Jack and Kill by Diane Capri

 
     
     
    Jack and Kill
     
    By Diane Capri
     
    1.
     
    Otto’s mood matched the bleak November landscape. They’d traveled the county road for eighteen miles under smothering gray skies, which allowed plenty of time for brooding. Thin snow covered the empty fields like a dirty blanket. Perhaps a riot of color had dressed the hardwoods before Halloween, but now only a few dead leaves dangled from dried stems beneath spindly branches. Even the vehicle in which they traveled was dull inside and out.
    She felt captured in a monochrome movie. Yet, she welcomed the dreary weather because while the low, dense cloud ceiling interfered with the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle surveillance drones, she enjoyed a thin slice of breathing room.
    Not the atmospheric gloom, then, but her quarry was responsible for her personal brain cloud. He was toying with her, which was okay. But he was winning the game, which wasn’t.
    “Tell me again why you think we’ll find Reacher in New Hope,” she said.
    FBI Special Agent Kim Louisa Otto didn’t mind matching wits with Jack (none) Reacher at the right time and place. Actually, she hoped this assignment grew in that direction.
    Meanwhile, a better profile of Reacher slowly developed in her mind the way an old fashioned photographic image revealed itself when blank paper was submerged in the proper fluids. She was better at strategic games than he was; Reacher’s military file confirmed. But preparation was key. She needed to gather sufficient data to devise and implement a decent strategic plan before their joust. In short, she needed more time.
    Meaning today was most definitely not the right day. Nor was New Hope, Virginia, the right place. Which was why, despite the perfect weather for a confrontation that might escape sophisticated surveillance, she wasn’t all that happy right at the moment. She didn’t expect to get any happier as the day wore on, either. She expected the opposite.
    Behind the wheel of the full-sized sedan he’d selected at the rental counter in DC, Gaspar sprawled deliberately. His right leg was fully extended to reduce the pain that often hobbled him. Otto had stopped counting how many Tylenols he’d swallowed already, although she worried about his liver. One of many tacit agreements they’d fallen into during their brief but intense partnership. As if not asking meant not knowing, and not knowing meant not happening.
    He glanced toward her and frowned, but his tone was quiet, perhaps annoyed.  “I didn’t say we’d find him, Sunshine. We’re building a file, not conducting a manhunt. I said he was there yesterday . Big difference.”
    She could tell Gaspar wanted to find Reacher today, though. “Do I want to know how you acquired that intel?”
    In response, he flashed a quick stare before returning his attention to driving. Which probably meant he'd ignored their operating protocols. Again. Working a different case with different rules, he might have offered more or she might have asked. As it was, they’d agreed plausible deniability might save them if either was eventually forced to testify. Which they’d also agreed was more than likely where the whole Reacher mess was headed.
    “How much farther?” she asked instead.
    He glanced at the odometer. “Maybe fifteen more miles. Give or take.”
    The rental was equipped with GPS and they had their own equipment, too. She could find the precise distance easily enough. But GPS acted like a tracking beacon for UAVs that crosshatched the country and she’d had enough of being watched. Instead, they did most things the old-fashioned way, making every effort to remain skinny straws in the very large haystack of surveillance data. The boss and too many others had unlimited access to their movements.
    Maybe Reacher did everything the old-fashioned way, too. Maybe that was how he stayed far off the grid. It seemed if anyone saw Reacher it was not because they found him but because Reacher found them. Otto had