Get Back Jack (21 page)

Neagley frowned. As if she was creating an official report, again without emotion, she delivered the facts. “Paul lives in a group home during the week and here on weekends. A year ago, we found him a job working in a local office. We never leave him alone. He’s escorted everywhere. But he walks to work—with his detail, of course. And he stops off on the way home to get a strawberry milkshake every day.”

Neagley sat there, perfectly relaxed. Her cold competence was unnerving. Maybe Colonel Silver was right. Maybe she was some sort of psychopath.

Kim said, “And?”

Neagley picked up where she’d left off. “On Wednesday, when Paul stopped for his strawberry shake, Berenson was there. He didn’t know her, but when he described her to me, I knew who he meant. She approached him and touched his arm—”

“Wait,” Kim said. “Why didn’t the detail step in?”

“The detail was waiting outside.”

Kim stared at her. So did Gaspar. Finally Kim said, “The detail was waiting outside? What kind of security—”

“Paul likes to go in alone. It makes him happy.”

“Well that might be, but—”

“Not much makes Paul happy.”

Neagley’s expression was implacable. No advantage to be gained in pressing. Maybe she simply loved her brother.

Which meant Frances Neagley was capable of love.

Was that possible? A moment ago, Kim would have bet against it.

Kim said. “So Berenson touched his arm and then what?”

“You can’t do that with Paul. His kind of autism makes physical touching painful for him.”

Kim remembered that Neagley tried to talk to her brother and calm him down when he freaked out in her office, but she never touched him. It had seemed odd at the time. Still did, even explained.

“Berenson backed off, but it took quite a while to get Paul to calm down.” Neagley took a deep breath and released a thin smile. “His detail had to come inside.”

“And Berenson?”

“Slipped away in the disturbance.”

Kim nodded.

Neagley went on. “So when Berenson walked toward Paul in my lobby on Friday afternoon, he just lost it. And his behavior can be quite frightening, as you saw. Sanchez had his gun out, kind of waved it around. Maybe he felt threatened, or he thought a gunshot would stop Paul’s outburst. Or maybe he was just unhinged. Who knows? You saw the video. For whatever reason, he didn’t shoot to kill, but he discharged his weapon. And the bullet grazed Paul’s arm. And then Paul turned it up a dozen notches.”

After a couple of seconds of thinking about it, Gaspar shook his head. “Too convenient.”

“What?” Neagley asked. Matter-of-factly.

“You already knew Sanchez killed O’Donnell by Friday afternoon because you’ve seen O’Donnell’s surveillance.”

“So?”

“Sanchez shows up in your office and approaches you at gunpoint. Paul freaks out. Sanchez shoots and the bullet grazes Paul’s arm.”

“That’s right.”

“And then Sanchez has a heart attack and dies? And Berenson bugs out and gets away?” Gaspar said. “Damned convenient.”

Neagley snorted. “Not even close to convenient, Gaspar. Paul had to be sedated after that. Sanchez—a man I had worked closely with and at one time considered to be part of my family—was dead. Berenson escaped. O’Donnell is dead. We can’t find Dixon or Franz’s widow and son. Doesn’t sound the least bit convenient to me.” Neagley checked her watch. “Stay alert. I’m going for a last check on the team outside.”

After she left, Gaspar said, “She could have told us that about the lobby before. You believe her?”

“Not at all,” Kim said. “She killed Sanchez. There’s too many stories just like that in her Army file. Guys who were standing too close to her one minute and flat out on the ground the next.”

“How’d she do it?”

Kim shrugged. “She’s exceptionally proficient at unarmed combat, according to the Army. Probably a heel kick to the heart muscle. Maybe an elbow. Anything hard enough and placed correctly would do it.”

Thoughtfully, Gaspar said, “The autopsy wouldn’t show a bruise over the heart. Bruising requires blood flow, and there wouldn’t have been any after his heart stopped.”

“Makes you feel lucky to be alive with nothing but a sore neck, doesn’t it?” Kim glanced at her Seiko. “Stay sharp. Berenson and Paul are supposed to be here in five minutes.”

Kim felt the familiar blast of cold air when Neagley opened the wide front door. Then she sensed a dull chalky impact nearby and something stung her on the left cheek. From the corner of her eye she saw a puff of dust around a small, cratered chip on the surface of the plaster wall.

Once again, she heard no sound at all.

Instantaneously, she thought:
Bullet. Silencer.
She watched another puff slightly below the first. She hit the deck and rolled under one of Neagley’s huge Spanish tables.

“Gun!” she screamed.

A line of puffs and craters raced toward Gaspar. He ducked behind a heavy chair and fell onto the floor below the line of fire and landed with a millisecond to spare.

Kim belly-crawled to the front wall and peered out the bottom corner of the nine-foot glass windows. Paul was running for the house along the sidewalk, flashing in and out of the pockets of gloom created by the heavy canopy of oaks.

“Frances! Frances!” he shouted.

He was in a total, frothing panic. Must’ve broken free of Berenson, and now the peaceful exchange had exploded.

Craning her neck, Kim could see Neagley crouched behind a heavy Spanish armoire hugging the side wall just inside the front entrance, scanning for the shooter’s location.

“Paul! Get down!” Neagley screamed.

Paul kept running.

A volley of shots rang out from a second gun.

Neagley fired back, but didn’t have a clear sightline to the shooters. Kim and Gaspar repositioned to provide cover fire through the broad open front door. Team members outside must have released a bullet-wall, too. Front windows shattered, spraying glass everywhere. The noise was deafening.

Paul was still coming, all pumping arms and knees, zig-zagging wildly. Half a dozen feet shy of the threshold, he launched himself like a baseball player diving head-first for home plate just at the moment Neagley moved and he landed square on his sister’s upper chest where she crouched near the armoire. The impact blasted her off her feet and the two of them crashed backward to the floor while the bullet storm never let up.

Returning fire along with the outside team toward the invisible shooters, Kim saw Neagley trying to struggle out from under her brother. Too much blood spurted—from Paul, she guessed. A
lot
of blood. A major artery hit. His or hers?

Then only Neagley’s outside team was firing—the shooters had pulled back. Kim glanced out the window and saw the slope of a body loping fast toward what might have been a dark van parked down the block moments before the vehicle sped off. Neagley’s team charged off in pursuit. Gaspar dashed outside.

Kim rushed to help Neagley and Paul, but Morrie got there first, dragging him off of Neagley. Neagley only shoved Morrie aside, slipping through the lake of blood to pull Paul to her and cradle his head in her arms.

It was the first time Kim had seen Neagley touch her brother. Kim wondered how many years it had been since she or anyone else had done so. Paul could bear it now. He was completely limp and still, like his clothes were empty. His eyes were wide open, moving slowly, searching side to side.

“Frances?” he whispered. His voice was very quiet, but alert. “Are you okay?”

Kim’s eyes welled up. She hard-blinked to clear them. But no tears streamed down his sister’s face.

Neagley’s voice was strong. “I’m fine, Paul,” she said.

She slid her hand under his neck, where the blood was pulsing out in a warm, hard jet. Neagley’s hands were strong. She applied pressure as she’d been trained to, directly to the wound, attempting to stop the blood flow.

“Medic,” Neagley called softly. A soldier’s reflex.

Paul’s chin fell to his chest. Blood flooded between the folds of his skin and soaked his shirt. Pooled on the ground around Neagley’s legs and soaked into the plush carpet.

“Medic!” she called again, louder.

“On the way.” Kim watched helplessly because she knew they’d be too late. Paul weighed about one-sixty-five, which meant he had about ten to twelve pints of blood in him. Most of them were already gone. His heart was doing its job, valiantly pumping his life straight out onto the carpet around his sister’s lap.

“Medic!” Neagley screamed it this time. Nobody came.

Paul looked straight into his sister’s face. “Remember?” he whispered.

Neagley bent closer.

“I love you, Sissy,” he whispered. “Remember?”

“I remember, Paulie,” she said.

Paul smiled weakly, like her answer satisfied totally. He was very pale now. Blood soaked everything in a widening pool. It was warm and slick. His eyes settled on her face.

Neagley held him until he bled out and died in her arms.

Paramedics had arrived and helped Neagley to her feet. Neagley laid Paul’s head gently on the blood-soaked carpet and moved away while the paramedics handled the rest.

Official vehicles had been steadily arriving since the van sped off. Gaspar returned from a swift canvass of Neagley’s team and the outdoor stations. He had conferred with the first responders and now met Kim and Neagley at the front entrance as the paramedics removed the gurney.

Neagley looked down at her blood-coated hands. Her clothes were soaked in Paul’s blood and clung to her lithe body. She smelled of a mix of coppery blood and gunshots.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kim said.

“Of course it was,” Neagley said, matter-of-factly. “That bullet was meant for me. Subsonic bullet. It would have bounced right off my vest.”

“Yes and no.”

Neagley looked at her.

Gaspar’s right eyebrow inquired.

Kim said, “The bullet wasn’t meant for you. They don’t want you dead. Yet. They want their money back first.”

“Dixon is the one who can help them with that, and they already have her.” She sounded weary, almost beaten. Kim’s heart went out to her, even knowing she wouldn’t be pleased to know it. “I’ll get cleaned up. Meet me in the security office in ten minutes.”

Remembering Sanchez’s tortured body, Kim shuddered to think about Dixon and the other hostages in Dean and Berenson’s hands. If the same memories concerned Neagley, she didn’t show it. Her self-control was nothing short of robotic.

Kim watched her back as she headed to her room upstairs.

Then, she turned to Gaspar and asked, “They had a lot of firepower going. Any evidence that Reacher was helping them outside?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sunday, November 14

3:36 p.m.

Chicago, IL

Law enforcement vehicles continued to flood Neagley’s driveway and the street. Personnel worked the crime scene inch by inch outside. Kim watched, saw nothing amiss in their procedures from her vantage point inside the house. She saw Morrie deep in conversation with the officer who appeared to be in charge. Neagley’s team had not returned since they dashed after the surviving shooters and experience said the longer they were gone, the less likely they’d return alive.

Gaspar tilted his head closer to report on his brief crime scene inspection for her ears only. “Two dead—one ours, one theirs.”

Kim nodded. Waited for something worse, which she sensed was coming.

“Berenson’s dead crew member sported visible gang tattoos on his neck and chest. The Las Olas Mexican cartel,” he said. “You know them?”

“By reputation. I’ve seen the FBI estimates they’ve killed more than two thousand of their enemies, using our guns and ordnance fighting over drug distribution in Mexico and the U.S. No personal experience. They don’t reach all the way to Detroit.”

“Lucky you. They also specialize in kidnapping for ransom and home invasions. The full menu. They’ve been involved in a turf war with a rival gang for about six years. Last time I had a case involving Las Olas was back in the summer. The cartel targeted Miami law enforcement vehicles to steal firearms, vests, ammo, ID. Never recovered any of it. We lost two good agents and never made an arrest.”

“Terrific,” Kim replied. “If we were old enough to be nostalgic for the Mafia, Las Olas might get us there.”

A second officer joined Morrie and the officer in charge. Morrie might have been describing the Las Olas attack and Paul’s murder, but she couldn’t hear the content of their conversation.

Neagley’s team had been in pursuit for too long. Kim guessed they’d been overtaken somewhere shortly after they left Neagley’s home and more bodies would be discovered very soon. With any luck, at least a few of those bodies would be Las Olas, too, though in Kim’s experience, cartel members had nine lives.

“It gets worse,” Gaspar said.

“Of course it does.”

“The cartels have been recruiting in prisons all over the country, as you know. So the crew members shooting at us could theoretically have been locals. Except the Illinois State Police officers outside didn’t recognize the tats.”

“Means Las Olas has no presence here. Berenson must have imported her own crew for the job.” Kim ran a weary hand over her still-tight, sleek chignon and rolled her shoulders. She was bone tired. She’d been awake almost 36 hours. Gallons of coffee could only carry her so far. Very soon now, she’d require sleep. “Which means Berenson and Dean are long gone. Probably back in Mexico by now. If they haven’t already killed her, they’ve taken Dixon with them.”

“And we’re damned unlikely to get her back alive,” Gaspar said. He held something in his closed fist and dropped it into her palm. Kim recognized it from FBI anti-terrorism training. A polymer cartridge subsonic bullet, military prototype. “Picked it up off the ground near the first body. There’s plenty more out there, so don’t worry about evidence. Not that anyone will ever be charged with killing Paul, regardless.”

Kim caressed the bullet, said nothing. The cartels were frighteningly adept at acquiring U.S. weapons and ordnance. Possible sources for these prototypes were endless. Still, she’d ask the Boss and Neagley for answers.