Page 118 of Bulletproof Jack: Hunting Lee Child's Jack Reacher

She didn’t mention the second vehicle. No reason to bring it up with Russell.

“You think he ran down into that gorge. Seems like a crazy thing to do, even for him,” Russell said.

“It does.” She nodded. “But when he ran down, the drone was headed down into the gorge. He might have been concerned that the drone would be destroyed.”

“Since he didn’t like the damned thing in the first place, why would he care about it being destroyed?”

Kim shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the drone is traceable. Maybe he thinks someone can reverse engineer it to make another one unless he destroyed it personally. Maybe he wanted a toy for his kids. How the hell should I know?”

She reached for her phone and found the photos she’d taken of the third gunman. The one who had her bullet in his back. She passed the photo over to Russell.

“That’s the one who tried to kill me,” she said. “Do you recognize him?”

Russell looked carefully at the images. To be fair, the man’s body was mangled and pretty far away from the camera. But Russell seemed totally engrossed in the images.

“So you do recognize him.” Kim said flatly.

“It’s hard to be certain. He looks really beat up. The guy I’m thinking of isn’t a field agent. Can’t imagine why he’d be out here,” Russell handed the phone back. “They say we all have a doppelganger or two in the world. Maybe the dead dude isn’t the guy.”

Kim nodded. “Okay. So who do you think it is?”

Russell shook his head. “I’d rather not say until I’m sure.”

“Why?”

“Because this situation is bad enough already. And if I’m right, we’re in a lot more trouble,” Russell said quietly.

“What kind of trouble?”

“The kind even Cooper can’t get us out of.”

“I can’t even imagine what kind of trouble that might be,” Kim deadpanned.

Russell frowned but said nothing more.

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Chapter 46

Saturday, June 4

Ontario, CA

After a while, Kim asked, “What do you think is going on with that drone? Why does Reacher care about how they plan to use it?”

“Who knows,” Russell shrugged. “There’s the rest of us, and then there’s Reacher. He makes his own rules.”

Kim nodded. Russell was right.

But Reacher wasn’t against weapons or killing or war. Why did this one weapon matter to him?

She added this to her very long list of unanswered Reacher questions.

After a while, Kim pulled into a gas station and filled up the SUV while Russell made a coffee run. They were back on the road in short order.

Several things were bothering her, now that she’d started composing her internal report. The one she’d upload to her secure server as soon as she had the chance.

Paying her insurance premium, she called it. Contemporaneous reports could save her ass when the hunt for Reacher went even further south than it already had.

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