by Jude Hardin
The order for elimination would come from The Director, but it probably wouldn’t come today. Reacher would probably be transported to HQ, where they would squeeze him for everything he was worth. Accomplices, arms dealers, instructors at training facilities—anyone at home or abroad who might possibly be an enemy of democracy. Whatever Jack Reacher knew, The Circle would know. And then they would execute him.
But probably not today.
“No,” Colt said. “I’m not going to kill JR. Not unless I have to.”
“You mean like in self-defense?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Let’s get going.”
Benny started the car and steered out of the parking lot. The paved road soon turned to gravel, and then to dirt.
“The trailer’s right around the bend up here,” Benny said.
Colt lifted his head for a few seconds, saw that they were entering a heavily wooded area.
He got back down and stayed down.
The SUV came to a stop.
Benny cut the engine.
The keys jingled as he pulled them from the ignition and slid them into his pocket.
“Don’t forget the beer,” Colt said.
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. I’m right here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Just act like nothing happened. You went to Clark’s to look for the diamond, and that was it. You didn’t find it, so you came on back and bought the beer. No big deal. Still plenty of time to make it to the meeting. And remember, I’m going to let you go free if you do this right. No jail time.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, but you have to do exactly what I tell you to do. I’m your best friend in the world right now, but I’ll be your worst enemy if you try to double-cross me. And if anything happens to me out here, my people will find you.”
“What people?”
“Dark and secret people, Benny. People who know how to inflict a lot of pain. They’ll make you wish you were in jail.”
Benny stared straight ahead. He seemed to be off in another world. “I think it’s going to be a better story if I did find the diamond,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. Just go on in and—”
“If it doesn’t matter, then I want the version with the happy ending. I want to find the diamond.”
Colt sighed. “Fine,” he said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the earring and handed it to Benny over the center console.
“Thanks,” Benny said.
“Yeah. Just get in there and do your job.”
Benny climbed out of the SUV and shut the door.
Colt opened the backseat passenger’s side door, slid out and crouched behind the rear fender. When he rose a few inches, he could look through the windows and see the front of the trailer. He watched Benny walk inside, and then he crouched back down again. His plan depended on the element of surprise, so it was imperative that he not be seen.
1:36.
It was quiet, nothing but some birds chirping and the intermittent hum of the trailer’s central air conditioning unit. Colt figured he would be able to hear the three of them when they came outside. Benny, Felisa, and JR. He would wait until they got close to the car, and then he would make his move.
Five minutes went by, and then ten. The early afternoon sun beamed through the clearing like a heat lamp. No breeze, humidity high enough to steam the wrinkles out of a suit.
Colt wiped the sweat from his forehead, rose and peeked through the windows again. Nothing. The front door was still closed. Maybe JR was having a couple of beers before leaving for the meeting. Or maybe the time of the meeting had been changed. They definitely weren’t going to make it into DC by two o’clock now. Not unless the SUV sprouted wings.
Finally, Colt heard the click of the front door latch as it slid past the strike plate, and then he heard the door slam shut.
He hunkered down and held his breath. Heart thumping, sweat trickling down his back in streams. It wouldn’t be long now.
Footsteps.
A cough.
A set of keys jingled and Colt jumped out from behind the SUV and pointed the gun at the very large figure standing in front of him.
Very large, and very alone.
“There’s nobody home,” Benny said.
35
The right side of Felisa’s face still stung from JR’s backhand. He was a monster, an enormous brute of a man, and he didn’t know his own strength. Or maybe he did know it, and he just didn’t care. At any rate, the blow had almost knocked her out. It could have killed her.
After receiving another phone call—another one where he listened but didn’t talk—JR had finally given up on Benny. He had reluctantly taken Felisa’s suggestion, and the two of them had walked out to the highway and had hitched a ride into DC. Felisa with a wig and a pair of sunglasses and a t-shirt that was way too big. Now they were sitting at a table in the coffee shop, waiting for whoever it was they were supposed to meet. Felisa still thought it would probably be someone in Sam Gosswald’s family. Just a guess, but it made sense.
“How’s your coffee?” JR said.
“I could scream, you know. I could climb up on the table and start shouting, tell everyone my name and that I’ve been kidnapped.”
JR took a sip from his cup. “And I could twist your head off your neck.”
Felisa knew that he could, and that he would. Anyway, the place was deserted except for the guy behind the counter, who appeared to be stoned. Bloodshot eyes, stained apron, long greasy hair tied back in a ponytail. Cell phone plugged into a charger and propped against the stir-stick caddy on the counter, some kind of movie or TV show playing on its four-inch screen.
Barista?They called them soda jerks back in my day, her grandfather had said one time. Maybe the guy owned the place. Felisa couldn’t imagine that anyone had hired him.
“What time is it?” she said.
“Five after two. They should be here any minute.”
There was a globed candle on the table, and some sort of exotic music playing in the background. Indian, maybe. The people meeting JR had picked a place that wouldn’t be busy this time of day. Or maybe this place was never busy. The coffee was way too hot, and it tasted as though it might have been brewed with dirty bathwater.
The little bell over the door tinkled and two silhouettes walked in. They wore fedoras and sunglasses and black trench coats. Like gangsters from the 1930s. One of them was carrying a briefcase.
Ninety degrees outside, and they were wearing long black coats. Felisa had to stifle a laugh, even though the situation was anything but funny. These clowns were going to take her away, and there was no telling what kind of sinister things they had in mind.
They walked to the table.
JR stood and shook their hands and said, “Have a seat, gentlemen.”
Everyone sat down.
“Why is she here?” Gangster One said.
“Slight change of plans,” JR said. “My associate couldn’t make it, so I’m going to have to handle the transaction by myself.”
“How do we know this is really her?” Gangster Two said.
“Take the wig and glasses off, baby,” JR said.
Felisa took the wig and glasses off.
“Are you guys wid da syndicate?” she said.
“It’s her,” Gangster One said. “Smart aleck, just like on TV.” He turned to JR. “You know, we’re all taking quite a chance with her being out in public like this. I don’t like it.”
“Couldn’t be avoided,” JR said. “Just give me the amount we agreed on and we can all walk out of here together. You guys can go your way, and I’ll go mine.”
Gangster One shook his head. “I don’t have the amount we agreed on. I have half. That was the deal. She was supposed to be chained to a tree somewhere. You were going to take us to her, and we were going to give you the rest of the money when we got there.”
JR seemed nervous. Appre
hensive. He’d twisted the paper napkin that came with his coffee into a skinny little length of rope.
“Where is the rest of the money?” he said.
“In a safe place. We were going to pick it up on the way.”
“I guess we’ll just have to all ride together then.”
“That seems to be the case.”
Gangster One and Gangster Two stood up.
JR didn’t move. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead.
“Tell you what, gentlemen. This little mix-up is all my fault. I’ll just take what’s in the briefcase and call it a day. You can have her for half price.”
Gangster One looked at Gangster Two and said, “He’ll just take what’s in the briefcase and call it a day.”
The two men started laughing, and then Gangster One pulled a pistol out of his coat pocket and blew the left side of JR’s face all over the fake Picasso hanging on the wall behind the table.
Felisa screamed.
The stoned barista grabbed his cell phone from the counter, but Gangster Two shot him five times before he could thumb 911 into the touch screen.
A hush fell over the room. There was blood and coffee everywhere.
“Go get the car and pull it up to the door,” Gangster One said to Gangster Two.
Gangster Two didn’t say anything. He understood the reasoning behind the command, and so did Felisa. It was to avoid the possibility of anyone on the street seeing her and possibly recognizing her.
Gangster Two slid his pistol back into his pocket and walked outside.
JR’s left leg started twitching, and he tried to say something through his ruined mouth. He uttered something incomprehensible, and then it sounded as though he was trying to spell out a word.
“H—E—L—”
And then he stopped.
JR was still alive, but his breathing was ragged and his speech garbled. He wasn’t going to last long without medical attention.
He tried to push out another letter, strained to make it happen. Gurgling, spitting, the muscles in his neck tense and taut, bulging out like tow chains.
Stunned, shaken to the core, Felisa stood there and looked into his eyes and waited for the next letter to come.
36
Nobody home.
Colt holstered the revolver.
“Why didn’t you come out and tell me right away?” he said.
“JR left the bread out on the counter. And the bologna. And the cheese. And the mayonnaise. I couldn’t resist.”
“You left me out here to bake in this heat while you fixed yourself a sandwich?”
“I was hungry.”
Unbelievable.
“All right, Benny. Think hard now. Where was this meeting supposed to take place?”
“At a coffee shop in DC.”
“Which one?”
Benny looked down at the ground, started kneading his forehead with his fingers. “It’s a funny name. I don’t remember. He said it was close to the bus depot.”
“What’s the name of the place?”
“I don’t know.”
Close to the bus station. At least Benny remembered that much. It was something. It would put them in the general area.
“All right,” Colt said. “Let’s go.”
He snatched the keys from Benny’s hand and climbed into the driver’s seat. Benny walked around and opened the front passenger’s side door, slid in and fastened his seat belt.
“Thanks for not tying me up again,” he said.
“I would if I had time.”
Colt put the SUV in gear, made it out to the highway and then to the interstate. He cruised toward DC at ninety miles an hour, hoping he wouldn’t get pulled over for speeding.
37
“V—E,” JR said, finally squeezing the letters out in a spray of bright red blood.
H—E—L first, and then V—E.
H—E—L—V—E.
Helve.
Felisa had no idea what it meant, or if it meant anything.
Gangster One walked over to where JR was lying, drilled two more rounds into his skull, turned to Felisa and said, “Ready to go now?”
But Felisa wasn’t ready to go.
Ready to go meant ready to die.
No.
At that moment, Felisa decided to do everything she possibly could to avoid getting into a car with these goons. Getting into a car with them would mean defeat. It would mean giving up. And throughout Felisa Cayenne’s life—even before she became Felisa Cayenne—there was one phrase that her father had repeated more than any other: never give up.
In one swift motion she grabbed the cup of coffee she’d been sipping on and slung the steaming hot liquid into Gangster One’s eyes. He shrieked and dropped the gun and put his hands to his face while Felisa grabbed the globed candle and smashed it over his head. His hat and sunglasses fell off as he dropped to the floor.
She’d done it. She’d knocked him out! Hot wax oozed over the side of his face and the flame from the wick danced dangerously close to his hair. He was still breathing, and his eyelids were twitching, but he was definitely unconscious.
Felisa grabbed his gun, looked at the front entrance, made a quick decision not to go there. She ran to the service area and around to the other side of the counter, stepped over the dead barista and opened a door that said EMPLOYEES ONLY. There was a storage room with a bunch of coffee cans on shelves and some other supplies and a small office and a delivery door that was padlocked from the inside.
Padlocked.
From.
The.
Inside.
Felisa darted into the office and started searching for the key, frantic little wheezes in her throat competing with hot pulses of misery in her eyeballs. She swept through the mess of papers on top of the desk, yanked the drawers out and dumped them on the floor, scanned the walls for a brass hook.
Nothing.
The barista. Maybe he had the key.
She hurried back up front to the counter and checked his pockets, which were saturated with dark sticky red blood. It was almost black and it was still warm and her stomach lurched as she reached in and pulled out a key ring with a car key and several other keys on it and a miniature flashlight. She set the pistol on the stainless steel drain pan beside the sink, rinsed her hands and grabbed a towel and scurried back to the delivery door and started trying the keys one by one.
The first one wouldn’t go in at all.
Neither would the second one.
The third one fit nicely into the slot, but it wouldn’t open the lock.
There was only one more possibility, one more small key, one more that might be the right size for the padlock dangling in front of her. Felisa slid it in and tried to turn it clockwise, but it wouldn’t move. Same resistance she’d encountered with the third key. She shouted at it and jiggled it frustratedly and kicked the door and—finally! Success! The key turned and she yanked the lock open and pushed it out of the hasp and pressed the door’s release bar and saw a sliver of sunshine before a voice behind her said, “Don’t move or you’re dead.”
38
Benny still couldn’t remember the name of the coffee shop. Colt cruised the area around Union Station, covered several blocks, finally pulled into the lot across from the National Postal Museum and waited for someone to walk by.
Several minutes ticked off the digital clock on the dashboard.
“Where is everyone?” Colt said.
“At work, I guess.”
Benny was right. It was 2:36 in the afternoon. Everyone was sitting in an office or a cubicle, sleepy from lunch, goofing around on the Internet and waiting for five o’clock to roll around. At five o’clock they would swipe their time cards and march out to their mid-sized sedans and fight the traffic all the way to the suburbs. They would eat something for dinner and watch some television and set their alarms and go to sleep and get up and do it all over again. On the weekends they would mow and trim and edge and rake and maybe catch a ballgame
or two and grill some hamburgers and sit around dreading Monday morning.
And these were the ones who’d clawed their way up the middle class ladder, the ones who’d secured the college degrees and the social and business connections to get the jobs in the first place. These were the lucky ones. As much as Colt abhorred the thought of that kind of life for himself, he reckoned most people in the world had it a lot worse.
He sat there and stared through the windshield and thought about it all.
“You ever wonder why we’re even here, Benny?”
“I know why we’re here. Because you’re looking for JR. Hey, here comes someone.”
A young man wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt and a bunch of silver studs in his face sauntered up the sidewalk toward the SUV. Colt rolled Benny’s window down and shouted across to the guy.
“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”
The young man walked over and leaned into the window. “Trying to get enough money for a bus ticket home,” he said. “Think you could help me out?”
Trying to get enough money for a hit of black tar heroin, Colt thought. The kid was pale and skinny and he had tracks on both arms. Colt handed him a five and said, “You know where we can get a good cup of coffee around here?”
“I know where you can get a bad one.”
“Okay.”
“Place called Perk-U-Now. Two blocks down and take a left.”
“Is there a sign?”
“It’s hard to see from the street. There’s a building in front of it with a big black window. Used to be a video store.”
“All right. Thanks.”
Perk-U-Now. As opposed to percolator, Colt thought. Clever.
“Now I remember,” Benny said.
“Yeah. Now you remember.”
Colt put the car in gear and eased away from the curb. Two minutes later he parked at a meter half a block away from the big black plate glass window the addict had told him about.
