Read Jack and Kill for Free Online

didn’t.
    Kim wondered aloud, “Why he was headed to New Hope along that lonely road this afternoon? He was already here yesterday. Where did he go and why was he coming back?”
    No one answered. Maybe someday, Kim would have the chance to ask him. She felt her stomach churn at the thought and controlled it by turning her attention back to the video.
    Heavy clouds threatened to snow blanket the countryside again before nightfall. He could have slept outside. He’d done it many times before when he was in the army. But maybe he had a plan for a room in New Hope, although everything she knew about him said he wasn’t much of an advance planner.
    “There,” Gaspar said, pointing with his chin, one eyebrow raised. “See it?”
    She did. He’d picked his head up. His stride hesitated briefly.
    Kim said, “He heard the car approaching when it was far behind him. Good ears.”
    “He’s got years of training and sharp reflexes. And it was probably just quiet enough out there. The engine would’ve sounded small and weak and foreign. You can almost see him thinking it through, knowing he’d have trouble scrunching his six-foot, five-inch frame into the passenger seat.”
    Or maybe he was expecting the Prius all along because Duffy told him what car Jillian was driving, Kim thought. Maybe that’s why he was there to start with.
    Gaspar said, “Alternative rides weren’t thick on the ground. He probably figured nothing more suitable was likely to pass before nightfall.”
    A few moments later, Reacher had turned to face oncoming traffic and stuck his right thumb out, walking slowly backward, waiting. Kim recalled too clearly the biting wind that scraped her corneas. Must have been the same for him and caused his eyes to water, too.
    He’d have watched through watery haze while the blue vehicle steadily narrowed the distance between them without slowing. Some optical trick might’ve made the car seem smaller as it came closer, which made no sense at all, but Kim had experienced that, too.
    He blinked until his vision cleared, maybe. He saw a female at the wheel, alone in the Prius. Blonde hair. Nice face. Gorgeous eyes. Dark sweater. Maybe mid-thirties. Kim was shocked by Jillian’s face. The face Kim saw after Jillian was viciously attacked by the truck driver, wasn’t recognizable as this same woman.
    Jillian glanced toward Reacher as she passed without slowing. Now, he blinked the water out of his eyes and closed his lids briefly.
    “He couldn’t have been surprised,” Kim said. “What woman in her right mind would pick up a guy looking like him?”
    Gaspar replied. “No woman should pick up any hitchhiker, Sunshine. Not even you. And I don’t care how good a marksman you are.”
    Kim didn’t bother to defend against his challenge because she agreed with him on principle. But if Jillian had followed her first instincts and simply kept going, she’d be dead now. Maybe she’d known that. Maybe she knew that violence is a process, not an event.
    After the Prius passed, Reacher turned to face westward again and resumed trudging, his head down against the frigid wind once more.
    Less than five minutes later, he must’ve heard the puny engine’s unmistakable whine again. He glanced up and saw the same driver behind the wheel. Maybe he wondered why she’d changed her mind. What did he think? Probably some misguided act of Christian charity or something?
    The car passed him again, made a U-turn, returned and pulled up alongside. Jillian lowered the passenger side window and he bent over to speak to her. It was then he would have seen Brook belted into a booster seat on the passenger side. Young Brook’s head was barely as high as the window’s edge.
    “What’s going through his head now?” Kim asked, as if she was talking to herself.
    “He’s thinking she’s either very brave or very foolish,” Gaspar said. “What’s she thinking?”
    “Maybe she figured the boy would provide a level of security. She