Christmas Kidnapping. Cindi Myers

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СКАЧАТЬ beauty, he attributed most of his good mood to the way she focused on him. As if anything he had to say were the most interesting thing she had heard today. That was probably just her therapist’s training, but it was doing him a lot of good, so he wasn’t going to complain.

      “How did you hear about me?” she asked when they had ordered—a salad for her, a chicken sandwich for him.

      “I have a friend—Carson Allen, with the Bureau’s resident agency here in Durango. He and I have done some hiking and stuff. Anyway, he said you’re the counselor for the police department and the sheriff’s office. How did you end up with that job?”

      “My husband was a police officer.” She focused on buttering a roll from the basket the waitress had brought.

      “Was?”

      “He was killed three years ago, by a drug dealer who was fleeing the scene of a burglary.”

      The news that she was a widow—a cop’s widow—hit him like a punch in the gut. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been tough.”

      She met his gaze, serene, not a hint of tears. “It was. But I lived through it. I have a son, Ian.” She smiled, a look that transformed her face from pretty to breathtaking. “He’s five. I had to be strong for him.”

      “Sounds like he’s a pretty lucky little boy.” And her husband had been a lucky man. Jack envied his coworkers who had found women who could put up with the demands of a law enforcement job. He had never been that fortunate.

      “Tell me more about this talent of yours for remembering faces,” she said. “What did you call it?”

      He recognized the shift away from any more personal conversation about her, and he accepted it. “I’m a super-recognizer. I think it’s one of those made-up government descriptors the bureaucrats love so much.”

      “I’ll admit I’m unfamiliar with the concept. It must be pretty rare.”

      He shrugged. “It’s not something that comes up in casual conversation. Scientists are just beginning to study facial-recognition abilities. More people may be super-recognizers than we realize. They just don’t admit it.”

      “Why not admit it?” she asked.

      “It makes for awkward social situations. You learn pretty quickly not to admit you recognize people you haven’t been introduced to. I mean, if I tell someone I remember seeing them at a football game last fall or on the bus last week, they think I’m a spy or a stalker or something.”

      “I guess that would be strange.” She speared a tomato wedge with her fork. “How old were you when you realized you had this talent?”

      “Pretty young.” For a long time, he had thought that was the way everyone saw the world, as populated by hundreds of individual, distinct people who stayed in his head. “In school it was kind of a neat parlor trick to play on people—go into a store to buy a soda and come out three minutes later and be able to describe everyone who was in there. But as I got older, I stopped telling people about it or showing off.”

      “Because of the social awkwardness.”

      “Because it made me different, and if there’s anything teenagers don’t want to be, it’s different.”

      She laughed, and they waited while the waitress refilled their glasses. “Did your ability get you the job with the Bureau?” she asked. “Or did that come later?”

      He shrugged and crunched a chip. “You know the government—they test you for everything. I was doing a different job—one that used my electrical and robotics background—when someone in the Bureau decided to put together a whole unit of people like me and I got tapped for it. Gus was a recognizer, too.” A familiar pain gripped his chest at the mention of Gus. Jack didn’t have any brothers, but he had felt as close to Gus as he would have any brother. They had been through so much together.

      “Is that what brought you two together?” she asked.

      “Not at first. We were in the same class at Quantico and we hit it off there. We had probably known each other a year or so before I found out he had the same knack I had for remembering faces. We used to joke about it some, but we never thought anything of it. Not until both of us were recruited for this special project.”

      “That’s really fascinating.” She took a bite of her salad and he dug into the chicken sandwich. The silence between them as they ate was comfortable, as if they had known each other a long time, instead of only a few hours.

      But after a few more minutes he began to feel uneasy. Not because of anything she was doing. He glanced around them, noting the group of women who sat at a table to their left, shopping bags piled around them. A trio of businessmen occupied a booth near the front window, deep in conversation. A family of tourists, an older couple and two clerks he recognized from the hotel where he had stayed his first two nights in town months ago filled the other tables. Nothing suspicious about any of them. He swiveled his head to take in the bar and gooseflesh rose along his arms when his gaze rested on a guy occupying a stool front and center, directly beneath the flat-screen television that was broadcasting a bowling tournament. Average height, short brown hair, flannel shirt and jeans. Nothing at all remarkable about him, yet Jack was positive he had seen the guy before. Probably only once—repeat exposure strengthened the association. But he had definitely been around this guy at least once before.

      “What is it?” Andrea spoke softly. “You’ve gone all tense. Is something wrong?”

      He turned to face her once more. “That guy back there at the bar—the one in the green plaid shirt—he’s watching us.”

      She looked over his shoulder at the guy and frowned. “He has his back to us.”

      “He’s watching us in the bar mirror. It’s an old surveillance trick.”

      “Do you know him?” she asked.

      “I’ve seen him before. Maybe only once. I think he’s in our files.”

      “Why would he be watching you?”

      Jack shoved back his chair. “That’s what I’m going to ask him.”

      He pretended to be headed for the men’s room, but at the last second, he veered toward the guy at the bar. The guy saw him coming and leaped up. He overturned a table and people started screaming. Jack took off after him, alarmed to see the guy was headed right toward Andrea, who stared, openmouthed. Jack shoved aside a chair and dodged past a waitress with a tray of plates, but his bum leg made speed difficult and the guy was almost to Andrea now.

      But the perp didn’t lay a hand on her. He raced past, headed toward the door, Jack still in pursuit. Andrea cried out as Jack ran by her. “My purse,” she said. “He stole my purse!”

Chapter Two

      Andrea stared at the water glass on its side, ice cubes scattered across the cloth. Jack had taken off after the purse snatcher so suddenly she hadn’t had time to process everything that had happened. One moment he was saying something about the guy at the bar watching them, and the next her purse had disappeared, and so had Jack.

      “Would СКАЧАТЬ