Jack of Hearts

by Diane Capri

Kim jumped to the ground and closed the door on the Navigator, which turned off the interior lights and made the surrounding darkness seem blacker than it was for a few seconds. She waited for her eyes to adjust before she moved out.

  Staying in the shadows as much as possible, she kept low and headed for the last warehouse. It was smaller than the others, which made it stand out. Since she didn’t know exactly which place Burke had been watching, the last one seemed like a reasonable place to start.

  The full moon illuminated the pavement too well. There were no windows in the warehouse buildings. But if anyone was looking, they’d probably see her, even as she did her best to avoid attracting attention.

  When she reached the driveway to the last warehouse, she saw that the gate had been pushed in and demolished. That must have been what Burke saw from the Navigator that drew him out. Maybe he saw it happen in real-time.

  If Burke thought Reacher was responsible, he’d have gone after him. For sure.

  Kim pulled her weapon and hustled a little faster toward the entrance. A gray panel van was parked in front of the building’s entrance. Otherwise, everything in the vicinity seemed quiet.

  Kim swiveled her head and scanned constantly, but she didn’t catch a glimpse of Burke. If he’d created an observation nest for himself, he’d done a good job of cloaking it.

  A pair of headlights preceded a Jeep along the roadway, headed toward the warehouse. Kim took another quick look around.

  The only viable cover on the front side of the warehouse was the gray van.

  She ran toward the vehicle and slipped into the shadows behind it, moments before a Jeep’s headlights flooded the entrance from the driveway.

  The Jeep paused at the destroyed gate, giving her a chance to sneak around to the shadows on the opposite side of the van.

  She took a few tentative steps and tripped over a big man lying flat on the ground. She landed on top of him and rolled off on the other side.

  The Jeep’s headlight beams cast a wide arc under and around the van, providing enough illumination to get a better look.

  The man was splayed in the dirt near the front door. His body looked like he’d been hit by a truck.

  His head was bashed in. His nose was a bloody mess of pulped collagen. His limbs were twisted in unnatural ways because his elbows and both knees had been crushed.

  Kim checked his carotid pulse, which had stopped beating a while ago. His body was cool to the touch.

  She noticed another body, slightly smaller, crumpled in a heap ten feet away from this one. His head had been blown away by gunshots. No need to check his pulse.

  Kim raised her weapon, prepared to shoot, her back flat against the cold gray steel, breathing hard, as she waited for the Jeep to move.

  CHAPTER 45

  Wednesday, May 18

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  9:30 p.m.

  The first thing Sydney noticed as he approached the safe house was the gaping hole in the fence where the big gate should have been.

  “What the hell?” he said, narrowing his eyes to stare.

  Black tire marks on the paved driveway led up to the fence. Like the guy had accelerated while he braked, transmission wound up tight, tires screeching and smoking.

  The kind of loud and unusual noises Little Tony should have heard from inside. Big Tony, too.

  So what the hell were they doing in there?

  The impact had mangled the gate all to hell and flung it back into the yard. The lock had busted and left the hasp still dangling.

  It looked like a big SUV or a heavy pickup truck had rammed into the fence at full speed and kept on going, laying rubber, even after the gate was destroyed.

  A blow like that would have done all sorts of damage to the front of whatever vehicle did the smashing. Shouldn’t be too hard to identify the doer. So where were the vehicle and the maniac driving it?

  He lowered the window to listen and swiveled his head to scan for threats. He saw and heard nothing alarming. Which was odd in itself, given the damage.

  Sydney slowly moved the stolen Jeep he’d picked up at Rossi’s car lot when he’d dropped off the limo for sanitizing.

  He rolled past the security box, seeing it had been attacked with considerable force. The heavy metal pole was bent flat against the ground, and the box itself had been bashed into tiny pieces.

  Which meant Rossi already knew about the destruction. The security team would have been alerted when the box was destroyed. They would have notified him.

  So why hadn’t Rossi called?

  Sydney idled into the yard, continuously scanning for enemies. They had to be here. No question. But where? And who were they, anyway?

  Rivals or enemies were the two likely options.

  The locals didn’t have the balls to hit Rossi. Which meant it had to be out-of-towners.

  For a brief moment, Sydney worried again about the feds. They had the guts and the muscle to put Rossi out of business at any time.

  Rossi paid big money to keep cops off his back. Usually it worked well enough. The relationship was mutual. Rossi conducted his business and left law enforcement alone. They returned the favor.

  But that agent Sydney had dumped in the desert could have been different.

  Earlier tonight, he had confessed the situation with the FBI agent to Rossi. He would have found out anyway. Joey Prime couldn’t keep a secret for more than ten minutes without blabbing.

  In the end, Sydney had decided it was smarter to confess and spin the situation to his advantage before Little Tony got in there to skewer him.

  Rossi hadn’t been pleased. But the agent was already handled before Sydney told him about her, so Rossi had said nothing.

  Sydney wondered now whether the agent they’d dumped in the desert could have survived and come back here to demolish the place.

  Not likely.

  But possible.

  Maybe destroying the safe house gate had been her doing.

  “Nah. That’s not it,” Sydney said aloud, shaking his head to reassure himself.

  This didn’t look like the feds seeking revenge. They’d have moved in with teams and weapons and overtaken the place with force.

  “They’d still be here. Feds can’t get in and out this quick. Hell, they can’t do anything quick.”

  Sydney shook his head slowly, baffled. Nothing he could think of made any sense.

  Including the safe house.

  How could it seem so normal with all the noise destroying that fence must have made?

  Little Tony was a lot of things, but he wasn’t deaf. Or stupid. And he had a very strong survival instinct.

  “This is nuts,” Sydney said under his breath.

  The lights were on inside the safe house, which was a good sign.

  But the gray van Joey Prime should have already moved to Rossi’s car lot was parked at the front door, which wasn’t a good sign at all.

  As he rolled past the front of the gray van toward the garage, he saw the van’s front end was in good shape. Which meant the van wasn’t the vehicle that had rammed through the gate.

  That bit of intel presented two more problems.

  If the van hadn’t demolished the front gate, where was the vehicle that did?

  And the second issue. Joey Prime took the van to be cleaned a long time ago. Why did he bring it back?

  Were they moving the women already? Rossi told Sydney he’d sold a few of the females. The others were going to one of Rossi’s brothels in northwest Nevada. But they didn’t know that yet.

  Sydney shook his head. Moving the product. Nah, that’s not it.

  Rossi would have told Sydney if they were moving the Thais already. Because Eleanor Duncan wouldn’t be joining the others. Rossi had other plans for her.

  And even if the timeline for moving the Thais had accelerated, Joey Prime should have parked the van in the garage out back where they could load up away from any prying eyes or listening ears.

  Sydney clicked his ton
gue against his teeth. Joey Prime knew better. He shouldn’t have dropped the ball like this.

  Where was Joey Prime, anyway?

  The gray van appeared to be unoccupied. The engine was off. No one sat in the driver’s seat or the passenger seat. All the doors were closed. So was the front door to the safe house.

  Sydney picked up his cell and dialed Rossi. The phone rang on the other end a dozen times.

  Maybe Rossi was involved in a top-level meeting, but that seemed unlikely. Unless it was some sort of emergency.

  Rossi said Alan Chen was fighting his last bout tonight. He’d scheduled Sydney to dump Chen’s body later.

  Tonight’s heavy bettors were already seated, waiting for the big finale. Maybe Rossi didn’t answer because he was occupied with the boxing. Not likely. But possible.

  Sydney gave up, disconnected, and called Dolly’s number. Again, no answer.

  His third call was to Little Tony. Sydney hated that prick. But he’d run out of options.

  Little Tony’s phone rang and rang, with the same result. No answer.

  Sydney cursed and spiked the useless cellphone into the passenger’s seat. It landed near his loaded Glock and bounced onto the Jeep’s floor.

  Whatever was happening here at the safe house, he’d have to handle it on his own.

  “What would Rossi do?” he said aloud as he pushed the Jeep’s accelerator and passed the gray van on his way around the building to the multi-level garage in the back.

  As Sydney entered the garage, his headlight beams caught an old turquoise sedan the size of a small tank blocking the driving lane near the electric vehicle charging stations.

  “What the hell?” he said aloud as he slowed and pulled up behind it.

  CHAPTER 46

  Wednesday, May 18

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  9:45 p.m.

  Sydney stared at the huge car, his mouth hanging open in slack disbelief. The sedan looked like a movie prop for a film shot in Cuba, where car designs seemed frozen in 1959.

  The old boat seated at least six adults and a few kids. It had to stretch close to twenty feet, bumper to bumper. Heavy metal. Cast-iron block. V-8 engine. The gas tank held more than twenty gallons.

  “Must weigh three tons or more,” Sydney said, shaking his head. Definitely big enough and powerful enough to have shoved in the front gate. When he got a look at the front end, he’d know for sure.

  The sedan was parked in the driving lane, parallel to Rossi’s row of electric charging stations and perpendicular to the vehicles plugged into them.

  Curiously, the sedan’s four doors, trunk lid, and hood were wide open. Like a bunch of rowdy teens were conducting a prank, like a Chinese fire drill or something.

  A moment later, while Sydney was still trying to make sense of the situation, a man dashed from the charging stations. He darted between two electric SUVs, running fast, full out as if the hounds of hell were chasing him.

  Sydney shoved the Jeep’s transmission into park and jumped out, brandishing his pistol.

  “Hey! You! Stop!” Sydney yelled.

  The guy was average-sized, and his long, blond locks fanned out behind him as he ran. He maneuvered adroitly, sprinting between parked vehicles, heading away from the sedan as if his life depended on it.

  As the runner passed cars and SUVs, and trucks, he pulled doors open and kept running.

  Sydney squinted and shook his head. “What’s up with that? Trying to block the path of anyone chasing him on foot?”

  Sydney didn’t have a clear line of sight, but he aimed and fired at the man’s retreating back anyway.

  The bullet ricocheted off a concrete pillar.

  He heard the ricochet strike something hard. Not the runner, for sure.

  Then he heard crashing glass, sounding in a zigzag pattern, moving toward the ramp to the second floor.

  The guy was busting out windows as he went.

  “Dammit!” Sydney fired again.

  The sound of gunshots inside the garage was deafening, but it didn’t bring Little Tony or anyone else out of the safe house.

  Before Sydney had a chance to worry about that, he heard a loud whoosh and felt the instant heat.

  The sedan lit up from the inside, where all the stuff that’s easy to ignite was installed. Carpet, seat foam, soft plastic, even windshield wiper fluid. All flammable.

  The guy must have put an accelerant inside the sedan and started a slow blaze before he took off.

  Flames burst from the front seat first. Followed quickly by more flames from the back seat. Next, the contents of the trunk caught fire.

  What the hell? Call the fire department?

  Sydney smelled gas. He scanned the area around the burning sedan until he spied the problem.

  A trail of gasoline led from the sedan’s trunk toward the electric chargers on the other side of the vehicles.

  The flames that had flumed beyond the interior of the car danced along the fuel trail, broadening and gaining strength as they rushed ahead.

  In Sydney’s periphery, big clouds of heavy black smoke emitted from beneath four electric cars.

  Where the lithium-ion batteries were located.

  Batteries that had been known to catch fire and explode when deliberately sabotaged.

  Understanding dawned. The running man must have been tampering with the batteries when Sydney rolled up.

  The smoke and the fires and the gasoline combined with the breeze blowing between the open floors of the garage brought stinging pain to Sydney’s eyes. He blotted his face with his forearm but failed to quench the pain.

  The stench burned his nostrils and hurt his lungs as he tried to breathe through the thick smoke.

  The black smoke expanded, spreading to the other vehicles. Quickly, a small SUV began to flame from underneath. And then the flame spread along the row, from one electric vehicle to the next, lightning-fast.

  Too fast to believe, at least a dozen vehicles inside the garage were aflame. He was surrounded by fire and smoke and the smell of gasoline.

  Sydney stared, mouth agape, struggling to comprehend and defend.

  A moment too long.

  Something inside the big sedan’s trunk exploded, pushing steel and plastic and metal outward.

  Sydney was ex-military. Instantly, he knew this was no accident. The force of the blast could only have been caused by an improvised explosive device. An IED created by an expert.

  The blast wave expanded outward from its explosive core.

  Transmitted. Absorbed. Reflected by the garage and everything in it.

  The first explosion was followed by four more, like a symphony’s staccato punctuation with cannon fire during holiday fireworks.

  Five explosions.

  Four electric vehicles and the big turquoise sedan were now spectacularly ablaze.

  The charging stations ignited next.

  Sydney swiveled his head, widened his eyes, mouth agape. The scene was too spectacular to grasp.

  The open-air breeze moved swiftly between floors to oxygenate the blazes.

  Six minutes after Sydney’s Jeep had rolled up behind the turquoise sedan, a wall of fire filled the garage, superheating it beyond any human’s ability to withstand.

  Sydney turned and ran, feeling the heat coming fast and hard at his back.

  CHAPTER 47

  Wednesday, May 18

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  9:35 p.m.

  Kim had watched from her position behind the gray van. After a couple of minutes, the Jeep rolled through the open maw where the gate had been. Headlights inched into the yard and kept going. The driver passed the van slowly as if looking inside the cabin before moving on.

  She’d pushed herself upright, rose to her feet, and jogged a few steps to the front of the van, watching.

  The Jeep rolled past the van and around the opposite corner of the warehouse. The extra illumination provided by the headlights abruptly disappeared. The red tail lights went dark a momen
t later.

  After the Jeep turned out of sight, Kim inched away from the front of the warehouse and around to the other side of the van. She allowed her night vision to adjust and then scanned the area again. No more bodies were visible from where she stood.

  There was probably a back entrance to the warehouse or a back exit from the yard. Or both. Maybe more storage of some sort back there, too. Could be anything. To search effectively, she’d need backup.

  Where the hell was Burke?

  He’d come here looking for Reacher.

  Was Reacher inside?

  What about Petey Burns?

  Half a moment later, she heard gunfire from somewhere in the back. The same area where the Jeep had disappeared.

  As if her thoughts had conjured him, Petey Burns came running from behind the warehouse building.

  Petey ducked around the front of the van, flung open the door to the warehouse, and ran inside, shouting, “Eleanor! Jade! GiGi! Round ’em up. Let’s go!”

  Kim had heard two of those names for the first time tonight from the man on Rossi’s rooftop. They had to be Rossi’s kidnap victims.

  Was this why Burke was here? And what did Reacher have to do with any of it?

  Kim saw that the side door of the van was wide open. Several women ran from inside the warehouse and piled into the van.

  The last one was Eleanor Duncan, running fast. She pulled the driver’s door open and lifted her leg to hop inside.

  Before she could get settled into the driver’s seat, Kim ran forward and yanked her out again.

  Eleanor’s eyes were wild. She fought hard to get away, but Kim subdued her, speaking urgently. “Eleanor! It’s me! Stop!”

  Eleanor jerked her arm, frightened.

  Kim shook her again, harder this time. “Stop!”

  Eleanor finally seemed to recognize her.

  She tried to shake Kim’s hold on her arms. “What the hell do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on,” Kim demanded.

  “We can’t talk here. I have to go. Get into the van if you want to come along. Otherwise, get out of the way,” Eleanor said.