Jack of Hearts

by Diane Capri

  “How so?”

  “Seems to me he wanted to find Reacher on his own. He doesn’t want to be the junior member of the team, subordinate to your success.”

  “Or Burke followed Petey Burns, got to the warehouse, ran into Reacher, and couldn’t leave,” Kim replied, somewhat surprised to hear herself defending Burke’s behavior tonight.

  But he was on her team now, for better or worse. And he was impulsive. So it could have happened that way.

  Until she had a chance to ask him, she’d give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Doesn’t matter why he went there,” Gaspar growled. “What’s important to remember is that he left you to fend for yourself and never looked back. You could have died when Sydney dumped you in that desert. Burke wouldn’t have even known about it. Your body could still be out there. Vulture food.”

  “That seems a little harsh, don’t you think?” Kim shuddered because Gaspar was right. “At least let me talk to Burke and find out why he went ahead without me. He’s my partner. I owe him some loyalty, too.”

  “Look, Otto, he’s a guy. Guys are just not that complicated. He washed out of the hostage rescue team,” Gaspar replied, one logical step after another as if the situation was obvious. “Cooper’s giving him a chance to prove he’s got what it takes to stay employed. Burke’s pulled out all the stops to please Cooper.”

  “It’s friendly competition.”

  “Not that friendly. Burke’s out to prove he’s better than you.”

  “You think?”

  “Hell yes. You’ve been on the hunt for Reacher for seven months. If Burke finds Reacher quickly before you do, he gets the glory. And he gets his job back.” Gaspar paused and swigged the coffee and then wrapped up. “He shows you up. And you get screwed. Again.”

  Maybe it was that simple. She nodded again, eyes closed, thinking it through.

  But Gaspar’s theory didn’t feel right to Kim. Tomorrow, when her head was clear, she’d figure out why.

  “What about Eleanor Duncan?” she asked, deflecting, moving to a less controversial subject.

  She had finished the food, poured another glass of wine, and carried The Boss’s encrypted flash drive over to the bed. She slipped the drive into her laptop and waited for it to load up.

  Gaspar replied, “What about her?”

  “Looks like Reacher came to help Eleanor for some unknown reason. And this was the second time he’s rescued her. Seems like she’d want to express her gratitude, doesn’t it?” Kim asked while she opened the files on Cooper’s flash drive.

  “Maybe she’s used up her quota of Reacher’s goodwill now,” Gaspar replied. “They’ll go back to Denver to collect the girl, Mika. They could rebuild the restaurant. Jade’s escort business will continue to thrive. There’s an endless supply of customers. They could stay.”

  “Or they could move on and start over somewhere else. They’ve started over before,” Kim said, skimming her new orders from the Boss.

  They didn’t talk for a few minutes.

  Kim finished her wine.

  Gaspar was probably sorting through images, looking for Burns and Reacher and Eleanor, while he consumed mass quantities of sweetened coffee with milk and pastries.

  She grinned. Honestly, Gaspar should weigh three hundred pounds. It was unfair to women everywhere that he didn’t.

  After a bit, she heard Gaspar’s son crying in the background.

  He said with a chuckle, “I’d better go. He’s got quite a set of lungs on him, my boy. Maybe he’ll be a singer when he grows up.”

  “One more thing,” Kim said, even as she heard Juan’s relentlessly demanding wails.

  “Yeah?”

  “Eleanor Duncan strikes me as a woman feeling a lot of guilt.”

  “Maybe. So?”

  “What’s all that guilt about?” Kim asked, tapping her finger absently on the wine glass. “And how is Reacher involved in it?”

  She could feel his shrug across the miles. His all-purpose gesture. Could mean anything.

  He said, “Does it matter now? Reacher saved all those women. Twice. That’s all that’s important to Eleanor and the others at this point.”

  Kim cocked her head. “Would he look at it that way?”

  Gaspar had always been her secret weapon where Reacher was concerned.

  Understanding the quarry was the first rule of hunting. Gaspar thought like Reacher. They’d had the same background and experience until Gaspar joined the FBI.

  After the army, their paths diverged.

  Gaspar chose to become a devoted family man.

  Reacher became a lonely drifter. At least, that’s how it looked from the outside.

  But the Eleanor Duncan situation proved that Reacher was more concerned about the people in his life than he liked to pretend.

  Which made sense of The Boss’s strategy, too. Cooper had been sending Kim to people and places where Reacher had gone before.

  Gambling that Reacher would come back when those people were in trouble.

  Sometimes Cooper had engineered the new trouble. Other times, he’d committed a hundred crimes to discover it.

  Either way, he’d been right too often.

  Like with Eleanor Duncan.

  The baby cried louder, insisting now.

  “I gotta go or he’s gonna wake up the entire household,” Gaspar said.

  “Give my love to Marie and the girls,” Kim replied.

  Then he offered one last warning before he signed off. “Don’t get all hung up on Reacher’s motives, Kim. He’d say he never saved those women at all. Luck and happenstance saved them. Reacher just happened to be in the right place at the right time. That’s what saved them. He probably never even saw their faces.”

  Yeah. But it turns out Jack Reacher has a heart after all.

  Kim was tired. Sleep when you can, Gaspar would say. Reacher would say that, too, probably. It was good advice.

  She turned off the lights and settled deeper into the luxury of high thread count sheets and lightweight down comforters.

  For now, she closed her eyes and allowed the wine to hasten sleep.

  She’d collect Burke from the hospital tomorrow. He was still her partner. If he really had engaged Reacher and survived because he possessed vital intel, Burke was more valuable to her now than he’d been before.

  Orders from The Boss on the flash drive had included two plane tickets to Chicago.

  As usual, the orders were terse. No explanations. She didn’t know why he was sending them to Chicago or where they were ultimately headed, or how Cooper had acquired intel sufficient to issue the orders.

  The mission remained the same: Find Reacher.

  And now she knew things about Reacher she hadn’t known before.

  She had Burke and access to whatever vital intel he possessed.

  She also had at least one viable lead: Petey Burns.

  Otto and Gaspar’s Hunt for Jack Reacher continues in

  STRAIGHT JACK

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  Available on Kobo

  ~ Keep reading for more from Diane Capri ~

  MORE FROM DIANE CAPRI

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  Have you read all of Diane Capri’s series? Maybe it’s time to give them a try!

  For a complete list of Diane Capri Books visit:

  http://dianecapri.com/books/

  (Click each title to buy or download a sample)

  The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:

  (in publication order with Lee Child source books in parentheses)

  Don’t Know Jack • (Killing Floor)

  Jack in a Box (novella)

  Jack and Kill (novella)

  Get Back Jack • (Bad Luck and Trouble)

  Jack in the Green (novella)

  Jack and Joe • (The Enemy)

  Deep Cover Jack (Persu
ader)

  Jack the Reaper • (The Hard Way)

  Black Jack • (Running Blind / The Visitor)

  Ten Two Jack • (The Midnight Line)

  Jack of Spades • (Past Tense)

  Prepper Jack • (Die Trying)

  Full Metal Jack • (The Affair)

  Jack Frost • (61 Hours)

  Jack of Hearts • (Worth Dying For)

  Straight Jack • (A Wanted Man)

  The Jess Kimball Thrillers Series:

  Fatal Distraction

  Fatal Demand

  Fatal Error

  Fatal Fall

  Fatal Game

  Fatal Bond

  Fatal Enemy (novella)

  Fatal Edge (novella)

  Fatal Past (novella)

  Fatal Dawn

  The Hunt for Justice Series:

  Due Justice

  Twisted Justice

  Secret Justice

  Wasted Justice

  Raw Justice

  Mistaken Justice (novella)

  Cold Justice (novella)

  False Justice (novella)

  Fair Justice (novella)

  True Justice (novella)

  Night Justice

  The Park Hotel Mysteries:

  Reservation with Death

  Early Check Out

  Room with a Clue

  Late Arrival

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Diane Capri is an award-winning New York Times, USA Today, and worldwide bestselling author. She’s a recovering lawyer and snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, Alliance of Independent Authors, Novelists, Inc., and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers. She is hard at work on her next novel.

  Please connect with her online:

  http://www.DianeCapri.com

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/DianeCapri

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Diane.Capri1

  http://www.facebook.com/DianeCapriBooks

  FROM LEE CHILD

  THE REACHER REPORT:

  March 2nd, 2012

  The other big news is Diane Capri—a friend of mine—wrote a book revisiting the events of KILLING FLOOR in Margrave, Georgia. She imagines an FBI team tasked to trace Reacher’s current-day whereabouts. They begin by interviewing people who knew him—starting out with Roscoe and Finlay. Check out this review: “Oh heck yes! I am in love with this book. I’m a huge Jack Reacher fan. If you don’t know Jack (pun intended!) then get thee to the bookstore/wherever you buy your fix and pick up one of the many Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Heck, pick up all of them. In particular, read Killing Floor. Then come back and read Don’t Know Jack. This story picks up the other from the point of view of Kim and Gaspar, FBI agents assigned to build a file on Jack Reacher. The problem is, as anyone who knows Reacher can attest, he lives completely off the grid. No cell phone, no house, no car…he’s not tied down. A pretty daunting task, then, wouldn’t you say?

  First lines: “Just the facts. And not many of them, either. Jack Reacher’s file was too stale and too thin to be credible. No human could be as invisible as Reacher appeared to be, whether he was currently above the ground or under it. Either the file had been sanitized, or Reacher was the most off-the-grid paranoid Kim Otto had ever heard of.” Right away, I’m sensing who Kim Otto is and I’m delighted that I know something she doesn’t. You see, I DO know Jack. And I know he’s not paranoid. Not really. I know why he lives as he does, and I know what kind of man he is. I loved having that over Kim and Gaspar. If you haven’t read any Reacher novels, then this will feel like a good, solid story in its own right. If you have…oh if you have, then you, too, will feel like you have a one-up on the FBI. It’s a fun feeling!

  “Kim and Gaspar are sent to Margrave by a mysterious boss who reminds me of Charlie, in Charlie’s Angels. You never see him…you hear him. He never gives them all the facts. So they are left with a big pile of nothing. They end up embroiled in a murder case that seems connected to Reacher somehow, but they can’t see how. Suffice to say the efforts to find the murderer and Reacher, and not lose their own heads in the process, makes for an entertaining read.

  “I love the way the author handled the entire story. The pacing is dead on (okay another pun intended), the story is full of twists and turns like a Reacher novel would be, but it’s another viewpoint of a Reacher story. It’s an outside-in approach to Reacher.

  “You might be asking, do they find him? Do they finally meet the infamous Jack Reacher?

  “Go…read…now…find out!”

  Sounds great, right? You can get it HERE. Check out “Don’t Know Jack,” and let me know what you think.

  So that’s it for now…again, thanks for reading THE AFFAIR, and I hope you’ll like A WANTED MAN just as much in September.

  Lee Child