Hostage

5

Vaughan opened her eyes, tried to get up but couldn’t. She was lying flat on a carpeted floor, wrists cuffed and ankles wrapped with duct tape.

A few feet to her right, the man she’d arrested was sitting in a tattered desk chair next to a cheap wooden table, his legs propped up on a large ice chest. There was a steel lamp on the table, no shade and no bulb, along with a semi-automatic pistol-probably the one that had been in Vaughan’s holster. To the right of the table there was a solid wooden door and a rectangular window. The curtains had been parted a few inches to let some light into the room.

The man had a cell phone to his ear.

“I have her,” he said. “You can deactivate the circuit now.”

Vaughan had no idea what the man was talking about. He sat there and listened for a few seconds, and then he clicked off and set the phone on the table. It rang a few seconds later. He looked at the caller ID, but he didn’t answer.

“Where are we?” Vaughan said.

“You’re awake. Good. I was afraid I might have overmedicated you.”

“Where are we?” Vaughan said again.

“It’s not important for you to know that.”

“Are we still in Colorado?”

“It’s not important for you to know that, either, but yes, we’re still in Colorado. Far from any sort of populated area, so don’t bother trying to shout or scream. Nobody will hear you. And if you annoy me enough, I’ll make it so you can’t talk at all.”

Vaughan looked around. She knew that they were in a motel room somewhere, but she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious or how far she’d been taken from home.

“Who are you?” she said. “What do you want?”

“My name is Caminha Sozinho. It’s not my real name, of course, but it’s what people in certain professional circles know me by. I made it up. In Portuguese, it means walks alone. Pretty cool, don’t you think? As for what I want, well, right now that’s somewhat basic. I just want to survive.”

Sozinho told Vaughan about the man in the black leather jacket. He told her about the electronic circuit implanted in his neck, and he told her about the contract out on Jack Reacher.

“He won’t come,” Vaughan said. “Reacher’s too smart for that. He’s going to know it’s a trap.”

“I don’t know a lot about the man,” Sozinho said. “But from what I understand, he’s intensely loyal to people he considers to be his friends. From what I understand, he will come, trap or no trap. The man in the black leather jacket thinks he will probably want to hear your voice over the phone, to make sure you’re still alive. Once that has been established, he will analyze the situation, consider all the angles, and then he will come, confident in his abilities to defeat the opposition-which at the moment happens to be me.”

“He’s confident in his abilities for a reason,” Vaughan said. “He won’t have any problem dispensing with you.”

“We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

“Anyway, how is he going to hear my voice? Are you going to give the police your cell phone number or something?”

“Or something.”

“You’re assuming that he’s going to take an interest in this. I doubt if he will. I haven’t heard from him in a long time.”

“A police officer being abducted is going to be big news. I imagine all the major networks have crews en route as we speak. When Reacher hears that his good old friend Officer Vaughan has been taken-and especially when he hears it directly from you over the phone-it’ll be on. He’s going to get here as fast as he can. At least that’s what the man who hired me is betting on. It might take a couple of days for Reacher to get here, but we’ll be okay. The man in the black leather jacket arranged for this nice big cooler full of food and water to be placed here for us, along with some clean clothes and this cell phone and some other supplies and a portable toilet. We have everything we need, and if we need something else, it will be brought to us. We can wait Reacher out for as long as it takes. The authorities will never find us here.”

“What makes you think Reacher will find us here?”

“He won’t have to,” Sozinho said. “Once I get word that he’s in the area, I’ll find him.”

Vaughan wondered what Sozinho had done with her police car. He must have hidden it someplace where it wouldn’t be spotted from the ground or the air. The only other way for anyone to track her would be through her cell phone, and she was certain that Sozinho had destroyed it before leaving Hope. Or maybe he had tossed it into the back of a pickup truck or something, maybe one with out-of-state plates, enjoying the thought of the FBI wasting time chasing it.

At any rate, Sozinho was right. It wasn’t likely that anyone was going to find her, wherever she was. There were thousands of square miles of nothingness in Colorado, and there were thousands of places a kidnapper could have hidden her.

Or buried her.

“Let’s say Reacher comes,” Vaughan said. “And let’s say you’re successful in taking him down. Where do I fit in to all this? What’s going to happen to me?”

Sozinho opened the cooler and pulled out a bottle of water.

“Thirsty?” he said.

“No. I want you to answer my question.”

“Don’t worry. You’re just bait. Once I’m done with you, I’ll let you go.”

Vaughan didn’t believe that for a second. She’d seen Sozinho’s face, not only here in the shadows but in the bright morning sunshine back in Hope. She could easily identify him. There was no way that he was going to let her go. He was just telling her that to keep her calm during the wait.

“How much is he paying you?” she said.

Sozinho choked on his water.

When he finished coughing, he said, “Don’t you think it’s a little rude to ask about that? I would never ask you about your salary.”

“I’m just curious. How much money does it take for you to end the life of another human being?”

“I don’t even think about it in those terms. Anyway, as it turns out, this little number is going to be gratis as far as any monetary compensation is concerned. It’s not the way I wanted it to be, but I wasn’t given much of a choice in the matter.”

“There’s always a choice,” Vaughan said. “Instead of going after Reacher, you could go after this enigmatic man in the black leather jacket you keep referring to. You could give yourself up right now, cut a deal for testifying against him. And if this guy’s organization is as big as you say it is, we might even be able to get you into the witness protection program.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, so maybe you should just be quiet for a while.”

Vaughan closed her eyes. If she couldn’t entice Sozinho into surrendering, then she needed to make an attempt to get away from him. She couldn’t wait for the cavalry to show up, like it happened in the movies. It was doubtful that the FBI would ever find her, and it was doubtful that Reacher would ever find her. Not in time. She needed to make a move, and she needed to do it now. The sooner the better.

“I have to use the restroom,” she said.