New York, NY
JFK Airport Hudson Hotel
November 2, 2:00 a.m.
Kim rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck, seeking to relieve the unremitting tension. For twenty-four hours, she’d been running on her standard triple A’s: ambition, adrenaline, and anxiety. Add two gut-wrenching plane rides on less than two hours sleep and her nerves, like her muscles, were screaming. None of this, she knew, was visible even to the keenest observer. And she meant to keep it that way.
Sixty-five minutes ago, she’d arrived in the luxury suite of the JFK Hudson Hotel excited and fully armed with her well-crafted approach. Allotted ninety minutes, she’d planned to complete the Reacher file through this single interview. She would make a powerful ally, learn everything she needed to know, write a perfect report, and wrap. From start to finish in less than twenty-four hours. Record success in record time, even for her. The boss would be pleased. She’d go home in triumph, sleep for a week, and never go back to Margrave again.
That was then.
Her optimism had dimmed as her time expired. She was forced to revise, cut, refocus, and revise her plan again and again. Now she had only twenty-five minutes to complete the mission. Not enough time. Not even close.
“You’re looking a little silly up there on the ceiling,” Gaspar said, without opening his eyes. He rested on the edge of his seat, legs stretched out, ankles crossed, head supported by the narrow wood across the chair back, hands folded like a corpse.
“Whatever do you mean, Gumby?” she said, haughty, as if he’d missed the mark completely.
“This is total bullshit. You didn’t cause it and you certainly can’t fix it. You might as well relax until he shows up.” He grinned. “I’ll let you know when it’s time to panic.”
“You’re too kind.”
“It’s a gift.”
“A curse, you mean.”
“Suit yourself. Wake me up when his royal highness appears.”
He wasn’t fooling her. She saw the white knuckles on his clasped hands. He’d been slouching like that since they arrived, but he hadn’t actually slept a second.
“Don’t worry, Quixote. You’ll hear the trumpets.”
She’d run the revised plan through her head a hundred times, but it never got any better. All available accounts proclaimed Finlay an honorable man whose integrity equaled his superior competence. Which had to mean the negatives had been removed from his records and the complainants silenced. Nobody got as high up the ladder as this guy without making enemies.
She needed leverage and she simply didn’t have any.
His title was Special Assistant to the President for Strategy. What did that mean? The precise nature of his job was nowhere described. Which was more than enough to shove her internal threat-level against the top of the red zone and hold it there.
He’d been selected by the highest-ranking civilian responsible for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and placed one heartbeat away from the U.S. Commander in Chief. No watchdog kept tabs on him. He reported seldom and only through verbal briefing. No paper trail so much as named the missions he’d undertaken. Process, performance, results, also absent from the record.
Casualties, of course, never acknowledged. She’d heard rumors. Unconfirmed.
Everything she’d learned about Finlay marked him as dangerous. He deployed unspecified unique skills in service to her country on unidentified missions. Like nuclear power, when properly harnessed he might be useful. But she’d found nothing restraining him; not even his own word.
Was he friend or foe? Wiser to assume the worst.
She heard a door swish over carpet in the suite’s anteroom. The noise charged her nervous system like a cartoon character’s finger plugged into a light socket, an image she’d never found remotely funny. She’d been tasered. She knew how it felt.
“He’s here,” she said. Her voice sounded calm. No tremors, good cadence, low octave. So far, so good.
“Finally.” Gaspar’s scowl had become a permanent groove in his forehead. “Who does the guy think he is? Jennifer Lopez? Now there’s someone worth waiting for.”
She knew what he meant. Worthy leaders never disrespected subordinates. Loyalty was a two-way street in her book, too.
Gaspar had decided Finlay’s tardiness was deliberately dismissive. Kim wanted to believe he’d been unavoidably detained, even as her stomach acid said Gaspar was right.
She warned Gaspar again, “Our time is his time.”
“Yeah. I got that. Remember me? I’m the one with four kids to put through college.” He stood up, stretched. Kim pretended not to watch him stroll awkwardly around the room. She saw the pain on his face, too. At some point, she’d ask him about the leg. But not now. She had more immediate things to worry about.
Maybe the interview wouldn’t be a disaster. A glimmer of her initial excitement remained. She’d been given this rare chance to impress a powerful man who could and did advance women on the job. Finlay had a proven track record on that score: Roscoe.
Would Roscoe have become Margrave Police Chief without Finlay’s support? Hardly.
“He could have a good reason for being late, you know,” she said.
Twenty-two minutes left. She strained to hear the voices in the anteroom. But the suite was near soundproof; she couldn’t quite capture the words being exchanged, which might be OK. Or not. Depended on what the words actually were, didn’t it?
Three or four men were talking. One was the aide who had escorted them from their arrival gate. She hoped one was their subject. If so, the other two could be his protection detail. A lot of firepower for a friendly conversation with two FBI agents.
She heard footsteps. She stood up. Lamont Finlay, Ph.D., pushed the door open and crossed the threshold as if he owned the room and everything in it.
Even at two o’clock in the morning, he looked like a spokesman for financial services. Tall, straight, solid; close cropped hair slightly grey at the temples. Clean shaven. Well dressed. Everything polished to high gloss. Distinguished. Experienced.
Intimidating.
A black man, but his ethnicity was not African-American. The file said his grandparents had emigrated from Trinidad to New York before settling in Boston, where he’d been educated at Harvard. The Boston accent had faded but Kim could hear it.
“Mr. Gaspar, Ms. Otto,” he said, shaking hands with both of them in turn. His paw felt as big as a catcher’s mitt. She could have made a fist with both hands inside his grip. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Please, sit, sit. Have your needs been adequately attended to?”
“Yes, thank you, sir,” Kim said. A tray delivered more than an hour ago still rested on the table top. The silver coffee carafe with sides of sweeteners and cream, bone china cups and saucers, silver spoons, crystal glasses, linen napkins and four green eight-ounce bottles of bubbly French water consumed the flat surface. Sparkled lamplight danced from a cut crystal pitcher as if fairies filled the room.
Finlay was their host. This was his turf, his agenda. He displayed no concern. He had one knee crossed over the other. He had pinched the fabric to reset the sharp crease in his dark trousers. He had revealed bench-made cap-toe shoes and dark hose, not mere socks. Superior livery for a man with a government salary, Kim noted. She felt actual chest pain when she attempted to breathe, like an asthmatic.
Stress.
That’s all.
Finlay waited, unconcerned. Both arms were folded across his lap. No rings on his capable fingers. A watch, for surely he wore one, hid under crisp white shirt cuffs. Cufflinks glinted with each spare movement. Even before seeing Finlay’s enduring influence on Chief Roscoe, Kim had formed a clear mental portrait of a competent man. Rumor suggested violence and fatal consequences for those who crossed him. His presence cemented every impression of the absolute power she’d imagined. She’d expected ruthless entitlement as well. He was all of that and more.
In short, he scared Kim to death. Gaspar should be afraid, too. They were in way over their heads. They had eighteen minutes.
And then they caught a break. Two breaks, really, in quick succession. First, Finlay spoke when he should have waited. He smiled and said, “I realize we don’t have as much time as you’d hoped. So let’s get right to it, OK?”
But, second, he directed his question to Gaspar. He’d assumed that Gaspar was lead. He wasn’t fully briefed.
Was that good or bad?
“Of course,” she said, projecting her voice past her closed throat. “We certainly don’t want to waste your time.”
His eyes opened a fraction when he realized his mistake. He corrected swiftly and directed his attention to her, as if he’d never erred at all.
Ah, she thought, you’re one of those. But before she could integrate this new piece of data, he seized the advantage.
“I understand you’re building a file on Jack Reacher for the Specialized Personnel Task Force. What job are you considering him for?”
His question knocked her back. Finlay knew why they were here. So was he briefed, or not?
“Reacher’s proposed use is unknown at this time, sir,” Kim said. She sounded more deferential than she’d intended. She sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward.
“Hard for me to hit the target in the dark,” Finlay said.
She didn’t believe he was in the dark. Smarter not to believe him.
“We came directly from Margrave after speaking with Chief Roscoe,” she said, watching closely. No reaction. Unclear whether he already knew that, too. “Frankly, we didn’t have as much time with her as we’d hoped and we’re just getting started. Whatever you can add is more than we’ve got at the moment.”
“You want me to fill in the blanks?” He seemed to relax a bit more, as if the mission was less than expected. “The Margrave files are comprehensive. Not much missing, is there?”
Margrave files? What Margrave files?
“We don’t have all the documents yet,” Kim said, covering as well as she could.
Finlay pushed his starched cuff back with one finger and looked at the slender platinum timepiece on his left wrist. She’d guessed right about the watch at least.
He said, “It would take several hours to brief you. Quickly, ask me your most pressing questions.”
Several hours? Strike three. How could there be several hours worth of missing data?
She couldn’t think about that now. She had a million questions based on the little bit she did know. Literally. Which topic was the most important? She needed to know what made Reacher tick. Could he be counted on when his country needed him? What was his particular expertise? Why had he been off the grid all these years? What was he doing? What was he running from? Had Reacher assaulted Roscoe? Was he violent? Unpredictable? Crazy?
Gaspar cut directly to a question she was saving for later.
He asked, “Do you know where Reacher is now?”
Finlay said, “No.”
“Do you know where he went when he left Margrave fifteen years ago?”
“No.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No.”
“Is he dead or alive?”
Finlay flinched. A small flick of his right eyelid. Did it happen? Was it just a sparkle from the dancing fairies? She watched more closely.
“I don’t know,” Finlay said.
The flick again. Right there. She was sure.
Definitely a lie.
“Do you have any reason to believe Reacher’s dead?” Kim asked.
“None.” That was true, at least. She could tell. Then he added, “But it wouldn’t surprise me. Do you have any reason to believe he’s dead?”
“Only that he’s too far off the grid for any man alive,” Kim said.
She heard movement in the anteroom. A toilet flushed.
Finlay said, “Look at the files. You should find something.”
What was he talking about? She had consumed those files. She could recite the contents by rote. Start over. Analyze. You’re good at this. You see the hidden relationships that others don’t see. What does he know that you don’t? He looks relaxed, but he’s not. Why did he come here at all? What does he want?
Finlay had access to information well beyond anything Kim could acquire. Both official and unofficial.
If he said there was something in the Margrave files they could use to locate Reacher, then it was there.
But Finlay wouldn’t have more knowledge than the boss.
So Finlay was wrong.
Or lying.
Or testing.
Which was it?
She took a pause, a breath, and Gaspar asked, “You’re saying you know how to find Reacher?”
Finlay said, “I’m saying you should look at the Margrave files and then we’ll talk further. Roscoe and I testified back then. There’s a lot of material. Some of it is arcane and complicated. Foreign policy. Diplomacy. Chemical analysis. We can’t deal with all of that right now and it wouldn’t help you if we did.”
He looked at his watch. They were losing their chance. They might never be alone with him again.
Kim asked, “Do you know what Reacher’s hiding from?”
“Is he hiding?” Finlay asked back.
“If he isn’t hiding, why is he so far off the grid?”
“When I asked him about his lifestyle, he told me he was traveling the country simply because he hadn’t seen much of it. He said he didn’t work because he didn’t have to. He lived off his army pension, he said. He’d been in the military, one way or another, his entire life. He told me he wanted to enjoy his freedom for a change.”
“And you believed that?” Gaspar asked.
“We’ve all heard wilder stories. His checked out. No law requires an American male to be an upstanding husband and father of four, right? He doesn’t have to hold a steady job and pay a mortgage until he dies, no matter how hard it is, and no matter how much he hates it, does he?”
Gaspar went quiet.
Finlay had been briefed.
Kim said, “Chief Roscoe told us Reacher was arrested for a murder he didn’t commit. That’s how you met him, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Why did you like Reacher for the crime?”
“Both the victim and Reacher were strangers we knew nothing about. Several witnesses saw Reacher walking in the vicinity of the crime scene during the relevant time frame. It made sense in context.”
Kim understood. She’d been to Margrave. She realized how much a stranger like Reacher would stick out, how the coincidence would be too much to ignore. She’d have figured him as the killer, herself. In fact, Reacher was still the best suspect based on the little bit she knew. She’d held suspects on less.
“Who was the victim?” Kim asked.
Finlay hesitated. “We didn’t know the name when Reacher was arrested. Victim had no ID on him and his body had been rendered unrecognizable. We identified him after we’d confirmed Reacher’s alibi and released him from custody. With apologies.”
Gaspar repeated the question. “Who was the victim?”
Again, the pause, but nothing with the eyelid. Kim saw Finlay didn’t want to say the victim’s name. But this was a guy who did what he had to.
“It was Reacher’s brother,” he said, quietly.
Kim stared. Finlay had arrested Jack Reacher for murdering his own brother, a crime he didn’t commit, didn’t even know had occurred. His only brother. A screw-up of monumental proportions. Finlay was lucky to be alive.
And maybe he knew it.
Finlay said, “I’m sorry to be in such a hurry, but I do have a plane to catch. Is there anything else you need right now?”
“Was Reacher violent?”
“Yes.”
“Was he crazy?”
“I didn’t think so at the time.”
“Unpredictable?”
Finlay laughed. The sound was deep, resonant, and it shook the room for what seemed like a full minute. Eventually he said, “Agent Otto, I’d say that if you looked up that word in the dictionary, you’d find nothing but a full color photo of Jack Reacher.”
Then his handlers knocked on the door. Time to go. They accompanied Finlay toward the exit. He towered over Kim and he was a good four inches taller than Gaspar, too. When he reached the door, he turned and reached straight out and took her phone out of her pocket. Like a magic trick. He pushed the button to stop the recording and dropped the phone back into place.
He said, “Let’s go off the record now.” He slid two business cards from his jacket pocket. He handed one to each of them. “I promised your boss I’d help you if I can. That’s my private cell. Call me with your questions after you’ve read the files. Let me know if you need anything else. If I can’t talk immediately, I’ll get back to you.”
Then with his hand on the doorknob he added, “And when you do find Jack Reacher, give him my regards, will you? Ask him to call me when he has the time. You can give him that number.”
Gaspar asked, “Did you know Harry Black?”
Finlay thought and came up empty. “I don’t recognize the name. Who is he?”
“Who was he. He’s dead.”
Finlay shook his head. “Should I have known him?”
“He was a Margrave cop. Killed last night. Roscoe was pretty upset about it.”
There it was again. The eyelid flick. Finlay knew something. But he said, “Must have been hired after I left.”
“His wife shot him, she claims.” Gaspar pulled out his smart phone and showed Finlay a picture. “Sylvia Black. Do you know her?”
The flick came before the lie this time, and again afterward.
“Never saw her before,” Finlay said.
“Did Reacher kill Harry Black?” Gaspar asked.
The aide knocked again, opened the door, stood aside.
“You’ll have to ask him yourself,” Finlay replied. He turned and walked away. His entourage followed behind him like ducklings follow their mother.