dates. As in: June 6, 1998, Roscoe’s daughter was born. Jacqueline Roscoe Trent. Nine pounds, two ounces. Thirty inches long. Fair hair. Blue eyes.”

  “Big kid,” Gaspar said. “My wife would’ve killed me if any of ours were that size.”

  “Beverly Roscoe and David Trent were married on Christmas Day 1997. December 25th. The bride was nearly four months pregnant at the wedding.”

  Gaspar pointed and clicked. He said, “Finla
y was promoted from Chief of Detectives to Chief of Police on September 30, 1997, after the former top cop died on September 7, 1997. He was called Morrison. Which means that Joe Reacher and this Morrison guy died within three days of each other. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “No, it can’t,” she said. “And I just found Joe Reacher’s obituary.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Born in Palo, Leyte, Philippines, August 1958, died at the age of 38 years. Parents Stan and Josephine both predeceased him, his only sibling Jack survived him. Educated on military bases around the world, then West Point, then Military Intelligence, and then Treasury.”

  “That’s an odd trajectory.”

  “You bet. Military Intelligence and Treasury are about as divorced from each other as it’s possible to get and still be in government service. He was killed in the line of duty. As a Treasury agent. Cremated. Ashes scattered in Margrave, Georgia. Which is weird.”

  “I know,” Gaspar said. “He was a veteran. Why wasn’t he buried at Arlington?”

  “That’s not what’s weird. What’s weird is how a treasury agent gets killed in the line of duty in a sleepy little town like Margrave, Georgia, in September 1997? How would that happen? Why was he even there?”

  “Were you even born in 1997?” Gaspar asked.

  “There’s no death certificate online. This is nuts. We’re the FBI. The most sophisticated and best equipped and most comprehensive agency in the world. And we can’t get any information from our own sources on an active investigation?”

  “Welcome under the radar, baby. If it was easy, they wouldn’t need high-octane talent like us, now would they?” He closed his laptop and began packing up.

  “I’m calling Roscoe.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  She picked up her phone and pressed the call back button.

  Gaspar stretched and limped around the room, limbering up. She noticed the limp and knew he was shaking it off. The list of things she intended to discuss with him was already long, but maybe that one should be moved to the top. She put the call on speaker while she shoved cords into her bag and pulled the zippers. Roscoe’s cell rang ten times, twelve, fifteen. Then Roscoe’s angry voice filled the room. It said: “You better tell me your ass is back in Margrave and you have Sylvia Black with you.”