Jack of Spades

by Diane Capri

  She paused to let the data sink in. “Any idea what he wants?”

  “Not precisely. But whatever it is, they think it’s in the Jeep you’re driving.” He paused for a long sigh. “Could be Jake. Could be something Jake’s transporting. Did you inspect the vehicle before you jumped in with the kid?”

  She scowled. Mostly because she didn’t like him scolding her. But also because he had a valid point. Jake could be running drugs or guns or some other contraband in the Jeep. She hadn’t checked the cargo. She should have.

  “Just the one vehicle?”

  “Only one identified so far. But muscle usually travels in packs.”

  “Right.”

  “You’ve got plenty of gas. As long as you keep moving, stay ahead of him, you should be okay until we come up with a plan,” Gaspar said.

  “We?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Had to call in some help on this one. When this goes south, you’ll thank me for batting cleanup,” Gaspar said before he signed off.

  Kim disconnected the call on her end, too. Then she took the burner phone apart, yanked out the electronic insides and tossed pieces out the window in three groups as she sped along the highway.

  Jake slept through everything.

  The Boss’s cell phone vibrated five minutes later. She answered, “Otto.”

  “The Jeep’s the target. It’ll get ugly. Do what you need to do. I’ll handle the fallout,” he said.

  “Copy that,” she said as she returned both hands to the steering wheel.

  “Learn anything useful from the kid?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got eyes on you. Keep in touch,” he said before he hung up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sunday, February 27

  7:30 p.m.

  Tulsa, Oklahoma

  A steady line of traffic had materialized in the left lane as the big rig pulled closer and she could see behind it. She held the Jeep steady in the right lane and searched vehicles in the rearview until she found the navy blue Escalade with a big dude behind the wheel, hanging in the big rig’s shadow.

  She could see him clearly, which meant the Escalade was coming up behind her in the left lane way too fast.

  She pushed the accelerator closer to the floor. The Jeep’s speed jumped to close the gap between the Jeep and the full-sized sedan ahead that was traveling at the speed limit. From this angle, she saw that several vehicles were traveling close in front of the eighteen-wheeler. Kim couldn’t move into the left lane ahead of the big rig.

  The Escalade was eating the pavement behind her at a faster clip. He’d catch up soon.

  She reached across the console and gave Jake a hard push. He barely moved. The kid was a tank and he was dead to the world.

  She grabbed a water bottle from the cup holder and twisted off the cap. She doused his face with water while shouting. “Wake up, Jake!”

  He turned his head toward her and opened his eyes. “What the hell?”

  “Get up. Put your seat back in the locked position. Make sure your seatbelt is snug.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, okay?” She accelerated again.

  The sedan ahead of her was still moving at the speed limit. The Jeep was blocked in on all sides. She had no choice but to slow down or ram the sedan hard enough to start a chain reaction collision, which she and Jake were unlikely to survive.

  The ribbon of expressway curved to the right up ahead leading to a long bridge over farmland with a shallow creek running through it. No doubt the Escalade planned to hit the left front side of the Jeep and push it over the low guard rail on the bridge. At these travel speeds, a fifty-foot drop followed by a likely rollover might be survivable. Maybe.

  Her mind whipped through all available options. Which didn’t take long because her choices were few.

  There was an exit on the other side of the bridge. If she could exit the expressway, she’d have a chance. But first she had to reach the exit unscathed.

  She reduced the pressure on the accelerator and pushed the button to turn on the emergency flashers. The Jeep slowed as much as possible, given the traffic coming up behind her.

  The Escalade was two car lengths back, still hanging behind the eighteen-wheeler, but moving closer by the second. At these speeds, he’d only need to give the Jeep a solid glancing blow on the left side near the front to send the Jeep flying off the bridge. If he timed it right, the Escalade would barely suffer any damage and could simply drive away with the traffic.

  Timing was critical.

  If the Escalade moved too soon, the Jeep would still go over the guard rail on the right side of the interstate, but the fall would be survivable.

  If he bashed the Jeep from any other angle, the crash could easily kill them all, and take out a few civilians, too. Whatever it was that the driver wanted, she figured he didn’t plan to commit suicide in the process.

  Her best chance was to keep the Escalade behind her until she could exit. She slowed the Jeep to keep pace alongside the big rig.

  The exit was less than three minutes ahead.

  Traffic in the right lane was traveling slower than traffic in the left lane. The eighteen-wheeler inched ahead with every passing second. The sedan in front of her kept a steady speed, which meant Kim was losing her shield against the Escalade and there was not a damn thing she could do about it.

  Jake was upright and paying attention. “What can I do to help?”

  She shook her head. “Keep your eye on that navy Escalade at seven o’clock.”

  He twisted his head and shoulders to locate the vehicle. “Who is that guy?”

  She shrugged.

  “He’s at eight o’clock now.”

  “He’s moving faster than we are by about twenty seconds a minute.”

  He stared at her. “You just calculated that in your head?”

  “I’m good with numbers.”

  “Who is that guy? Why is he after us? Some kind of road rage thing? What’d you do? Cut him off?”

  Kim shrugged, every ounce of attention focused on her driving.

  She reached up and pulled the alligator clamp from the seatbelt at the retractor and tossed the clamp to the floor. This was one time when she wanted the seatbelt to be tight across her body.

  The big rig was going to pass her. The Escalade would be at the best angle to hit the Jeep before she reached the exit. She inched the Jeep forward, tailgating the sedan in front of her in an effort to block the Escalade from entering her lane.

  She looked ahead along the right shoulder of the road. Nothing had changed. It was still narrower than she needed it to be. Driving the remaining distance along the shoulder was not feasible.

  The sturdy steel guardrail ran along the outside edge of the shoulder. She’d seen guardrail collisions before and she knew the statistics. Passengers in vehicles rarely survived them.

  The sedan immediately ahead of Kim was a subcompact. There were two more sedans ahead of that one. Then a crossover SUV. All were driving the speed limit. One at a time, the vehicles in the left lane ahead of the truck were moving over into the right lane, allowing the eighteen-wheeler to pass.

  The exit ramp was not quite a mile away. She’d be there in fifty seconds. Plenty of time for the big rig to pass and the Escalade to shove the Jeep over the edge.

  The rear wheels on the eighteen-wheeler were parallel to the Jeep’s front seats. The Escalade was too close behind. If the driver barely tapped his brakes, the Escalade would slide up under the trailer and decapitate him. But she couldn’t count on that.

  Kim could see inside the Escalade clearly using her left sideview mirror. The driver’s head and shoulders were in plain view. She was certain she’d never seen him before.

  Thirty seconds to the exit ramp. The eighteen-wheeler was slowly pulling ahead. The Escalade followed closely. He could shove the rear left quarter of the Jeep, but the physics were wrong. The Jeep would spin left, away from the guardrail. He stuck to his plan.


  The Escalade moved inexorably forward. Kim held her speed.

  The exit was twenty seconds ahead on the right. At the last possible moment, she’d need to slow slightly to bear right and down the cloverleaf to the county road below. The Escalade wouldn’t be able to move over. He’d be forced to stay on the interstate until the next exit. By the time he circled back, she’d be gone.

  She cast a meaningful glance toward Jake and tilted her head toward the right. If she’d warned him aloud, listeners would hear and be forewarned. He nodded and grabbed the sturdy handle in the roof above the passenger door to brace himself for impact. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

  The exit loomed ahead. The sedan in front of her was half a car length ahead. The sedan behind her was half a car length back. The Escalade wouldn’t fit in the open space.

  If he tried to follow the Jeep down the exit ramp, he’d hit the second sedan and push it over the guardrail instead of the Jeep.

  She tapped her brakes to warn the sedan at the same moment she swerved to the right, out of the flow of traffic and onto the ramp.

  The Escalade was too far advanced to see the brief flash of her brake lights. He didn’t anticipate her actions.

  Half a moment after she swerved out of the travel lane, the Escalade moved sharply right and then left again, in an attempt to slam the Jeep’s front left quarter with the Escalade’s right rear quarter. He wanted a glancing blow. Hard enough to lift and push the Jeep, but not so hard that it severely damaged the Escalade or simply pushed the Jeep sideways. And the blow needed to be fast.

  His timing was off.

  The impact glanced off the Jeep behind the driver’s door instead. The Jeep bounced and Kim struggled to hold it on the road. Miraculously, the vehicle kept moving in the right direction, but she was fighting the steering wheel to keep the Jeep on the road.

  “Whoa!” Jake yelled at the moment of impact.

  The Escalade outweighed the Jeep by more than a thousand pounds. But the extra distance between them along with the change in angle of impact made a big difference. The Jeep was badly damaged, but it limped along and Kim fought to hold the vehicle on the ramp as she slowed and steered around the cloverleaf.

  At the bottom of the ramp, she moved the Jeep off to the side of the road. She glanced up at the interstate and saw the Escalade sailing past. She was breathing heavily and her heart pounded wildly in her chest.

  She turned the engine off and jumped out. She ran around to the passenger side of the vehicle and pulled her bags out.

  Jake looked like he’d survived the worst thrill ride of his life. He opened the passenger door, stepped outside.

  She said, “Grab your stuff and follow me, Jake. I smell gas. The impact may have ruptured the tank. One spark and this thing could explode.”

  “You think he’ll come back?” Jake asked.

  “Yes. It’ll take him a while to reach the next exit and swing back. We’ve got some breathing room, but not a lot. Come on.”

  She walked quickly to put as much distance between them and the Jeep as possible. Jake walked ahead at a faster clip. When they were half a mile away, standing in the road that ran through the middle of an empty field, The Boss’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket.

  “Otto,” she said when she answered.

  “Nice work.”

  She said nothing.

  “Helo will be there in ten. Bring the kid.”

  “What about the damn Escalade? Who was trying to run us off the road?”

  “Working on it,” he replied before he hung up.

  Jake had waited for her to catch up. When she did, he said, “I guess my Jeep is totaled.”

  “Yeah.” She heard the helo in the distance. She scanned the sky to find the bird heading toward them at one o’clock.

  “Now what? Hitchhike? Wait for a bus?” Jake said.

  She cocked her head and looked up at him. Hitchhiking or riding a bus was exactly what Jack Reacher would do. As Gaspar would say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Sunday, February 27

  11:30 p.m.

  Siesta Beach, California

  Kim needed sleep, but before that, she left the hotel and went down to the beach. The salty ocean air made her sneeze. On the north side of the beach was a long public fishing pier that extended into the Pacific. Wood rails rested on either side of the concrete walkway supported by concrete pillars. The sign at the entrance said the T-shaped structure was 1,873 feet long. The platform at the end extended 320 feet south and 198 feet north. The Sunset Café, open twenty-four hours, perched at the end of the pier.

  She walked toward the café. It was three hours later on the East Coast, where she’d last seen Finlay. He traveled the globe and she had no idea where he actually was at the moment. Using a new disposable phone, she dialed the private number she’d memorized when he first gave it to her.

  On the tenth ring, he picked up. “How can I help you, Agent Otto?”

  “I’m in San Diego.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I think Reacher’s here.”

  “I think so, too.”

  She concealed her surprise. Finlay never admitted that he knew Reacher’s whereabouts, whether he did or not. “Tell me why you think so.”

  “He’s been seen in the vicinity. You’re walking on the Siesta Beach Pier. He’s been hanging around that exact spot, off and on.”

  Kim paused to let her tired brain absorb the data.

  Finlay replied, “He’s not there for the kid.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because he’s been there since before the kid left home,” Finlay paused to let the information sink in. “And because he doesn’t know the kid exists. Not yet, anyway. So if you are keeping the kid around in an effort to lure Reacher out, you don’t have the right bait.”

  “Jake’s the right bait. Reacher hasn’t seen him yet. It’ll be like looking in a mirror when he was twenty-two. He’ll be curious. Anybody would be,” she replied. “But if he doesn’t know about Jake yet, why is he here?”

  “My guess? Something to do with that Canadian couple, probably. The guy that owned the Honda. The one Smithers found up in Laconia. If I were looking for Reacher, I’d start with them,” Finlay said before he hung up.

  Finlay’s comments were more than mere suggestions. Maybe he knew Reacher had been in touch with the Canadian couple. She was on the right track. Good to know.

  She destroyed the phone and casually tossed most of it into the trash as she walked by. She dropped a few essential electronic pieces into the ocean for good measure.

  She turned to look back at the community of Siesta Beach resting to the east, across the sand from the Pacific.

  Siesta Beach was a funky, eclectic place. The main street was dominated by small retail businesses. Mostly antique shops, tattoo and piercing shops, bars, bike and surf shops. Plenty of head shops, too, selling cannabis paraphernalia mostly. Siesta Beach was almost like San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury of the 1970s had been frozen in time and relocated to the oceanside.

  The Canadian couple Finlay mentioned owned the windsurfing shop on the south side of the boardwalk. Patty Sundstrom and Shorty Fleck lived upstairs. She could see the bungalow now from her vantage point.

  Perhaps Reacher had watched them from here, too. The pier was a place for people to stand and gaze. He wouldn’t seem unusual in any way. No one would give him a second glance.

  But why would Reacher watch them? The connection between them was nothing more than a guess based on timing, location, and her gut.

  The sand between the pier and the boardwalk was cold and windy and cast in shadows. It was not easy to see anything clearly from this distance. The windsurfing shop was closed and all the windows were dark. Would Reacher have been able to see the couple in daylight or when the lights were on inside? Impossible to say.

  She stuffed her hands into her pockets, leaned against the siderail, and
glanced around.

  The pier was not crowded tonight, probably because of the coming storm. The ocean was already promising big waves tomorrow. High tide and strong winds were catnip to surfers. Storms lured them to ride the swells in droves, even when the storms were fierce and the waves treacherous. The beach would be busy in the morning.

  A few other hardy souls had ventured out to admire the roar of the ocean and the growing waves. The café was busier, but not full. A couple stood close together near the end of the pier on the left. Two men were smoking on the other side. She saw the glow from a couple of cigars and caught a whiff of tobacco. A few people strolled in pairs along the concrete in both directions.

  When she turned to look back at Siesta Beach again, she caught his silhouette out of the corner of her eye. A lone man lurking in the shadows of the café. She couldn’t see his face, but he was the right size and shape to be Reacher.

  Had Finlay been suggesting that Reacher was standing on the pier watching her? Right here, right now?

  Her breath caught until she consciously reminded herself to breathe. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

  All the times she’d imagined the moment she’d confront Reacher, none of them involved a pier that protruded into the Pacific in the dead of night with the cold wind whipping up the ocean’s spray.

  She pushed off the side rail and walked toward him. He didn’t move.

  She’d covered about half the distance between them when he stepped out of the shadows and her heart almost stopped. Raw power and confidence radiated off him in waves.

  Hands the size of turkeys. Broad shoulders. Six foot five inches tall and the way the moonlight glinted off his fair hair made him seem almost anointed or something.

  The light hit his face. And she recognized him.

  Jake Reacher.

  He looked so much like Reacher. The differences were imperceptible in the darkness. But the differences were there.

  Slowly, her internal threat level backed off the red zone. Her heartbeat slowed to its steady rhythm and she began to breathe normally again. She stopped thinking about how to reach for her gun without tipping him off, should the need arise.