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 that.”
“Why not?”
Duffy’s expression was unreadable. “Reacher has friends in high and low places.”
“Friends who made his crimes disappear, you mean?”
Duffy’s tone hardened. “Friends like me. Friends who notice you making a pest of yourself in our files and repeatedly finding nothing. You don't want that to happen again. Not everyone is as understanding as I am.”
Gaspar asked, “How do you know every file has been scrubbed clean of every Jack Reacher reference?”
Duffy slid the big hood back revealing short blonde hair, small ears close to her head, and huge emerald earrings. She put a bit of friendly into her voice. “Keep looking if you have nothing better to do. Your file on Jack Reacher will remain thin. Your mission will fail. You’ll never put Reacher in any kind of box. And you’ll piss people off. But hey, if you want to throw your careers in the toilet, you’ll get no problem from me.”
Kim watched one of the last pair of partiers walking toward the curb while she allowed this information to soak in. Both the man and the woman were older, a bit unsteady on their feet. Tipsy maybe.
She didn't know how she felt about Duffy’s attitude. Challenged? Should she try to prove Duffy wrong? Or relieved? Because she could now focus elsewhere?
She asked, “Do you know where Reacher is?”
After a moment, Duffy shook her head, “You won't find him if he doesn't want to be found.”
Gaspar’s impatience flared. “We’ll find him. We found Osama Bin Laden and he was a hell of a lot more powerful than Jack Reacher.”
Duffy smiled again, “Yeah, we found Bin Laden. After ten years of looking. Yeah, we got him. After Seal Team Six made it happen.” She paused for the briefest of moments. “But we didn't take him alive. If you’ve got ten years and a Seal team, maybe you can manage to kill Reacher, but you won’t take him alive unless he wants you to.” She shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
Kim took a deep breath. “So what do you suggest?”
“You could give up.”
Gaspar chuckled. “You don't know Otto.”
The energy in the air seemed to shift, as if Duffy had done what she’d come to do. She nodded slightly before lifting the hood to cover her shimmering blonde hair and returning her hands to her pockets. Her slight form almost merged with the darkness and became a single shadow.
“Suit yourself,” her disembodied voice seemed to echo too loudly. She softened her tone. “But know this: you risk everything if you keep looking. Everything. And Reacher risks nothing while he waits. That doesn't sound like a winning equation to me. Does it to you?”