in the past tense

right now, patty / shorty the canadian couple were still trapped, and fooled around by those four weird guys, who always talked in complicated and good-mannered sentences, meantime, jack reacher was on his way, to ryantown, a nowhere amidst nowhere, supposed to be, in the dense woods, now, p. 109, one third along the way in this SLOW 'thriller', nothing happened, nobody died, yet, except jack gave the rich kid a lesson, and except a few clues, left by lee, intentionally, of course, for example, did stan reacher run away from the fight that night, who was mark reacher, was he related to jack, in a certain way, what was in that heavy and mysterious suitcase, in which lies the business plan of patty / shorty, if they could arrive at new york alive,