Hostage

“Sure. Let me just go ahead and put your order in real quick.”

“Okay.”

She disappeared behind the partition that divided the dining area from the kitchen, came back a couple of minutes later carrying the coffee Retro had ordered and a humungous plastic tumbler filled with some kind of soft drink for herself.

She slid into the booth across from Retro.

“Have you found that female officer yet?” she said.

“Officer Vaughan. Not yet. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“We have a TV in back. They were talking about it on the news a while ago. It’s kind of freaking me out, if you want to know the truth. I have two little kids, and the low crime rate was one of the reasons I moved here. I thought Hope was just a nice little town where nothing like this ever happened.”

“It is a nice little town,” Retro said. “And nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“I guess it just goes to show that bad things can happen anywhere.”

Retro nodded, took a sip from his coffee cup. “You said you saw Officer Vaughan arresting the man who’d defaced the sidewalk and the fire hydrant out there. Did you get a good look at the guy?”

“He had jeans on, I think, and a flannel shirt with no sleeves. Muscular arms, like maybe he did some kind of hard work at one time.”

“Any tattoos?”

“I didn’t notice any.”

“What about his face?” Retro said.

“He wasn’t what you would call handsome. But he wasn’t ugly, either. Just a regular guy. Kind of average, I guess. His hair was dark and cut short like yours.”

“Facial hair? Piercings? Anything like that?”

“I don’t think so. Oh, but there was something on his neck. Like a bandage or something.”

“A bandage?”

“Yeah. You know, gauze and surgical tape and all that. It was professional looking, like maybe he’d been at a doctor’s office or a hospital or something.”

“You’re doing good,” Retro said. “Those are the kinds of details we need. Do you think you could describe the man’s features to a police sketch artist?”

“I could try.”

“What time do you get off?”

“I should have been off already, but one of the servers didn’t show up for work this evening. I was just sticking around to make a little extra money, but it’s really not that busy. I can probably leave whenever I want to.”

“Could you put my sandwich in a go box and ride over to the station with me?” Retro said.

“I’ll have to call my babysitter and make sure she can stay for a while, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“Great. Go ahead and make your call, and then let me know.”

“Okay.”

Mira scooted out of the booth and walked back toward the waitress station. Retro was glad he’d taken the time to come back to the diner and question her some more. If she could provide enough details for the artist, maybe the state police could get a drawing out to the media in time for the ten o’clock news.

And then maybe some calls would come in, and maybe they could catch this guy before it was too late.

14

Vaughan stared into the barrel of her own pistol, expecting Sozinho to pull the trigger any second. She thought about her mother and her father and her life as a little girl. Playing hopscotch and riding a bicycle and pretty shoes and dresses and scraped knees. She thought about chalkboards and erasers and the first day of algebra class and the first time she kissed a boy. She thought about her decision to become a police officer and how proud her parents had been when she graduated from the academy, even though they had tried to talk her out of it. She thought about her husband, and about how Jack Reacher had helped with that situation. She still owed Reacher a favor. A big one. She wasn’t afraid to die, but she didn’t want to leave the world with so much left undone.

There was still too much work to do.

“You’re not going to kill me,” she said. “You still need me.”

Sozinho stared her in the eyes. Snarling. Every muscle in his face as tense as a fiddle string. Vaughan figured he was thinking it over. If he pulled the trigger, she would die, but by killing her, he would probably be killing himself as well. The man in the black leather jacket wanted Vaughan kept alive, to be used as bait for Jack Reacher. If Sozinho killed her before exploiting the full extent of her usefulness, the man in the black leather jacket would then kill Sozinho.

Probably.

Reacher might come to Colorado without hearing Vaughan’s voice over the phone, but he might not. Was Sozinho willing to take the chance that he wouldn’t?

Vaughan didn’t think so.

She didn’t think Sozinho would take the risk, and she was right. He eased the hammer down with his thumb, lowered the pistol and tucked it into his waistband.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said. “But not yet.”

He wrestled the motorcycle to an upright position and wheeled it out of the way. Now Vaughan’s leg was free. Her right leg. Her left foot, the one injured from stepping on a shard of porcelain, had started hurting again. It wasn’t numb anymore, which she supposed was a good thing. At least it was getting some circulation.