Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

D E A D L Y   D O Z E N

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DON’T KNOW JACK

DIANE CAPRI

CRY WOLF

J CARSON BLACK

NIGHT WIDOW

CAROL DAVIS LUCE

GUARANTEED JUSTICE

M A COMLEY

STRANGER IN TOWN

CHERYL BRADSHAW

BREAKING STEELE

AARON PATTERSON & ELLIE ANN

MOONLIGHT SONATA

VINCENT ZANDRI

TERMINUS

JOSHUA GRAHAM

ONE DAY IN BUDAPEST

J F PENN

DEAD CELEB

MICHELE SCOTT

FINAL VECTOR

ALLAN LEVERONE

THE GIFTS

LINDA S PRATHER

DON’T KNOW JACK

THE HUNT FOR REACHER SERIES

DIANE CAPRI

Copyright 2012 Diane Capri, LLC

Published by: AugustBooks

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DEDICATION

For Robert

CHAPTER ONE

Monday, November 1

4:00 a.m.

Detroit, Michigan

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.

What had she missed?

At four in the morning the untraceable cell phone had vibrated on her bedside table. She had slept barely a hundred minutes. She cleared her throat, grabbed the phone, flipped it open, swung her legs out of bed, and said, “FBI Special Agent Kim Otto.”

The man said, “I’m sorry to call you so early, Otto.”

She recognized the voice, even though she hadn’t heard it for many years. He was still polite. Still undemanding. He didn’t need to be demanding. His every request was always granted. No one thwarted him in any way for any reason. Ever.

She said, “I was awake.” She was lying, and she knew he knew it, and she knew he didn’t care. He was the boss. And she owed him.

She walked across the bedroom and flipped on the bathroom light. It was harsh. She grimaced at herself in the mirror and splashed cold water on her face. She felt like she’d tossed back a dozen tequila shots last night, and she was glad that she hadn’t.

The voice asked, “Can you be at the airport for the 5:30 flight to Atlanta?”

“Of course.” Kim answered automatically, and set her mind to making it happen.

Showered, dressed, and seated on a plane in ninety minutes? Easy. Her apartment stood ten blocks from the FBI’s Detroit Field Office, where a helicopter waited, ever ready. She picked up her personal cell and began texting the duty pilot to meet her at the helipad in twenty. From the pad to the airport was a quick fifteen. She’d have time to spare.

But as if he could hear her clicking the silent keys, he said, “No helicopter. Keep this under the radar. Until we know what we’re dealing with, that is.”

The direct order surprised her. Too blunt. No wiggle room. Uncharacteristic. Coming from anyone lower down the food chain, the order might have been illegal, too.

“Of course,” Kim said again. “I understand. Under the radar. No problem.” She hit the delete button on the half-finished text. He hadn’t said undercover.

The FBI operated in the glare of every possible spotlight. Keeping something under the radar added layers of complication. Under the radar meant no official recognition. No help, either. Off the books. She didn’t have to hide, but she’d need to be careful what she revealed and to whom. Agents died during operations under the radar. Careers were killed there, too. So Otto heeded her internal warning system and placed herself on security alert, level red. She didn’t ask to whom she’d report because she already knew. He wouldn’t have called her directly if he intended her to report through normal channels. Instead, she turned her mind to solving the problem at hand.

How could she possibly make a commercial flight scheduled to depart—she glanced at the bedside clock—in eighty-nine minutes? There was no reliable subway or other public transportation in the Motor City. A car was the only option, through traffic and construction. Most days it took ninety minutes door to door, just to reach the airport.

She now had eighty-eight.

And she was still standing naked in her bathroom.

Only one solution. There was a filthy hot sheets motel three blocks away specializing in hourly racks for prostitutes and drug dealers. Her office handled surveillance of terrorists who stopped there after crossing the Canadian border from Windsor. Gunfire was a nightly occurrence. But a line of cabs always stood outside, engines running, because tips there were good. One of those cabs might get her to the flight on time. She shivered.

“Agent Otto?” His tone was calm. “Can you make it? Or do we need to hold the plane?”

She heard her mother’s voice deep in her reptile brain:
When there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.

“I’ll be out the door in ten minutes,” she told him, staring down her anxiety in the mirror.

“Then I’ll call you back in eleven.”

She waited for dead air. When it came, she grabbed her toothbrush and stepped into shower water pumped directly out of the icy Detroit River. The cold spray warmed her frigid skin.

#

Seven minutes later, out of breath, heart pounding, she was belted into the back seat of a filthy taxi. The driver was an Arab. She told him she’d pay double if they reached the Delta terminal in under an hour.

“Yes, of course, miss,” he replied, as if the request was standard for his enterprise, which it probably was.

She cracked the window. Petroleum-heavy air hit her face and entered her lungs and chased away the more noxious odors inside the cab. She patted her sweatsuit pocket to settle the cell phone more comfortably against her hip.

Twenty past four in the morning, Eastern Daylight Time. Three hours before sunrise. The moon was not bright enough to lighten the blackness, but the street lamps helped. Outbound traffic crawled steadily. Night construction crews would be knocking off in forty minutes. No tie-ups, maybe. God willing.

Before the phone vibrated again three minutes later, she’d twisted her damp black hair into a low chignon, swiped her lashes with mascara and her lips with gloss, dabbed blush on her cheeks, and fastened a black leather watch band onto her left wrist. She needed another few minutes to finish dressing. Instead, she pulled the cell from her pocket. While she remained inside the cab, she reasoned, he couldn’t see she was wearing only a sweat suit, clogs, and no underwear.

This time, she didn’t identify herself when she answered and kept her responses brief. Taxi drivers could be exactly what they seemed, but Kim Otto didn’t take unnecessary risks, especially on alert level red.

She took a moment to steady her breathing before she answered calmly, “Yes.”

“Agent Otto?” he asked, to be sure, perhaps.

“Yes, sir.”

“They’ll hold the plane. No boarding pass required. Flash your badge through security. A TSA officer named Kaminsky is expecting you.”

“Yes, sir.” She couldn’t count the number of laws she’d be breaking. The paperwork alone required to justify boarding a flight in the manner he had just ordered would have buried her for days. Then she smiled. No paperwork this time. The idea lightened her mood. She could grow to like under the radar work.

He said, “You need to be at your destination on time. Not later than eleven thirty this morning. Can you make that happen?”

She thought of everything that could go wrong. The possibilities were endless. They both knew she couldn’t avoid them all. Still, she answered, “Yes, sir, of course.”

“You have your laptop?”

“Yes, sir, I do.” She glanced at the case to confirm once more that she hadn’t left it behind when she rushed out of her apartment.

“I’ve sent you an encrypted file. Scrambled signal. Download it now, before you reach monitored airport communication space.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a short pause, and then he said, “Eleven thirty, remember. Don’t be late.”

She interpreted urgency in his repetition. She said, “Right, sir.” She waited for dead air again before she closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. Then she lifted her Bureau computer from the floor and pressed the power switch. It booted up in fourteen seconds, which was one fewer than the government had spent a lot of money to guarantee.

The computer found the secure satellite, and she downloaded the encrypted file. She moved it to a folder misleadingly labeled
Non-work Miscellaneous
and closed the laptop. No time to read now. She noticed her foot tapping on the cab’s sticky floor. She couldn’t be late. No excuses.

Late for what?

CHAPTER TWO

At precisely 5:15 a.m. the cab driver stopped in front of Delta departures at McNamara terminal. Fifty-five minutes, door to door. So far, so good, but she wasn’t on the plane yet.

She paid the driver double in cash, as promised. She ignored the cold November wind and pulled her bags from the car and jogged inside as quickly as she dared. Running made airport officials nervous. Airports were touchy places in America these days, particularly those close to known arrival and departure points for terrorists. Detroit-Wayne Metro had two strategic advantages for the bad guys. Proximity to the Canadian border allowed rapid deployment once they entered the country, and they could easily blend in. Greater Detroit was home to more people of Arabic descent than any city outside the Middle East. Which was the very reason Otto had requested the Detroit deployment: more opportunity for advancement on the front lines.

Right then she thought she would have been better off somewhere else.

She slowed to a walk. There were cameras everywhere. She was under the radar, but she wasn’t invisible.

She approached the checkpoint and looked for her contact. She saw a man with
Kaminsky
on his nameplate, manning the crew line, putting each crew member through the same screens as the regular passengers. He was focused intently on his work.

Come on, come on, come on.

She willed him to notice her. When he did, she ducked under the rope and walked up to where he stood. She said, “You’re expecting me.”

He said, “Correct.”

He glanced at her credentials and passed her along, with her bags, and her electronics, and her gun, around the outside of the metal detector hoop. Behind her a passenger called out, “Hey! What’s so special about her?”