by Diane Capri
That situation would have to change. But not now.
One thing at a time.
Gaspar paced the narrow hotel room, fueled by caffeine and sugar and something like outrage. “The Boss has enemies. Powerful people who’d love to destroy him. We’ve learned things the Boss never wanted anyone to know. As long as we keep the secrets, dead or alive, it’s possible no one else will ever know. If we’re killed in the course of this assignment, they’ll offer some bullshit explanation and people will believe them.”
“You’re not making me feel safer, if that was your goal.”
“But if we survive, we will always know them for what they are, always be a threat to them. Unless they’re prepared to kill us, they won’t dare to harm us. Don’t you see that?” Gaspar’s tone was triumphant.
“What I see is that the Boss and Neagley, and who knows how many others before we’re done, are all involved with Reacher somehow. The Boss doesn’t want anybody to know about whatever it is.”
“Exactly. Because if we can find out? Working in this straightjacket they’ve fitted around us? Then whatever it is, we’ll prove that it’s findable. And that’s the very last thing they want. If it’s findable, then they want to destroy it before anyone else finds out.”
“Of course,” she paused, “and destroy everyone who knows about it, too, don’t you think?”
He stared straight into her face, heavy black brows pointed directly at the bridge of his nose, nostrils flared, tone determined. “First thing I learned in the Army: stop thinking like you and start thinking like them.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“You’re still struggling inside the upwardly-mobile-FBI-agent straightjacket. You still think you can pull your fat out of the fire and mine, too. That’s what’s crazy.”
He stood a bit apart from her now—away from her, as if he could create distance from their situation, too. “The Boss and Reacher,” he said, “and probably Neagley and the scar-faced woman and who knows how many others—they’re all playing some game we don’t even know. And their game has no rules at all.” He turned his back to her and stuffed both hands into his pockets. “Follow your own advice, why don’t you? Caffeinate and carry on, Susie Wong.”
She laughed. The first time she’d really laughed since they were attacked. It felt good. And she didn’t care who heard her. “Are you packed, Cheech? We’ve got a plane to catch as soon as we’re done here.”
“Done with what?” he asked.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Saturday, November 13
9:30 a.m.
Chicago, IL
Kim stood, smoothed her suit, sucked in a deep breath. She reached for the radio and turned the volume a bit higher. She moved to the bathroom, flipped on the second overhead fan for more interference. Then, she sidled closer to Gaspar and lowered her voice.
“Yesterday, Neagley invited us to ask more questions after we reviewed those files she gave us on Dixon and O’Donnell. So I called her this morning. They said she’s out of town. Return date open.”
Gaspar snorted. “Three guesses where she went.”
Kim shrugged. “Two options: Nowhere or somewhere, right? But we’ll find her soon enough. I need to confirm something else quickly before we go.”
She meant to tread carefully. Because they’d been ordered not to use official resources at all, every time they did so they were violating orders. Which was not great, but she felt it was justified under the circumstances—though putting their colleagues in harm’s way wasn’t justified. She wouldn’t do it. So she’d use her personal connections inside the FBI and at other agencies sparingly, and with the utmost care.
This was doubly true with her partner and his connections.
Ultimately, Agents Otto and Gaspar would be forced to testify about this investigation when it went south, assuming they survived. The less they each knew about the other’s extra-legal activities, the better.
“What about Reacher’s bank records?” She phrased the question carefully, working around the minefield.
She didn’t ask how Gaspar managed to get Reacher’s bank records to begin with. Banks were hacked every day. Confidential information was leaked every day. Don’t ask, do tell—they kept coming back to that. Certainly seemed like a good policy for the moment, where confidential sources were concerned.
Leaning in tight, Gaspar quietly reported the facts. “He’s got one account. Branch in Virginia near the Pentagon. That’s all. Army pension deposited once a month, always on the 5th. Early on he’d call to withdraw cash now and then. Never large amounts. Usually a few hundred dollars. The bank would wire the cash to a Western Union office of his choice. Always a different Western Union office. Withdrawals sporadic. Amounts varied. No pattern I could find.”
“But he doesn’t do that now?”
“After 9/11, Reacher started using an ATM card. Meaning the withdrawals are traceable. And there’s likely photographs of his mug collecting the money at the machines, too.”
“Only after the fact. You could go to the spot where he used the card last, but that doesn’t tell you where to find him now.”
But maybe it did explain how the Boss lost track of Reacher. Assuming he actually did lose track.
“No pattern at all to the banking?” she asked. “He’s not withdrawing regular amounts? Regular intervals? Nothing?”
Gaspar shook his head.
She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Reacher’s habits seemed like complete idiocy to her. Could he really be wandering aimlessly from town to town? Taking a bit of cash here and there, and then moving on? It made no sense.
And even if it did make sense, in Reacher’s world, maintaining that lifestyle would be too awkward to succeed for fifteen years, and flat out impossible to implement indefinitely. The more she thought about the idea, the more preposterous it seemed. Which meant her early-morning epiphany became more plausible by the second.
She reached for her coat and pointed from the face of her Seiko toward the door.
Gaspar didn’t move. He said, “I see the wheels turning over there, Sunshine. What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure. But we’ve got to go.”
He grinned. “Another minute. Once we walk through that door, we can’t talk about this again for a while. Give me something else to dream about while I sleep on the plane.”
She scowled at him. Sleeping on an airplane was the height of idiocy, too. At least being awake gives you a fighting chance to save yourself during a fiery plane crash. Not a significant chance. But a better chance than if you slept through whatever fleeting opportunities might present themselves.
“Maybe it just happens that trouble finds Reacher wherever he lands,” she said, “but generally people get what they ask for, don’t they? Normal people don’t find themselves in bar fights and fistfights and gunfights every day. Walks like a killer, talks like a killer, trained as a killer . . . .”
Gaspar shook his head. “Some guys are just trouble magnets,” he insisted. He remained stubborn on this point, which Kim felt was so obvious even Stevie Wonder could see it.
She didn’t have time to argue about this again, so said nothing.
When she didn’t relent, Gaspar said, “Suppose he is a mercenary of some sort. Let’s say he gets paid for the work, too, because otherwise, why bother? Where does the money go? And what does he use it for?”
Kim shrugged. “Drugs. Women. Gambling. The list is endless.”
“Back to his bank records. Slim, almost non-existent. For fifteen years, very few deposits other than his monthly pension. So he gets paid for these mercenary activities in cash?”
The best answer was another bank account. Given Reacher’s friends in high and low places and the lack of information available about him, the likelihood of finding a second bank account, if it did exist, seemed remote and at the moment, she didn’t have the time to spare.
She shrugged again, this time to convey something totally different. “Yo
u’ll figure it out. Sleep on it.” Kim gathered her equipment. “Collect your bags. We’ve got to go,” she said, and left the room.
The Boss’s cell phone began vibrating in her pocket again as she walked down the hall. Coincidence? Surely not. How much had he heard of their conversation? She ignored his summons for the third time today. Liberating, really, not to be tethered to his whims.
She worked through her plans for the next twelve hours, focused on the private investigator who had been watching Dixon.
The surveillance file Neagley gave to them yesterday was incomplete at best and probably had been scrubbed. After almost a month of watching Dixon, the investigator had to have accumulated more than Neagley had revealed. Maybe Neagley had scrubbed the file, but more likely someone else had done it. Could have been the investigator. Or his employer. Or someone else.
Regardless, there was more to know than what Neagley had shared. If Dixon could be located, Kim might be able to move on in her assignment and stop dealing with Neagley and O’Donnell and the rest. Let Reacher and his crew kill each other off if that’s what they wanted to do. Kim didn’t really care anymore.
She reached the elevator, turned, and saw Gaspar pulling his bag, limping toward her, and pushed the call button.
Inside the elevator, she said, “I want to see the surveillance video Colonel Silver used to grab the still-frame photos of Dixon’s visitors.”
Silver had already failed to mention Neagley’s visit to Dixon last week. Old soldiers stick together, Kim knew, and this case overflowed with career Army veterans, most of them officers. Like any huge organization, the higher up the pyramid one climbed, the smaller the pool of pals. Officers of a certain vintage were likely to have at least a passing relationship with one another. At this point it would be foolish to assume Silver and Neagley didn’t have a long history with each other. She needed to find out for sure.
As Gaspar said, it was long past time for Kim to think like them.
Kim glanced at her Seiko. She could feel her stomach already churning. Fifteen minutes until takeoff. “Someday, Chico, let’s try getting on board our flight on time like normal passengers. What do you say?”
“You’re my captain, Dragon Lady Boss. But you’d better hustle,” he said. “Don’t hold me back, okay?”
She hadn’t planned to ask, but she did. “What did the Boss have to say when he called just now?”
“You think I talked to the bastard?” Gaspar laughed like a man watching a slapstick comedy gag over and over and over. Kim didn’t understand slapstick comedy or why men found it funny. She only knew that they did. And when some dumb jackass comedy routine struck their fancy, they laughed as if God himself had tickled them into near hysteria. That was Gaspar’s reaction.
When the elevator stopped at the gate level, he dashed out and she had to hustle to keep up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday, November 13
12:54 p.m.
New York City
The flight had been blessedly uneventful, on time, as perfect as Kim could expect while being strapped to an explosive missile. She hoped it was an omen. Perhaps her luck had changed.
She spent the flight time reviewing and updating her files, as was her routine. She’d identified more open questions about Reacher than answers, but she could almost believe she’d been deployed on a cut-and-dry background check for the SPTF. Almost. If she ignored the six-hour gap in her memory and the soreness in her neck. And the end of her career, which for her would be the end of life as she’d planned it.
The moment she had Internet access again, she’d sent the materials to secure storage. They’d stashed their equipment in a locker and joined a short cab line. The cab was clean, the driver pleasant, and weekend traffic light. Elapsed time from their O’Hare hotel to the curb in front of Dixon’s Manhattan apartment was under four hours. Not bad.
She waited on the sidewalk while Gaspar paid the cab driver. Unlike their prior visit only two days ago, the weather was crisp but fine and the city teemed with Saturday crowds. A Salvation Army volunteer stood on the sidewalk outside Dixon’s building, vigorously ringing his bell beside the familiar red kettle. New Yorkers hustled along, loaded down with heavy shopping bags or lost in whatever coursed through their earbuds, but several stopped to slide coins and folded bills through the slot on the collection kettle’s lid.
Kim’s father served as a volunteer bell ringer after Thanksgiving every year. He and her mother would be expecting Kim home in Detroit for the long holiday weekend. Would she make it? She dropped a folded twenty into the kettle and made a wish like she always did. Kim wasn’t superstitious. But her mother was and the wishing habit was ingrained from childhood. Today she wished to finish her assignment before Thanksgiving.
Kim could see through the revolving door that Dixon’s building was busier today, too. Residents passed through the lobby, some coming, some going; most called out to Colonel Silver on their way. Kim saw no one she recognized. When Gaspar joined her at the entrance, she said, “You take the lead with Silver. He seems to relate better to you. Tell him we want to talk to him privately. Find out when his break is and how long it lasts.”
“Ten-four.” Gaspar waved his arm forward, palm up, and said, “After you.”
She pushed through the door and waited for Gaspar on the inside before following him across the lobby. Seeing them before they reached him, a big grin lifted the corners of Silver’s mouth. “Hey! Good thing you two came back.”
Gaspar asked, “Why is that, Colonel?”
“Ms. Dixon came home last night. You still want to talk to her, right?”
“You’ve seen her?” Kim asked.
He wagged his head. “Not personally, no. But the night guy, he told me she’d arrived during the wee hours. She’s probably still catching up on things. Jet lag and all, you know? You can go on up if you want.”
Gaspar said, “Okay, thanks.”
Kim followed, completely flummoxed, and reconsidering everything she thought she’d learned in the past three days. Finding the investigator, identifying the scar-faced woman and the dead man might be unnecessary now. Maybe Dixon would actually be helpful. A cooperative witness who knew Reacher and might have something worthwhile to add? Now that was a refreshing concept.
Unlike the elevator in Neagley’s building, Kim remembered how this one zipped up the floors at light speed. They arrived on Dixon’s floor in a hot New York minute and Gaspar led the way to her apartment.
He pressed the doorbell. They waited. He pressed again. No answer, just like their prior visit. Kim began to feel uneasy. Gaspar pressed one last time. Same result.
He turned to Kim, gestured toward the keypad, and said, “Your turn.”
She spent a couple of moments in indecision before she stepped up and pressed the numeric keypad as if it were a cell phone, testing her hunch. 7-3-2-2-4-3-7.
Just as it had when Gaspar pressed the same entry code on their last visit, the door clicked open. “Good to have you back, Susie Wong,” he teased, grinning. “How did you know Dixon’s code?”
“I didn’t. But I know you, Chico. And I know everything you know about Dixon. I just used the code you would have guessed first when you were trying to impress me.”
“Which was?”
“The common denominator.”
He laughed and she pushed through the door and they stood a moment to admire the breathtaking view of New York again before he called out, “Ms. Dixon? Karla Dixon? Are you here?”
Crickets.
Kim said, “I’ll check the bedroom. You check the kitchen. Meet you back here.”
Gaspar nodded and moved toward the kitchen, continuing to call out to Dixon. Kim did the same while moving in the opposite direction.
“Karla?” Kim called ahead to avoid the possibility of interrupting the woman in her own bedroom. She needn’t have bothered.
Dixon’s bed had not been slept in. Kim had left one pillow slightly askew on her last inspection,
as a test, which remained as she had positioned it. The master bathroom’s sinks and shower were dry. She lifted the toilet lid. The bowl had a full complement of water. After almost a month’s disuse, some of the water should have evaporated. Maybe the toilet had been flushed since Dixon left, but when? No footprints on the carpets except her own size 5s and Gaspar’s size 12s, made during their Thursday inspections. She looked inside the closets and found them unchanged. She stopped in Dixon’s office again. Nothing out of place.
“No one back here,” she called out to Gaspar as she rounded the entry to the dining room. “Find anything out front?”
She saw Gaspar through the kitchen door, facing her with his hands behind his back, leaning against the cold granite countertop. He tilted his head to the side, as if he was pointing toward the corner, outside Kim’s visual range.
She felt every small hair stand up on the back of her neck. Alarm coursed through her venous system as she reached for her gun. But before she drew it, a woman’s voice projected from that direction. An even, dispassionate voice she recognized.
“Hello, Otto,” Neagley said.
Kim holstered her weapon and entered the kitchen. Neagley stood with her back to her, looking into the open refrigerator.
“Looking for lunch?” Kim asked.
“I was, actually,” Neagley said, without turning.
My ass, Kim thought. “You might have answered when you heard us calling out.”
“You called Dixon, not me.” Neagley closed the refrigerator and moved to opening cupboard doors.
The woman was infuriating. “Is Dixon here?”
“You’ve been through the entire place. Did you see her?”
Kim’s patience evaporated. “Why are you here?”
“Same reason you are, I suspect. I told you I’d left a message for Dixon. She got my message and left one in return. Said she was flying in last night and she’d be home today.” Neagley returned to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. “No food in here.” She offered a bottle to Kim, and closed the door again when Kim didn’t accept.
