Lee Child - Never Go Back

Reacher said nothing in reply to that. Feral , from the Latin adjective ferus , wild, via bestia fera , wild animal. Generally held to mean having escaped from domestication, and having devolved back to a natural state.

Turner said, ‘It’s like you’ve been sanded down to nothing but yes and no, and you and them, and black and white, and live or die. It makes me wonder, what does that to a person?’

‘Life,’ Reacher said. ‘Mine, anyway.’

‘You’re like a predator. Cold, and hard. Like this whole thing. You have it all mapped out. The four guys in the car, and their bosses. You’re swimming towards them, right now, and there’s going to be blood in the water. Yours or theirs, but there’s going to be blood.’

‘Right now I hope I’m swimming away from them. And I don’t even know who they are or where they are.’

‘But you will. You’re thinking about it all the time. I can see you doing it. You’re worrying away at it, trying to catch the scent.’

‘What else should I do? Buy us bus tickets straight to Leavenworth?’

‘Is that the only alternative?’

‘What do you think?’

She took her first sip of coffee, slow and contemplative. She said, ‘I agree with you. And that’s the problem, right there. That’s what’s making me uncomfortable. I’m just like you. Except not yet. And that’s the point. Looking at you is like looking into the future. You’re what I’m going to be one day. When I’m all sanded down too.’

‘So I’m too similar? Most women say no because I’m too different.’

‘You scare me. Or the prospect of becoming you scares me. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m not sure I ever will be.’

‘Doesn’t have to happen. This is a bump in the road. You’ll still have a career.’

‘If we win.’

‘We will.’

‘So best case, I step off the path to stay on it. Worst case, I’m off it for ever.’

‘No, worst case is you’re dead or locked up. Worst case is the wrong guys win.’

‘It’s always win or lose with you, isn’t it?’

‘Is there a third option?’

‘Does it burn you up to lose?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s a kind of paralysing arrogance. Normal people don’t get all burned up if they lose.’

‘Maybe they should,’ Reacher said. ‘But you’re not really like me. You’re not looking at yourself when you look at me. That’s why I came all this way. You’re a better version. That’s what I sensed on the phone. You’re doing it the way it should be done.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Everything. Your job. Your life. Being a person.’

‘Doesn’t feel that way. Not right now. And don’t think of me like a better version. If I can’t look at you and see what’s going to be, you can’t look at me and see what should have been.’

Then the griddle man came back, this time with plates full of eggs and bacon and fried biscuits, all of which looked good, and all of which looked perfectly cooked. The eggs had clean, crisp edges. Clearly the guy cared for his metal well. After he was gone again Turner said, ‘This is all assuming you have a definite preference, that is, one way or the other, about the number of rooms.’

Reacher said, ‘Honest answer?’

‘Of course.’

‘I do have a definite preference.’

‘For?’

‘I have to tell you my thing first.’

‘Which is?’

‘The other item designed to make me run.’

‘Which was?’

‘A paternity suit,’ Reacher said. ‘Apparently I have a daughter in Los Angeles. By a woman I can’t remember.’

THIRTY-THREE

REACHER TALKED, AND Turner ate. He told her the things he had been told. Red Cloud, between Seoul and the DMZ, and Candice Dayton, and her diary, and her home in LA, and her homelessness in LA, and her daughter, and her car, and her visit with a lawyer.

Turner asked, ‘What’s the kid’s name?’

‘Samantha,’ Reacher said. ‘Sam for short, presumably.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Fourteen. Nearly fifteen.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Bad. If she’s mine, I should have been there for her.’

‘You really don’t remember her mother?’

‘No, I really don’t.’

‘Is that normal for you?’

‘You mean, exactly how feral am I?’

‘I suppose.’

‘I don’t think I forget people. I hope I don’t. Especially women I sleep with. But if I did, I would be unaware of it, by definition. You can’t be aware of forgetting.’

‘Is this why we’re going to Los Angeles?’

‘I have to know,’ Reacher said.

‘But it’s suicide. They’ll all be waiting for you there. It’s the one place they can be sure you’ll go.’

‘I have to know,’ Reacher said again.

Turner said nothing.

Reacher said, ‘Anyway, that’s the story. That’s what I had to tell you. In the interests of full disclosure. In case it had a bearing. On the rooms issue, for instance.’

Turner didn’t answer.

They finished up, and they got their check, which was for a total represented by a scrawled figure circled beneath three scribbled lines. How much was a cup of diner coffee? No one knew, because no one ever found out. Maybe it was free. Maybe it had to be, because the composite total was modest. Reacher had thirteen dollars and thirty-two cents in his pocket, which was Sullivan’s surviving eighty cents plus the change he had gotten in the gas station hut, and he left all of it on the table, thereby including a handsome tip. A guy who worked a hot griddle all night deserved no less.

The car was where they had left it, unmolested, not surrounded by searchlights and SWAT teams. Far to their left the state police barracks looked quiet. The cruisers out front had not moved. The warm lights were still showing in the windows.

‘Stay or go?’ Turner asked.

‘Stay,’ Reacher said. ‘This place is as good as any. As weird as that sounds, with the troopers right here. It’s not going to get better than this. Not until it’s over.’

‘Not until we win, you mean.’

‘Same thing.’

They eased themselves into the Corvette’s low seats, and Turner fired it up and drove back to the motel. She stopped outside the office.

‘I’ll wait here,’ she said. ‘You go do it.’

‘OK,’ he said.

He took a fistful of twenties from one of Billy Bob’s bricks.

‘Two rooms,’ she said.

The night clerk was asleep in his chair, but it didn’t take much to wake him up. The sound of the door did half the job, and a polite tap from Reacher’s knuckles on the counter did the rest. The guy was young. Maybe it was a family business. Maybe this was a son or a nephew.

‘Got two rooms?’ Reacher asked him.

The guy made a big show of checking on a computer screen, like many such guys do, which Reacher thought was dumb. They weren’t the worldwide heads of global operations for giant hotel corporations. They were in motels with rooms they could count on their fingers and toes. If they lost track, then surely all they had to do was turn around and check the keys hanging on the hooks behind them.

The guy looked up from the screen and said, ‘Yes, sir, I can do that.’

‘How much?’

‘Thirty dollars per room per night. With a voucher included, for breakfast at the café across the street.’

‘Deal,’ Reacher said, and he swapped three of Billy Bob’s twenties for two of the young guy’s keys. Rooms eleven and twelve. Adjacent. A kindness, on the young guy’s part. Easier for the maid in the morning. Less distance to push her heavy cart.

‘Thank you,’ Reacher said.

He went out to the car, and Turner drove around to the rear of the compound, where she found a patch of lumpy winter grass behind the last of the buildings. She eased the car up on to it, and they raised the top, and they locked it up for the night, and they left it there, not visible from the street.