Lee Child - Never Go Back

‘Tonight?’

‘Better than sleeping under a bush.’

‘How far west?’

‘All the way west,’ Reacher said. ‘We’re going to Los Angeles.’

‘Why?’

Samantha Dayton.

Sam.

Fourteen years old .

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Reacher said. ‘It’s complicated.’

They walked through the downtown area, on a street called East Main, which became a street called West Main after a central crossroads. All the store windows were dark. All the doors were shuttered. Berryville was no doubt a fine American town, matter-of-fact and unpretentious, but it was no kind of hub. That was for damn sure. It was all closed up and slumbering, even though it was only the middle of the evening.

They walked on. Turner looked good in the shirt, even though she could have gotten herself and her sister in it together. But she had rolled the sleeves, and she had shrugged and wriggled like women do, and it had draped and fallen into some kind of a coherent shape. Somehow its hugeness emphasized how slender she was. Her hair was still down. She moved with lithe, elastic energy, a wary, quizzical look never leaving her eyes, but there was no fear there. No tension. Just some kind of an appetite. For what, Reacher wasn’t entirely sure.

Totally worth the wait, he thought.

They walked on.

And then on the west edge of town they came to a motel.

And in its lot was the car with the dented doors.

TWENTY-FIVE

THE MOTEL WAS a neat and tidy place, entirely in keeping with what they had seen in the rest of the town. It had some red brick, and some white paint, and a flag, and an eagle above the office door. There was a Coke machine, and an ice machine, and probably twenty rooms in two lines, both of them running back from the road and facing each other across a broad courtyard.

The car with the dented doors was parked at an angle in front of the office, carelessly and temporarily, as if someone had ducked inside with a brief enquiry.

‘Are you sure?’ Turner asked, quietly.

‘No question,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s their car.’

‘How is that even possible?’

‘Whoever is running these guys is deep in the loop, and he’s pretty smart. That’s how it’s possible. There’s no other explanation. He heard we broke out, and he heard we took thirty bucks with us, and he heard about that Metro cop finding us on Constitution Avenue. And then he sat down to think. Where can you go with thirty bucks? There are only four possibilities. Either you hole up in town and sleep in a park, or you head for Union Station, or the big bus depot right behind it, and you go to Baltimore or Philly or Richmond, or else you head the other way, west, on the little municipal bus. And whoever is doing the thinking here figured the little municipal bus was the favourite. Because the fare is cheaper, and because Union Station and the big bus depot are far too easy for the cops to watch, as are the stations and the depots at the other end, in Baltimore and Philly and Richmond, and because sleeping in the park really only gets you busted tomorrow instead of today. And on top of all that they claim to know how I live, and I don’t spend much time on the East Coast. I was always more likely to head west.’

‘But you agreed to head for Union Station.’

‘I was trying to be democratic. Trying not to be set in my ways.’

‘But how did they know we’d get out of the bus in Berryville?’

‘They didn’t. I bet they’ve already checked everywhere from about Leesburg onward. Every visible motel. Hamilton, Purcellville, Berryville, Winchester. If they don’t find us here, that’s where they’re heading next.’

‘Are they going to find us here?’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ Reacher said.

The motel office had small windows, for a decorative effect, like an old colonial house, and on the inside they were fitted with sheer drapes of some kind. No way of telling who was in the room. Turner walked to a window, and put her face close to the glass, and looked ahead, and left, and right, and up, and down. She whispered, ‘No one there. Just the clerk, I think. Or maybe he’s the owner. Sitting down, in back.’

Reacher checked the car doors. They were locked. As was the trunk. He put his hand on the hood, above the radiator chrome. The metal was hot. The car hadn’t been parked there long. He moved left, into the mouth of the courtyard. No one there. No one going from room to room, no one checking doors or looking in windows.

He stepped back and said, ‘So let’s talk to the guy.’

Turner pulled the office door, and Reacher went in ahead of her. The room was a lot nicer than the kind of place Reacher was used to. A lot nicer than the place a mile from Rock Creek, for instance. There was quality vinyl on the floor, and wallpaper, and all kinds of framed commendations from tourist authorities. The reception desk was an actual desk, like something Thomas Jefferson might have used to write a letter. Behind it was a red leather chair with a guy in it. The guy was about sixty, tall and grey and impressive. He looked like he should have been running a big corporation, not a small motel.

Turner said, ‘We’re looking for our friends. That’s their car outside.’

‘The four gentlemen?’ the guy said, with a tiny and sceptical hesitation before the word gentlemen .

‘Yes,’ Turner said.

‘I’m afraid you just missed them. They were looking for you about ten minutes ago. At least, I assume it was you they were looking for. A man and a woman, they said. They wondered if you’d checked in already.’

‘And what did you tell them?’ Reacher asked.

‘Well, naturally, I told them you hadn’t arrived yet.’

‘OK.’

‘Are you ready to check in now?’ the guy asked, in a tone that suggested it wouldn’t break his heart if they didn’t.

‘We need to find our friends first,’ Reacher said. ‘We need to have a discussion. Where did they go?’

‘They wondered if perhaps you’d gone to get a bite to eat. I directed them to the Berryville Grill. It’s the only restaurant open at this time of the evening.’

‘The pizza place doesn’t count?’

‘It’s not exactly a restaurant, is it?’

‘So where’s the Berryville Grill?’

‘Two blocks behind us. An easy walk.’

‘Thank you,’ Turner said.

There were two ways to walk two blocks behind the motel. On the left-hand cross street, or the right-hand cross street. Covering both at once would involve splitting up, which would risk a potential one-on-four confrontation for one of them. Reacher was happy with those odds, but he wasn’t sure about Turner. She was half his size, literally, and she was unarmed. No gun, no knife.

He said, ‘We should wait here. We should let them come to us.’

But they didn’t come. Reacher and Turner stood in the shadows, for five long minutes, and nothing happened. Turner moved a little, to let the light play along the flank of the car. She whispered, ‘Those are pretty good dents.’

Reacher said back, ‘How long does it take to check out a damn restaurant?’

‘Maybe they got sent on somewhere else. Maybe there’s a bar with hamburgers. Or a couple of them. Which don’t count as restaurants, with the motel guy.’

‘I don’t hear any bars.’

‘How do you hear a bar?’

‘Hubbub, glasses, bottles, extractor fans. It’s a distinctive sound.’

‘Could be too far away to hear.’

‘In which case they’d have come back for their car.’

‘They have to be somewhere.’

‘Maybe they’re eating at the grill,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe they got a table. A last-minute decision. We were hungry, they could be hungry too.’