Jack of Hearts

by Diane Capri

  A middle-aged Native American woman stood behind the counter, dressed in a tan western-style shirt with a bolo tie held together by a large turquoise and silver arrowhead. Kim guessed the outfit was a costume and not normal attire for her.

  “Been mountain biking?” She tilted her head toward the rear. “Restroom’s back there if you’d like to wash the dust off before you eat.”

  “Thanks,” Kim said, walking over the cracked linoleum floor until she reached the door with the unisex sign. She flipped on the combination light and overhead fan, slipped inside the tiny room, and closed the door.

  She used the toilet and flushed. Then she stood before the damaged antique mirror and looked at her reflection. The image she saw amid the blotchy tarnished and oxidized spots on the glass was almost unrecognizable.

  Her face was tender and sunburnt and covered in sandy dust, black hair, eyebrows, and lashes almost beige with it. She bent over the sink and splashed her face with several handfuls of warm water. She rinsed the dust from her mouth, too.

  When she looked again, her image hadn’t improved much.

  She pulled her hair loose from the knot at the base of her neck and knocked out as much of the grit as possible. Then she quickly rearranged the bun.

  Frowning into the mirror, she smoothed her eyebrows into place. She dampened a paper towel and used it to brush as much dust as possible off her black suit.

  “That’s as good as it’s going to get without a dry cleaner and a shower,” she said aloud in a still dry and raspy voice.

  She tossed the paper towels into the trash and returned the way she’d come. The waitress behind the counter waved her to a booth by the window. Kim slid into the seat and the waitress brought a menu, a glass of water, and a small thermos of coffee with a brown plastic mug.

  The waitress grinned, wrinkling the sunlines at the corners of her eyes. “Honey, you look like you been rode hard and put up wet.”

  “Um, thanks?” Kim offered a friendly smile in return. She’d never heard the expression before. Some kind of horse metaphor, she assumed. But she got the gist. And she couldn’t argue.

  “Most folks who come in here know me. Been working here all my life.” The woman poured the coffee into the mug and set the pot on the table, along with the water and the menu. “I’m Abigail.”

  Kim nodded and took a big swallow of the water, which tasted better than anything she’d ever had to drink in her entire life. “Thank you, Abigail. What’s good to eat here?”

  “Everything’s good. We wouldn’t have stayed in business more than a hundred years otherwise. You hungry?”

  “Starving,” Kim said, because it was true.

  “I recommend the cheeseburger and fries, then. That’ll fill you right up,” Abigail suggested.

  “Sounds great to me. You have cell phone service here?” Kim asked.

  “Honey, we got all the modern conveniences. There’s only twelve thousand of us lives here, but we get tourists coming here from all over. They act like they’ll die if they can’t connect to the outside world,” Abigail said with a grin on her way to put in Kim’s order.

  While she waited for her food, Kim drained the water glass and then pulled her phone out of her pocket. She’d turned it off to save the battery charge when she’d first awakened in the desert and realized it was useless. She powered it up now and waited for the promised connection to local cell towers.

  Man, it was dry out there. She might never get rehydrated. Kim drank the coffee Abigail had poured, which was surprisingly great.

  When the signal came in on her phone, she found several missed calls from Burke but no messages. None from Gaspar or The Boss. Which wasn’t surprising since both Gaspar and Cooper believed she had dedicated burners for each of them in her pockets.

  She’d destroyed Gaspar’s burner to make the signal fire. If he’d left messages there, she’d never be able to retrieve them.

  Next, she checked Cooper’s phone. No calls. No messages. Figured. He only contacted her when he wanted something. She could be dead for all he knew. Or cared.

  Kim shook her head. After another hit of caffeine, she punched the redial on her personal cell to call Burke. After three rings, he picked up.

  “Where’ve you been?” he said over a Bluetooth connection, probably in the Navigator. The window must have been open in the vehicle, too, judging from the wind noise.

  “Not sure exactly. I can tell you where I am now. Fruita, Colorado. I need a ride,” she said, as Abigail delivered a cheeseburger the size of a dinner plate, along with a bowl of shoestring fries.

  Kim picked up her knife and cut the burger into quarters. She took a bite of juicy goodness and found her napkin to wipe the grease that ran down her chin.

  “Maybe Gaspar can help you with that ride. Take me too long to get back there. I’m a couple of hours out of Las Vegas already,” Burke replied.

  Kim blinked. Did she hear that right? “Las Vegas? What for?”

  “You need to catch up,” Burke chuckled. “What did Eleanor Duncan tell you?”

  “You want me to ask Gaspar for a ride? What happened to keeping him out of our business at all costs?” Kim frowned, dipping two crispy fries in mustard before she plopped them into her mouth and chewed.

  “Right. Well, call Cooper, then,” Burke said.

  “What are you doing right now?” Kim asked before taking another bite of the burger.

  “Following Reacher. Our job is to find him, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  She swallowed the food and chased it with the coffee. “You have eyes on Reacher? Right now? Where is he?”

  “Not exactly,” Burke replied.

  “So what is it, exactly?” Kim said. “Give me the blow-by-blow.”

  “While you were doing whatever you were doing, Gaspar and I tracked Reacher down. He’s still riding with Petey Burns. Headed toward Vegas,” Burke said and then followed up with a brief recitation of the facts he’d been living since she saw him last.

  When he finished, she gave him a quick rundown on her activities and then said, “I’ll meet you in Vegas.”

  “Copy that,” he replied. “And stay in touch this time, will you?”

  “Aw, you were worried about me,” she teased as she chewed another potato, although his answers bothered her.

  The point of having a reliable partner seemed to be lost on him. He wasn’t the Lone Ranger, looking for Reacher on his own. He should have had her back first and foremost.

  “Nah. Just didn’t want to be left out of the action,” he laughed.

  “Right.” She disconnected and called Gaspar.

  “Good to hear from you, Sunshine,” he picked up immediately. He sounded relieved. He’d probably been frantically searching for her for the past several hours.

  Which was Burke’s job, whether he acted like it or not.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she replied.

  “Helo’s on the way. You’re about five hundred miles from Vegas. You’ll get there after Burke, but air time is a hair under three hours,” Gaspar said. “Finish your food. Pilot’s landing in the parking lot to pick you up in twenty minutes. Maybe less.”

  “You’re a lifesaver, Chico,” she said bravely as she pushed the burger away.

  Three hours in a helicopter, perhaps the most unstable motorized air transportation on earth. The rate of fatal crashes attributable to non-essential low-altitude operations like a quick flight to Vegas across the desert was too significant to brush off.

  Low flying helicopters encountered obstacles like buildings, powerlines, or hills that appeared suddenly in the fog. None of that should happen in the desert. But once they reached the outskirts of Vegas, the risks would multiply exponentially.

  But Gaspar was right. A helicopter was the best option. All she had to do was survive the trip.

  “Do you have any idea where Eleanor Duncan is now, specifically?” Kim asked as she wiped the grease off her hands and swilled the coffee.

  “Still w
orking on it. By the time you arrive, I hope I’ll have a solid location. Meanwhile, I’ve sent what I have on her employees in files to your secure server. They’re plain vanilla. Nothing special. When you reconnect with Burke and your laptop, let me know what jumps out at you,” Gaspar replied.

  “How about the limo driver and his sidekick? You were following them on traffic cams, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Haven’t had a chance to do much with that yet,” Gaspar replied.

  “Can you get a couple of stills and run them through all the facial recognition databases? This abduction was a smooth operation. These guys know what they’re doing.”

  “Which means they’ve done it before…gotcha,” Gaspar said.

  “We’ll talk soon. I’ll buy you a beer and enthrall you with my latest adventures,” she smiled to let him know she was okay, even though he couldn’t see her, and it wasn’t strictly true.

  Her abduction had rattled her more than she wanted to admit. She’d been lucky back there in the desert. But for those quad bikers, she’d have died. She knew it as well as she knew her own shoe size. It was a truth she didn’t want to dwell upon too long. That way lay madness.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he replied before he disconnected.

  She didn’t try calling Cooper again. He had access to her entire conversations with Burke and Gaspar. Whatever he wanted to know, he could find out himself.

  She dropped a twenty on the table to pay for the food, including a generous tip, before she went outside. Across the street was a drugstore. She jogged over and bought four new burner phones. By the time she made it back to the Chuck Wagon’s parking lot, the helo was on the ground.

  Kim bent into the rotor wash, letting the strong breeze brush the rest of the dust off her before she climbed into the passenger seat and prepared for takeoff, hoping she could keep her meal in her stomach.

  She’d be out of contact for the duration of the ride. Cell phones could interfere with a helo’s navigation systems, which was the last thing she was willing to risk. The ride would be harrowing enough.

  Gathering more intel from Gaspar and Burke would have to wait.

  CHAPTER 35

  Wednesday, May 18

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  6:10 p.m.

  Sydney rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck to work out the tension. The problem presented by the FBI agent he’d unintentionally scooped up with Eleanor Duncan had weighed on his mind for the entire trip from Denver.

  All the solutions he’d considered carried consequences worse than the problem itself. He’d made his choice hours ago, for better or worse, and there was no going back.

  But he kept turning it over in his head, looking for gaps he’d missed.

  Had he done the right thing?

  He’d been tempted to kill the agent and never mention the situation to Rossi at all. That’s what Little Tony would have done and declared the problem solved. What Rossi didn’t know could be swept away that easily, Little Tony would have said.

  But he’d have been dead wrong.

  Killing a federal agent would have put a bounty on Sydney’s head like nothing else he could do. Rossi’s, too, once the feds learned he was involved. And there was always a snitch looking to make a deal with the feds. Always.

  Carting the agent back to Rossi had been a non-starter, too. It was one thing to snatch up illegals and move them across state lines. They were illegal. Who were they gonna call? Nobody. And nobody would care if they died, either.

  Kidnapping citizens was another matter entirely. They had rights. They had families. They had jobs. Too many eyes and ears were out there searching for them.

  The only kind of citizen Sydney wanted to mess with were the ones already on the wrong side of the law. Like Eleanor Duncan.

  And abducting a federal agent? A thousand times worse than an ordinary citizen.

  Too much heat came with a national manhunt for a missing agent. If the feds got wind of it, Sydney would never breathe free air again. He knew it like he knew water was wet. No doubts whatsoever.

  The only thing worse than killing the damned woman would’ve been to keep her in any kind of captivity. Because then she could be rescued. And then she could talk. Which was beyond unacceptable.

  The last time some idiot had abducted and killed a federal agent, heads rolled. Many heads.

  Sydney was beyond keen to keep his head attached, right where it was.

  After mulling things over, he’d chosen the least terrible option.

  When he’d made up his mind, he told Joey Prime the plan. He didn’t mention that the suit was a federal agent. He said she was a citizen. That was all Joey Prime and his cousins needed to know.

  “Whaddaya mean, she’s a citizen?” Joey Prime asked, his mouth slack, eyes wide.

  “I heard her talking to Eleanor Duncan before I gave them the gas,” Sydney said. “She owns a local business close to the restaurant or something.”

  “Oh, cripes,” Joey Prime said, swiping the sweat from his brow. “Whadda we gonna do wit her? We kill her, we’re in trouble with Rossi. We don’t kill her, we’re in trouble with Rossi. Either way, we’re in trouble with the feds.”

  Sydney nodded. Joey Prime might be a bit dim, but he was smart enough to understand the problem. Which had made things easier because Sydney wasted no time explaining.

  “We’ll leave her in the desert before we cross over to Utah. She never saw our faces, and she won’t remember much else because of the fentanyl gas,” Sydney said. Which might not have been true, but he’d hoped it was.

  “She’ll die,” Joey Prime replied, nodding agreement as he worked it out. “No water, no food, no one around. Won’t take long, either.”

  “If we’re lucky.” Sydney shrugged. “You’re usually pretty lucky, Joey.”

  “Guess we got no choice. But Little Tony ain’t gonna like it,” Joey Prime said, shaking his head slowly.

  Sydney didn’t care what Little Tony liked or didn’t. Little Tony was paid muscle, several rungs down the Rossi organization ladder.

  Rossi’s orders had been to drive carefully on the return trip, obeying all traffic laws, arousing no suspicion. “Sneak into town with my inventory,” he’d said.

  “No harm to those girls, either, Sydney. Not so much as a mussed hair, you understand?” Rossi had ordered sternly. “They’ll bring top dollar, but only if they’re in pristine condition.”

  Until he’d discovered the agent, Sydney’s plan had been unfolding perfectly.

  He’d worried about leaving the interstate, which carried too much risk. Someone might’ve noticed. The black stretch SUV limo was distinctive. Witnesses might remember, it and it was too easy to spot on traffic cams if anyone were looking.

  These days, someone was always looking.

  You couldn’t even go to the bathroom in private anymore.

  Dumping the woman had been the best viable option Sydney had come up with. Which was what they’d done.

  But had he done the right thing?

  Whether it was the right thing or not, Sydney couldn’t change it now. But the situation made him as uneasy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

  After they’d stopped to dump the agent at McInnis Canyon, Joey Prime switched to a fake Utah license plate on the SUV and stuffed the Colorado plate deep into a dumpster.

  Sydney kept to the backroads for a while and then reentered the Interstate near Fruita, Colorado.

  Joey switched the plates again when they crossed from Utah to Nevada.

  It wasn’t a perfect solution.

  The plates alone would throw up red flags if the right people were searching.

  On top of that, no plate would ever match the SUV in any database because Rossi had eliminated the vehicle identification number.

  All of which meant that Sydney might make it to Vegas without being stopped. Or he might not. And the long hours in the driver’s seat had left his mind to ruminate on the problem with the federal ag
ent.

  As the sun waned, he was nearing Sin City, and he’d never been so happy to see its millions of lights in the distant sky. He picked up a secure cell phone and rang Little Tony.

  “Yeah?” Little Tony said when he picked up.

  “You know where you’re going?” Sydney asked.

  “Pulling up now.” Little Tony rattled off the address of the safe house where Rossi kept his most profitable cargo for processing when it first arrived.

  The area was north and east of town in a specially developed warehouse district Rossi’s predecessor had funded a decade ago. Rossi paid authorities to look the other way, which also made the eight warehouses valuable lease properties for Rossi’s partners.

  Most importantly, civilians never wandered into the area by mistake or otherwise. Which made security as tight as it could be in a warehouse district, Rossi figured.

  Little Tony had been to Rossi’s safe house before. He knew how to get through the security gate and park around back.

  “You still got all their cell phones in the blocking bag?” Sydney asked.

  Little Tony replied snidely, “They’re wearing pajamas. They don’t got no cell phones.”

  “You checked when you picked them up, though, right?” Sydney’s blood pressure rose and pounded in his ears. “People do grab their cell phones when they’re awakened in the middle of the night.”

  “A course we checked. Whaddaya think, we’re stupid?” Little Tony snarled.

  “We’ll see you in an hour.” Sydney disconnected as his heartbeat slowed. He saw the exit up ahead and moved the lumbering SUV into the right lane, heading toward the safe house.

  Eleanor Duncan should be awake now. Jade and the others, too, probably. Which could make them less cooperative when they reached the safe house but also easier to move around. They could walk on their own two feet. Carrying them in, one by one, would have been a chore, even for Joey Prime.

  Sydney flipped the switches to open the intercoms between the cabin and the two passenger compartments behind the front seat. He could hear them talking softly to each other.