Lee Child - Never Go Back

Slow, and awkward.

Turner said, ‘FBI ahead on the right, for sure.’

Reacher nodded and said nothing. One of the cars on the kerb was a Chevy Malibu, about sixty feet away, plain silver, base specification, with plastic where there should have been chrome, with two stubby antennas glued to the back glass, with a guy behind the wheel wearing a white-collared shirt. An unmarked car, but no real attempt at deception. Therefore possibly a supervisor, just stopping by for a moment, to check on morale and spread good cheer. To the guy he was parked right behind, maybe.

Reacher said, ‘Check out the thing in front of him.’

It was a civilian Hummer H2, wide, tall, gigantic, all waxed black paint and chrome accents, with huge wheels and thin tyres, like black rubber bands.

‘So eight years ago,’ Turner said. A legal seizure, possibly, because of coke in the door pocket, or because it was charged to a scam business, or it had carried stolen goods in the back, first confiscated and then reissued as an undercover surveillance vehicle, slightly tone deaf in terms of credibility, like the government usually was.

And sixty feet in front of the Hummer was a small white compact, parked on the other kerb, facing towards them, clean and bland, barely used, not personalized in any way. An airport rental, almost certainly. The 75th MP. Some unfortunate guy, coach class to LAX, and then a bare-bones government account with Hertz or Avis. The worst car on the lot, and no upgrade.

‘See it?’ Reacher asked.

Turner nodded beside him. ‘And now we know where the address is. Exactly halfway between the Hummer’s front bumper and that thing’s, I would say. Subtle, aren’t they?’

‘As always.’ Reacher had been checking house numbers, and the lot they were looking for was going to be on the left, about ninety feet ahead, if the government’s triangulation was dead-on accurate. He said, ‘Do you see anyone else?’

‘Hard to tell,’ Turner said. ‘Any one of these cars could have people in it.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Reacher said. ‘Two people in particular.’

He rolled on, slow and careful, giving himself a margin of error. The old truck’s steering was a little vague and sloppy. Plus or minus six inches was all it was good for. He passed the silver Malibu, and glanced down to his right. The white-collared shirt had a necktie down the front. FBI for sure. Probably the only necktie inside a square mile. Then next up was the Hummer. It had a fair-haired white guy behind the wheel. With a whitewall crew cut, high and tight. Probably the first whitewall crew cut ever seen inside a pimped-out H2. Government. Tone deaf.

Then Reacher glanced to his left, and started tracking the numbers. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. A gap of some kind, basically. Something different from the places before and after. Something boarded up and foreclosed, or burned down and bulldozed, or never built in the first place. With a big old car parked back in the shadow of its neighbours. Maybe a Buick Roadmaster.

But the address Emily had gotten was a house like all the others. Not different from the places before or after, not boarded up by the bank, and not burned and levelled. Just a regular house, on a regular lot. It had a car on its driveway, but it wasn’t a Buick Roadmaster. It was a two-door coupé, imported, sunfaded red, fairly old, and even smaller than the MP’s white compact. Therefore not big enough for two people to sleep in. Not even close. The house itself was an old one-storey, extended upward, with a groundfloor window on the left, and a groundfloor window on the right, and a new attic window punched out directly above a blue front door.

And coming out the blue front door was a girl.

She could have been fourteen years old. Or fifteen. She was blonde.

And she was tall.

FIFTY-ONE

TURNER SAID, ‘DON’T stop,’ but Reacher braked anyway. He couldn’t help it. The girl looped around the parked coupé and stepped out to the sidewalk. She was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a blue denim jean jacket, and big black baggy pants, and yellow tennis shoes on her feet, with no socks, and no laces. She was slender and long-limbed, all knees and elbows, and her hair was the colour of summer straw. It was parted in the centre, and wavy, and it came halfway down her back. Her face was unformed, like teenagers’ faces are, but she had blue eyes, and cheekbones, and her mouth was set in a quizzical half-smile, as if her life was full of petty annoyances best tolerated with patience and goodwill.

She set off walking, west, away from them.

Turner said, ‘Eyes front, Reacher. Hit the gas and pass her and do not stop. Drive to the end of the road, right now. That’s an order. If it’s her, we’ll confirm later, and we’ll deal with it.’

So Reacher speeded up again, from walking pace to jogging, and they passed the girl just as she was passing the MP’s white compact. She didn’t seem to react to it in any way. Didn’t seem to know it was there for her. She hadn’t been told, presumably. Because what could they say? Hi there, miss, we’re here to arrest your father. Who you’ve never met. If he shows up, that is. Having just been told all about you .

Reacher kept one eye on the mirror and watched her grow smaller. Then he paused at the T, and turned left, and looked at her one more time, and then he drove away, and she was lost to sight.

No one came after them. They pulled over a hundred yards later, but the street behind them stayed empty. Which theoretically was a minor disappointment. Not that Reacher really registered it as such. In his mind right then the two surviving guys from the dented car were on the backest of all back burners, on a stovetop about ten miles deep.

He said, ‘They told me she was living in a car.’

‘Maybe her mom got a new job. Or a new boyfriend.’

‘Did you see any surveillance opportunities?’

‘Nothing obvious.’

‘Maybe we should join the crowd and park on the street. We’d be OK as long as we never got out of the car.’

‘We can do better than that,’ Turner said. She checked her map, and looked out through the Range Rover’s windows, all around, craning her neck, searching for high ground or elevated vantage points. Of which there were plenty to the south, where the Hollywood Hills rose up in the smog, but they were too distant, and in any case the front of the house would be invisible from the south. In the end she pointed a little north of west, at an off-ramp in the tangle where the 134 met the 101. It was raised up high, and its curve seemed to cradle the whole neighbourhood as it swooped around from one freeway to the next. She said, ‘We could fake a breakdown, if that ramp has a shoulder. Overheating, or something. This car certainly looks the part. We could stay there for hours. The FBI doesn’t do roadside assistance. If the LAPD stops for us, we’ll say sure, we’re about cooled down now, and we’ll get on our way.’

‘Warrant Officer Espin will have seen it,’ Reacher said. ‘He’ll have scoped out the terrain, surely. If he sees any kind of a parked vehicle up there, he’ll investigate.’

‘OK, if anything other than a marked LAPD cruiser stops for us, we’ll take off immediately, and if it’s Espin we’ll duke it out in the wilds of Burbank.’

‘We’ll lose him well before Burbank. I bet they gave him a four-cylinder rental.’

They wanted a pawn shop next, because they needed a quality item for a short spell of time, and fast, and unmemorably, and they were going to pay for it with a stolen credit card, so overall second-hand was the better market. They used surface streets to West Hollywood, and picked one of many establishments, and Reacher said to the guy, ‘Let me see your best binoculars.’