Jack In A Box Read Online Free PDF Page A

speak again.
    Gaspar laughed. “If he planned everything. Big if. But if he did, this is a test.”
    “Test of what?”
    Gaspar shrugged. “Dunno. He wants to see what we’ll do. Whether we’ll come alone or bring an army. How long we’ll wait. What we’ll say. My kids call it a psych-out.”
    Kim said nothing, but she agreed, partly. If she’d expected to find Reacher here tonight in the shadows, she would have brought more firepower. But she thought Reacher had planned this encounter. What exactly was he up to?

7.
    ON THEIR SECOND PASS in front of the building, the limos had begun to collect their diplomats and depart. They’d pulled up in front, one at a time, orderly, their drivers knowing the drill. The glass doors opened, spilling music and party chatter into the quiet.
    Kim saw the three hooded people standing between two of the glass pyramids Gaspar had spied. They wore dark jeans, dark athletic shoes, stood with their hands in their pockets, fidgeting, but otherwise seemed to lack menace. Impossible to discern whether they were men or women. Aside from the weather being too warm for hoodies, Kim saw nothing alarming about them. Yet.
    By the third pass most of the guests and all of the limos had departed. The string quartet was breaking down their equipment inside. Cabs pulled up one at a time waiting for fares. The noise level had diminished.
    Kim checked her Seiko. It was ten minutes past their scheduled meet. What were they looking for? Waiting for? She had no clue, and on this point she judged Gaspar clueless as well.
    Was Reacher here? Watching? Kim had looked for him but had seen nothing resembling a giant paying attention to her.
    On the fourth pass, Kim noticed a woman standing apart from the building in the shadow of the largest pyramid, facing the line of cabs at the front entrance, facing her and Gaspar, facing the three hoodies, although they were blocked from her view by the large glass pyramid that separated them.

8.
    THE WOMAN WORE AN ANKLE-LENGTH BLACK CAPE and silver party shoes with a three-inch spike heel poked below the hemline. The cape’s full hood covered her head and obscured her face. She was slightly built, medium height. Kim could discern nothing else about the woman’s shape concealed by her cape.
    Kim felt her gun resting securely within easy reach before she touched Gaspar’s arm. He nodded. They moved together into the shadows toward the woman. Despite the hour’s walking, his limp remained under control.
    The woman said, “No closer. I can hear you from there.”
    They stopped. Kim calculated how quickly she could close the distance. Slightly faster than their adversary, since she was encumbered by those spike heels.
    “What do you want?” the woman asked.
    “You know that already,” Kim answered and then asked her own question. “Who are you?”
    The woman smiled briefly, as if the response was expected according to some tit-for-tat plan. “Susan Duffy, DEA, Houston office. Why are you hunting Reacher?”
    “We want information about him.” Kim hesitated a couple of beats to see if the woman would fill the silence. She didn’t. “Why do you care?”
    Susan Duffy broke the rules; she didn’t answer the question. “What kind of information?”
    “Everything, including his underwear size and what kind of condoms he uses. Whatever we need to get him in the box,” Gaspar said.
    Susan Duffy, if that’s who she was, laughed.
    Kim was vaguely aware that the departing gala guests had diminished from a few hundred to a few dozen to a few couples, making the trek from the entrance to the waiting cabs only a pair at a time.
    Gaspar asked, “What do you know about Reacher?”
    Duffy had tired of the game, perhaps. She simply stated the message she’d come to deliver. “You’re wasting your time looking in official files. You’ll find plenty before March 1997, but it’s all bullshit Reacher prepared himself. You won’t find anything involving Reacher after