Chapter 502: Heading to New York

With a place to stay, Jack dozed off for a bit before Isabelle fell asleep. Although he didn't really need to sleep, he figured it was better to rest a little since they would be crossing the border the next day. No need to push himself to the extreme.

When he woke up, he found a round, slightly chubby face resting against his cheek, sleeping soundly. Her warm breath tickled his eyelashes, making him feel a bit itchy.

Tsk, the little girl really couldn't be relied on. She was supposed to help keep watch but fell asleep herself. Jack glanced at his phone; he had slept for almost three hours and was feeling refreshed.

Feeling something cool and damp on his cheek, Jack sighed quietly. These past two days, he had been subtly manipulating the young girl, not for any ill intent, but so that she would be more obedient in the future. This would help the old Hunter couple, who would have less trouble dealing with a rebellious teenager. After all, they didn't have much experience raising one.

Yes, the guardians Jack found for Isabelle were none other than Detective Hunter and Aunt Didi, an elderly couple with no children of their own.

It seemed his plan had worked a little too well, though. The young girl was already showing signs of puppy love. If she had run into someone less decent, things could have gone very badly.

Jack tucked the blanket over Isabelle, then lit his last cigar and sat outside to keep watch. He plugged his phone into a portable charger and began scrolling through his messages.

Justin had sent him a bunch of texts, all asking for tips on writing CEO romance novels. Each time she thought of something, she'd send him a message, and there were 40 or 50 of them by the time he turned on his phone. The notifications flooded in like a waterfall.

Hearing the faint snores from Isabelle, who had been pretending to sleep earlier, Jack smirked. Even though Justin was over 30, she seemed to share a similar mindset with this young girl.

When they got back, he thought he might introduce the two. Maybe Justin would find a new best friend besides Garcia.

The night was long, and with nothing else to do, Jack slowly replied to Justin's messages, one by one. He valued his relationship with her.

First, she was truly pitiful. There weren't many people who could have a real conversation with her. Jack, while not much of a talker himself, was quite comfortable communicating through text. In his past life, he could argue with someone online for a whole day without getting tired.

When Justin started using emoticons, it gave Jack an unexpected feeling of familiarity. Over time, their conversations became more and more in sync.

Second, Justin was incredibly useful. Earlier, Jack had killed a Mexican cop involved in drug trafficking near a tunnel. Later, when he used the cop's patrol car, he found a family photo in it and slipped it into a maid's apron pocket at Alarcon's villa, leaving it for Chris and Braxton to find.

Justin, after getting the photo from Chris, looked into the cop's background. It turned out he was just a regular officer forced into trafficking and had no other criminal records. She passed the information along to Jack.

Considering the situation in Mexico, Jack didn't think he was wrong to shoot at the time. But his actions had shattered an otherwise ordinary family, and he felt the need to make some amends.

Before he could even ask, Justin informed him that she had already made arrangements. She found a local Catholic charity and managed to get some financial aid to the widow and her child. It wasn't much, but it would cover the boy's education until adulthood.

Now, wasn't a hacker friend like this far better than any AI or so-called artificial intelligence?

—

The next afternoon, Jack flagged down a car on the road to the small town of Reynosa. He handed the driver $50 and hitched a ride into town.

This was one of the routes he had discussed with Cordell Walker. The area didn't belong to either the Matamoros gang or the Reyes gang. The smuggling business here was run by a small-time coyote who didn't even deal in drugs.

Walker had already mapped out their smuggling routes. All Jack needed to do was follow the smugglers at a distance and cross the border with them after dark.

He found a secondhand clothing store and got Isabelle a hoodie. He had her tie her long hair up and tuck it into the hood, making her look like a handsome young boy at a glance.

He then bought a beat-up car for $800 from a local dealership. After nightfall, he parked it on a secluded dirt road, turned off the engine, and waited in silence.

Around midnight, a battered bus rumbled down the bumpy road. Jack waited a while before starting his car and following the faint tail lights from a distance.

After driving in the dark for about 20 minutes, the bus stopped in the distance. Jack turned the wheel sharply and drove his car into the bushes on the side of the road.

He opened the door, stuffed his phone and two pistols, along with extra magazines, into a waterproof bag, and hung it around Isabelle's neck. He told her to protect these items at all costs, then hoisted her onto his back and darted into the woods like a swift leopard.

Up ahead, the Mexican migrants had already gotten off the bus and were being led by a young man. They walked along a narrow path for about half an hour before reaching the Rio Grande.

Thanks to upstream water projects and their proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, the real obstacle wasn't the river's current but the mud at the bottom.

The moon was bright tonight, and the river sparkled under its light. Jack lay by the riverbank, watching as the migrants waded through the waist-deep water.

Once he had the layout memorized, Jack wasn't in a hurry. He waited another half hour after the group had crossed before picking Isabelle up again and wading through the river, step by step.

After crossing the Rio Grande, they were back on American soil. Jack didn't put Isabelle down; he kept running, making his way through the woods, following a beaten path until they reached the main road, where he finally stopped.

Up ahead, police lights flashed. A box truck had been pulled over by federal border patrol, and the migrants who had crossed the river earlier were being arrested.

Jack took the phone from the waterproof bag around Isabelle's neck, swapped out the SIM card, and called Walker. Before long, a pickup truck with "Texas Ranger" written on the side pulled up, its lights flashing.

"Welcome back!" Walker, wearing a cowboy hat, waved at the two of them from behind a tree.

—

"New York? Why?" Jack was startled by Rossi's words.

A week had passed since the BAU team had wrapped up the investigation into the supermarket bombing. It turned out to be the work of a fundamentalist cult in New Jersey. The case had been handed over to another department, as handling terrorists wasn't their specialty.

The Hunter couple had smoothly become Isabelle's guardians. They were overjoyed with the clever and adorable girl, feeling like she had filled a void in their lives. Jack joked that it was like adopting a little bundle of joy without the hassle, a blessing that was hard to come by. Only Hannah seemed a bit jealous.

Interestingly, Hannah wasn't jealous of Jack, but of Didi. She felt that her dear Aunt Didi had become biased ever since Isabelle arrived, even though she was supposed to be the old couple's favorite little pumpkin.

Jack stayed out of that mess. Hannah was just being dramatic, and he was too busy cleaning up his own problems to care.

After the explosion, the house had to be demolished and rebuilt. But Jack wasn't planning to move back in. The fickle man was already thinking about how to spruce up the small farm he had just acquired.

He spent a fair amount of money moving the fruit trees from his backyard to the farm. After that, he got lost in a sea of design plans.

The problem was, he had no experience being a landowner, and his head was filled with ideas. He wanted everything, even a rock garden and a water feature, to create something that looked like a Chinese garden. But his nearly empty wallet forced him to rein in his ambitions.

Hannah offered to cover the costs, but Jack politely declined after thinking it over. Freedom was too valuable to him, and he had set a hard line of not getting married before 30.

And just as he was trying to sort all this out, Rossi threw him a curveball.

"Are they trying to make Jack a scapegoat?"

"That's too much. This whole thing started because of me. I should take responsibility for everything."

Looking at JJ's expression of guilt and Emily's angry outburst, Rossi rubbed his temples in frustration.

"Jack is still part of the BAU. This is just a temporary assignment, a loan! At most, it'll be two years, maybe even just one if things go quickly. And the New York office promised that if we ever need him, we can always request his assistance."

Rossi tried his best to explain. Jack had barely reacted, but the others were more upset than he was. Before this conversation, Rossi had finally convinced Hotchner, and now he had to go through it all over again.

"A high-ranking CIA agent died, and another was seriously injured. Jack left the team without permission, and even though he had a reasonable explanation, the incident still needed some sort of resolution."

Rossi felt helpless. The operation had been a failure, but thanks to some interdepartmental backstabbing, the CIA ended up taking the blame.

On the other hand, Jack's heroic actions had not only saved face for the FBI but also earned

 the agency greater recognition for domestic counterterrorism, making it a win-win for them.

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