Jack of Hearts

by Diane Capri

  If so, he had access to powerful government technology that should make the task doable, given enough time. After all, they found Bin Laden. Only took them ten years to do it.

  She wouldn’t last ten years. Maybe she’d last ten more hours, give or take.

  How long had she been out here, anyway?

  She was sunburned but not blistered. How long did it take to get blisters? She wasn’t totally dehydrated, either.

  She nodded. Not too long, probably.

  Which didn’t matter much. The question wasn’t how long she’d been here already. The issue was how she could get herself rescued.

  If Cooper wasn’t so inclined, her ace in the hole was Gaspar. He always had her back. Always.

  Gaspar knew she carried three phones. He could locate the three numbers easily enough. With all three signals, he could probably pinpoint her exact location.

  What she needed to do was to sit still and give him a chance to perform his magic. She had absolutely no doubt that he’d be working on it.

  As soon as he realized she was missing.

  How long would that take?

  She closed her eyes and tried to recall how she’d ended up here.

  The fire at the Orchid Thai Bistro. When was that? Just this morning? Or was it days ago?

  She remembered Eleanor Duncan shepherding the bistro employees into a van. The van pulled away, headed west.

  “Okay,” she croaked around her dry vocal cords. “Then what?”

  After a few blank moments, she recalled climbing into a limo with Eleanor. They’d talked a few minutes. She couldn’t recall the conversation.

  After that, she remembered nothing at all until she’d awakened here.

  Kim searched her brain for more about the limo ride, but it was like her memory had been chemically erased.

  The random thought sparked an unwelcome epiphany.

  Her symptoms were not caused by exposure and dehydration. At least not totally. Her memory had been chemically erased.

  The symptoms she’d experienced since she woke up were familiar. Drowsiness, confusion, dry mouth, and the rest.

  She’d worked a lot of drug cases over the years. There were other possibilities, but given the nature of drug trafficking these days, she suspected hers were symptoms of a fentanyl overdose.

  Somehow, she’d been drugged. How? She didn’t recall ingesting anything. Maybe she’d remember later.

  How it happened was academic.

  And then, after some period of time, probably hours and not days or weeks or years, she’d been dumped here.

  Why would Eleanor Duncan have done that?

  Kim tried to work through the puzzle, but her logic remained too muddled.

  “You’ll be okay. It takes longer to die of dehydration,” she rasped aloud, ignoring the missing hours. How long had she been here anyway? She kept coming back to that.

  She’d read statistics on dehydration deaths in the Grand Canyon, but her memory was still too fuzzy to recall the details. The gist of the important part was that the park service rescued hikers daily and sometimes deployed a medivac helicopter.

  Which meant someone might find her before it was too late.

  If they were looking for her now.

  Gaspar would be looking for her, she hoped.

  If she could stay alive until he found her, she’d be okay.

  She closed her eyes, and drugged sleep consumed her once again.

  CHAPTER 30

  Wednesday, May 18

  Utah

  12:00 p.m.

  Jade awakened slowly and opened her eyes inside the darkened passenger compartment of the SUV. Eleanor Duncan was sitting quietly in the captain’s chair beside her.

  “What’s happening to us?” she asked Eleanor, stretching cramped muscles. She pressed the seatbelt release button, but it remained securely fastened into the buckle.

  “Save your energy. You won’t get that seatbelt off. I’ve already tried,” Eleanor replied speaking Thai. She’d learned Thai to communicate with the women she’d rescued all those years ago, and she had an excellent facility for the language.

  Eleanor passed a bottle of water across the console between them. “It’s not drugged. I’ve been sipping it for an hour.”

  Jade took the water and twisted off the cap. She sipped enough to soothe her dry throat. Taking her cue from Eleanor, she replied in Thai, too. “How are GiGi and the others?”

  Eleanor shrugged and shook her head.

  “So we’ve been abducted again?” Jade asked, her voice stronger now that her vocal cords were somewhat hydrated.

  “I’m not sure. Could be something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Eleanor leaned her head back against the seat. “Someone else was sitting in your seat before I passed out. An FBI agent.”

  Jade gasped. “You mean we’re being deported? After all this time? We have papers. We shouldn’t have been flagged anywhere. How did they even find us?”

  “I have no idea.” Eleanor shook her head. “My phone doesn’t work, so I can’t call for help. But it all seems rather high-tech for a run-of-the-mill kidnapping for ransom, doesn’t it?”

  Jade shivered. She had traveled many days in a comfortable shipping container and more long hours cramped into the back of a van with fifteen other women.

  At the time, she’d been filled with happy anticipation. The trip was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Strangely, those memories flooded through her as if they’d happened last week instead of years ago.

  But this time, she felt anxious and afraid.

  “So we’re stuck here until we get to wherever they’re taking us?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.

  “Unless we can escape. They’ll have to stop for gas, at least. Maybe they’ll let us out to use the bathroom. I doubt they want us to urinate inside here,” Eleanor said, her voice weary as if riding in a luxury SUV was far from the worst thing that had ever happened to her, too.

  Jade nodded. “What about Reacher? Is he following us?”

  She didn’t know exactly what had happened to Eleanor back in Nebraska, but she knew Reacher had rescued her friend somehow. Maybe he’d do it again now. She crossed her fingers and hid them in the folds of her clothes so Eleanor wouldn’t see.

  “Maybe he is. I haven’t seen him. But the FBI agent, the one who got in here with me back at the bistro? She asked the same questions,” Eleanor replied wearily.

  “I see,” Jade said, although she didn’t understand. Not exactly. “Why would the FBI be interested in Reacher? How did they even know about him?”

  Eleanor cleared her throat, and Jade handed the water bottle back to her. “Have you spoken to your brother since Sunday?”

  Jade’s hand flew to her mouth. “You think this is about Amarin? We’ve been taken because of what he did?”

  Of course, it was possible. More than possible. Amarin worked for a gangster. He’d killed the fixer. Three days later, the bistro burns to the ground, and they’re all kidnapped. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

  “Karma’s a bitch.” Eleanor kneaded her temples with the fingers of both hands. “Look, this might not be your brother’s fault. It could be mine.”

  “Your fault? Why?” Jade was bewildered.

  Eleanor frowned and opened her eyes again. “Who is your brother’s boss?”

  “I don’t know his name. Amarin never told me.” Jade shook her head. “But what does it matter?”

  “Gangsters have long memories. They’re not forgiving, either.”

  “So he’d want revenge against Amarin,” Jade said, frowning, still unable to grasp whatever Eleanor was trying to say. “But not us. We didn’t do anything to him. I’ve never even laid eyes on the man.”

  Eleanor nodded. “He might want revenge against Amarin. If I were your brother, I’d be watching my back, for sure.”

  “But I’ve never met the man. Why would he steal all of us?” Jade asked. “He doesn�
�t even know we exist.”

  Eleanor was a very strong woman, but she wasn’t bulletproof. No human was. She inhaled deeply and held the breath for a full three count. It was something Jade had only seen her do when she was seriously rattled and trying to hold it together.

  The silence lasted a while. Jade waited.

  Finally, Eleanor said, “When I rescued you all back in Nebraska? They would consider what I did stealing from them. All of you were bought and paid for. Specifically, they’d paid my husband and his family a great deal of money to deliver you all from Thailand, unharmed.”

  Jade widened her eyes and blinked several times. Her breathing came in ragged bursts of pain in her chest.

  “Strictly speaking, it was my husband and his family who handled the shipping from Thailand. And they’re all dead now,” Eleanor said. “But it gets worse.”

  Jade’s heart was pounding now with fear, blood rushing in her ears. Her voice shook when she asked, “How can any of this be worse?”

  “The men who paid for you have a grievance against Reacher, too. Reacher helped me escape. He helped you, too. Back then,” Eleanor explained wearily as if revisiting old horrors was the very last thing she wanted.

  Jade realized something she should have guessed before. Eleanor wasn’t speaking in the Thai language on a whim. “Are they listening to our conversation right now?”

  Eleanor shrugged. “Possibly.”

  Perhaps their captors could speak Thai well, but the risk was worth taking. Once again, Jade and Eleanor needed to work together to save themselves and the others.

  Jade closed her eyes and tried to calm herself. Hyperventilating wouldn’t solve anything.

  She was a prisoner in this seat. Eleanor, too.

  Her sister, GiGi, was a prisoner in the compartment behind her, along with the others. And the women in the van, the ones who worked at the bistro. Eighteen of them in all.

  Eventually, this SUV would stop somewhere. They’d be released from these restraints. Which was when the fresh hell would start.

  CHAPTER 31

  Wednesday, May 18

  Unknown Location

  12:30 p.m.

  A noise in the distance jostled Kim awake. She opened her eyes and tried to moisten her lips with her dry tongue.

  She cocked her head, attempting to identify the sound. Buzzing around, back and forth, up and down, like the world’s largest bumble bee.

  She grinned. Her brain fog had cleared enough to realize how silly that thought was.

  So what was it?

  Motorcycles? Off-road vehicles? Something like that. Which meant humans were having fun on motorized transportation. If she heard some, there could be more people close enough.

  Perhaps she could hitch a ride.

  Sound traveled far in the desert. The vehicles could be miles away.

  Even if her feeble shouting could be heard across the distance, the whining engines would overwhelm any sound she managed to make with her voice.

  But maybe hikers or campers were closer. Without the heavy background volume of the machines, an aural signal might reach them.

  Kim dug her cell phone out of her pocket and located the specialized air horn application. She opened the app, maxed up the volume, and pushed the button to sound the horn.

  The noise was loud. Really loud.

  She listened for any sort of response. Nothing.

  The riders were not focused on distress signals. They were probably wearing helmets with some noise-canceling tech inside, too.

  The cell phone horn was probably not loud enough to capture their attention.

  She waited, listening to the roaring engines accelerating, decelerating, coming, and going in the distance. They didn’t seem to be headed toward her.

  Kim tried the horn again. Twice. Same result.

  A louder noise might work, but the only thing she had was her service weapon with a limited number of bullets, which she was reluctant to waste.

  Hikers or campers in the area might have heard the horn’s blast but had no means of response. She couldn’t waste time on wishful thinking. She focused on the riders.

  She needed a visual signal. Something they might see from a distance. The riders were watching the ground and each other. Enjoying the ride more than the scenery in the distance. She wouldn’t squander this chance.

  A road flare would probably do the job. If she had one. Which she didn’t.

  The reflection from a mirror could be seen for miles by land, air, or water rescue crews looking for survivors. Any normal woman would have a mirror in her purse. But Kim didn’t have a purse. Or a mirror.

  Her FBI survival training had been focused on urban warfare, but she’d been a Girl Scout once, and she grew up on a farm with brothers. She’d been camping lots of times. She knew the basics. And she understood technology.

  Kim could sacrifice one of her three cell phones. She chose the burner that was her lifeline to Gaspar. She could always call him on one of the others when she made it to a cell tower connection.

  She put the phone on the ground and stomped the back with her boot to bust it open. The reflective material on the back of the screen would be enough to reflect the bright sunlight and create an effective signal.

  The engines were still revved and running off to the west. She held up the mirror to catch the sun and aimed it through extended fingers toward the riders. If they were looking toward her, they should see it. She hoped.

  She held the mirror aimed in the right direction for a good long time, but nothing about the engine noises changed. If hikers or campers were in the area, they might have seen her signal by now, too.

  Kim had been listening closely to the engines long enough to distinguish four distinct vehicles, revving up and slowing down at different intervals.

  And then she noticed that two of the vehicles shut down. Only two were running now. The riders might be getting tired. Wrapping it up for the day.

  If she lost this chance, it could be hours, or days, before another opportunity appeared. She could be dead from exposure by then.

  She needed what her family, football fans all, called a Hail Mary. A desperate, last-ditch attempt to score with little chance of success.

  If she combined the horn, the signal mirror, and a signal fire all at once, maybe one of the riders would notice. And failing that, she’d fire her gun.

  For the first time in her life, she regretted being a non-smoker. A smoker would carry a lighter or a box of matches. Kim had neither.

  What she had were three cell phones. All containing batteries.

  It was the longest of shots, but one cell phone was already destroyed, and she could afford to sacrifice a second.

  The off-roaders wouldn’t stick around forever.

  She was out of better ideas.

  The first thing she needed was flammable tinder.

  A woman with a purse might have a flammable spare tampon or hand sanitizer packet. Kim had neither.

  The ground near her shady rock was bare and dry.

  She found what she needed ten yards away on the other side of the big rock. Dry sagebrush. She picked up an armload. She shredded a few pieces into a finer nest that might ignite quickly if she could produce the right conditions.

  Kim removed the battery from the destroyed cell phone and found a thin wire to create a hot short circuit.

  She bent low to shelter the tinder and the battery from any errant breeze.

  “You can do this,” she rasped and then held her breath to steady her hands. She tapped the wire to the positive and negative ends of the battery terminal simultaneously.

  The short circuit heated up and then, somehow, flashed a spark. Yes!

  The spark ignited the tinder. Double Yes!

  And the tinder began to burn.

  She sheltered her small fire and added more tinder to keep it alive. When it was large enough, she added more dry sagebrush for kindling. Soon, she had a nice signal fire going.

  She listened to
the engines.

  No change.

  She stood near the fire, used the mirror again, and triggered the signal horn. All three at once.

  No change.

  She grabbed her service weapon and discharged two bullets. The ear-splitting blasts reverberated in her ears, drowning out the noise of the engines. But did the explosive roar travel far enough to grab anyone else’s attention?

  Kim bent to feed her fire with the last of the kindling she’d collected before she left in search of more. She didn’t want to destroy another cell phone to start over. Easier to keep the fire going.

  Starting fires was a felony in some places, especially when conditions were dry and breezy.

  She’d put the fire out before she allowed it to get out of control.

  But maybe, if she were lucky, some concerned outdoor enthusiast would see it from afar and report the fire to the proper authorities.

  On the other side of the big rock she’d used for shade and shelter, she’d found the dead sagebrush earlier. She walked back there to collect the rest of it, wondering where she’d find more after this armload was consumed.

  Her hearing was still impaired from the gunshots and dehydration. She couldn’t distinguish the engines now. Were there still two? Or four? Did it matter?

  Carrying an armload of dry sagebrush, she came around the big rock, headed toward the fire, and saw a four-wheeler idling on the leeward side of her fire away from the smoke.

  A woman pulled her helmet off and killed the engine. “What kind of idiot are you? Fires like this can burn out of control in minutes. Acres of wildlife and habitat destroyed by your selfishness.” The redheaded woman was furiously stamping on the fire. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

  Kim dropped the armload of sagebrush and hurried toward the Valkyrie on the quadbike. “Hoping to hitch a ride back to civilization. Any chance?”

  CHAPTER 32

  Wednesday, May 18

  Denver, Colorado

  2:00 p.m.

  Gaspar had doubled down on his effort to find Otto. He didn’t know if she had gone dark intentionally or whether she was in trouble. Hell, he didn’t even know for sure that she was still riding in the black SUV she’d climbed into with Eleanor Duncan back at the bistro. She might have climbed right back out again at Denver Tower or somewhere else entirely.