Get Back Jack Read Free

Gaspar if he couldn’t do the job.
    Like her mother insisted, when there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.
    With exaggerated patience, Kim recapped what Gaspar seemed to be ignoring. “Reacher’s old unit had nine members, counting Reacher. We’ve spent two days trying to track them down. We were only able to locate three. We’re set to meet the first two of those this afternoon. You were supposed to come up with a can’t-miss approach for today’s two. What are we going to say?”
    Gaspar’s tone was clipped, as if he were reciting the phone book. “We’re doing a routine background check on Jack Reacher for the FBI Special Personnel Task Force, updating his personnel file since he left the Army. We want to know, soup to nuts, what they can contribute to our almost non-existent data.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Why not? The guy’s a licensed P.I. and the woman’s a forensic accountant. Both ex-Army police. They’ll get it.”
    Kim drained the coffee cup and refilled. She felt taut as a drawn bowstring.
    “He didn’t call you?” she asked.
    “Sure, he called,” Gaspar told the view out the window. “He warned me about Reacher coming our way. He sent the report. I’ve read it. Nothing worth getting our panties in a wad over. Let’s not get off course again just because he’s yanking our chains, okay? We tried that last week and it nearly got us killed.”
    Now that they had at least an understandable plan, Kim wanted to stay on track, too. Despite running into dead ends everywhere they turned, they’d managed to uncover bits of Reacher’s Army file that the Boss had refused to supply. They’d already tracked down two of Reacher’s prior commanding officers. Both generals now, and both tight-lipped. Deliberately unhelpful, beyond suggesting they interview members of the elite special investigative unit Reacher had recruited and trained. For two years, the team had been inseparable, a force to be reckoned with, never messed with. If Reacher had kept in touch with anyone, the two generals said, it would be the eight other members of that unit.
    Given what she knew about Reacher so far, Kim had her doubts. But a group of people once that tight could be a gold mine of information. Maybe. Besides, neither she nor Gaspar had identified any viable alternatives.
    So, after unencrypting the Boss’s early morning e-mail, they had even fewer.
    She asked, “I wouldn’t feel too optimistic about my life span if I were in Reacher’s old unit, would you?”
    Gaspar shrugged again, distracted, still gazing out the window—or at his reflection. “Special investigative units are manned by soldiers with a death wish, Sunshine,” he said. “Volunteers for extremely hazardous duty. Natural risk-takers. Adrenaline junkies. They continue risking life and limb after discharge, too. Predictably, they don’t live long.”
    She nodded. “True. But, Reacher’s team never lost a member while they were handling the Army’s extremely hazardous duty. They leave the service, and now four of the eight are dead, another is presumed dead, not one has died of natural causes, and their leader can’t be found.”
    Gaspar shrugged. “The first one died in a car wreck. Car crashes kill plenty of Americans every year.”
    As if he’d said one member of Reacher’s unit had died on a trip to Mars, she asked, “You believe that was an accident?”
    At long last, he turned to her. “You don’t, I suppose,” he sighed.
    “Let’s say you’re right. One car wreck. What about the others? Five years ago, one member of the unit disappeared and three more members died. All within days of each other. All three of the known dead tortured, their legs broken to immobilize them. And then each one dropped, still alive, from a helicopter miles above the desert floor. That is not normal risk-taking, adrenaline-junkie death-defiance, Chico. No way.”
    The data they’d uncovered on Reacher’s army days had, as usual, revealed