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Instead, Jillian continued her steady stream of nervous chatter, but whatever she said inside the car was inaudible through the available surveillance microphones and the image wasn’t the right angle for lip reading.
But the horns, the lost toy, Jillian’s agitation, and probably a hundred other things altogether flipped a switch of some sort and the boy began to squall while still safely belted into his car seat.
Jillian glanced over, maybe to comfort the child. In the split second she was distracted, she didn’t see the F-150 stop abruptly in front of her and the Prius slammed into what must have felt like hitting a brick building.
From the back seat, her passenger had no warning and no opportunity to brace himself. The impact threw him onto the floor in a jumble of boots and knees and elbows. Maybe his head took a resounding whack against the padded front seat.
Brook cried harder and Jillian panicked, yelling now, probably near hysteria, which fed the boy’s squalling and the cacophony inside the car must have reached decibels assaulting all ears.
The truck driver moved swiftly from inside the F-150’s cab to standing beside the Prius holding his shotgun by the barrel like a club or a baseball bat.
Kim and Gaspar watched Reacher struggle to extricate himself from his tortured position in the foot well. When the truck driver smashed Jillian’s window, Reacher must have heard the sound of breaking glass and felt the rush of cold air into the cabin.
Jillian screamed and the boy continued screeching and while Reacher was still struggling to get up off the floor. The truck driver’s angry tenor shouted, “What the hell is wrong with you, bitch?”
That was the point where the truck driver opened Jillian’s door and hauled her out and threw her hard against the car.
Gaspar pressed the pause button on the playback to give them a moment Reacher didn’t have at the time to think through the situation.
6.
By the time Reacher was able to assess the situation, chaos reigned. The Prius’s front end had smashed into the rear of the oversized F-150 and crunched like an accordion. The burly driver, outraged, unrelenting, held Jillian by the arm and shook her, screaming angry words Reacher, still in the back seat, couldn't quite hear, either. The boy continued his hysteria in the front seat and the little car’s horn, which had sounded constantly since the collision, blared as if its battery might last forever.
The truck driver raised the shotgun and brought the butt down on Jillian’s shoulder hard enough to knock her out of his grasp and drop her to the pavement.
In a flash, Reacher propelled from the back seat, over the wrinkled car hood, and when the burly guy raised his shotgun club again, Reacher grabbed the gun barrel, stopping the swing at the top of his arc and causing the burly guy’s weight to shift and pivot on his left foot.
Surprise caught the burly guy off guard for a moment, but a moment was all Reacher needed. Briefly, their eyes met and the truck driver’s bulged as if he was being squeezed by a bullwhip around the stomach.
That was when the burly driver made his final mistake. He faced Reacher full on and snarled a threat that seemed to faze Reacher not at all.
Out of the blue, Reacher head-butted him full in the face. Came off his back foot, thrust up the legs and whipped his head forward and smashed it into the guy’s nose, like hitting him in the face with a bowling ball.
His legs crumpled and he hit the floor like a puppet with the strings cut.
And his head cracked on the concrete’s jagged edge.
When the truck driver went down and stayed down, Reacher moved swiftly to Jillian’s side. He helped her to her feet, steadied her inside the Prius, then knelt to talk with her, watching her face carefully, maybe looking for the non-reactive pupils Kim saw hours later. They exchanged a few words the microphones didn’t catch, but it seemed like a brief and gentle disagreement.
Jillian waved toward the moving traffic. A few vehicles had slowed and some had stopped. A man held a cell phone to his ear. A woman dressed in nurse’s garb approached to help. Jillian glanced at Reacher once more and a long look communicating something unspoken passed between them.
More cars slowed, stopped, and people came to help.
Reacher stood, turned, and walked northward along Grand Boulevard’s gravel shoulder. In the final moments of the video, his image was grainy, indistinct. Perhaps another drone camera’s capture or maybe Duffy had cut the sound.
Reacher seemed to have a cell phone held to his ear. Then he dropped it onto the pavement and crushed it with the heel of his boot before he turned, stuck out his thumb, and waited for a ride.
The video ended. Silence reigned while the three agents mulled things over.
Duffy said, “I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be right back.” She picked up the video player and left the table.
Gaspar said, “I have to call Maria.” He left the table, too, and Kim heard, “Alexandre? How is she?” before he moved through the front door of The New Hope Family Diner in search of a better signal.
7.
Kim remained seated, trying to make sense of the puzzle picture and Reacher’s jumbled profile as Duffy’s video destroyed the working hypothesis she’d formed in her head.
Several things that had been mysteries a few hours ago were now solved. Duffy had done Reacher a favor three days ago when she warned Otto and Gaspar to stop digging for Reacher’s records. Reacher probably came to New Hope to return that favor.
He figured somehow that Jillian Timmer and Brook Armstrong were hiding here. Reacher discovered or deduced a co
Maybe Reacher had pla
The confounding point was his motivation. Was it possible that all he wanted was to release Jillian from the man’s hold and help Duffy return Brook to his family?
Gaspar returned to the table, smiling a little, Kim thought. “Maria doing better?”
“She’s got a ways to go, but thank God for Alexandre and Denise. They’re staying with her, helping with the kids until I can get back. I’ll tell you about it later. Where’s Duffy?”
Kim looked out into the parking lot and noticed that the black SUV with the tinted windows and government plates was gone.
THE END
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