Lee Child - Never Go Back

‘And?’ Reacher said.

‘That same Assistant Deputy was also in charge of temporary commands. He was the guy who moved Morgan to Fort Bragg a year later.’

‘Interesting.’

‘I thought so. Which is why I called. Shrago owed him, and Morgan was his chess piece.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Crew Scully.’

‘What kind of a name is that?’

‘New England blue blood.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘He got promoted. Now he’s a Deputy Chief of Staff in his own right.’

‘Responsible for what?’

‘Personnel,’ Edmonds said. ‘HRC oversight. Technically he’s my boss.’

‘Who moved Morgan to the 110th, this week?’

‘Scully’s second-in-command, I assume. Unless things have changed.’

‘Will you check that for me? And will you check whether Scully has access to Homeland Security intelligence systems?’

‘I don’t think he would have.’

‘I don’t think so either,’ Reacher said. He clicked off the call, and went back to staring at the street.

Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘Shrago tells me they’re not travelling separately. He decided to check the rental depot, and he got there just in time to see the Range Rover getting towed.’

‘More fool them. Using one car limits them. Which is to our advantage.’

‘That’s not the point. The Range Rover is on Baldacci’s credit card. We’ll have to pay the tow fee and the daily rental. It’s another slap in the face.’

‘What else did Shrago see?’

‘He’s close. She’s out of the house. Just walking around. There’s no one within a mile of her. He’s going to pick his spot.’

‘And get the message to them how?’

‘At the diner. They’ve been there twice. There’s a gentleman named Arthur who seems willing to pass the word.’

Turner’s ten minutes had turned into almost forty, but nothing had happened, either on the off-ramp behind them, or on the street in front of them. She said, ‘We have to go.’

Reacher said, ‘Where?’

‘Just drive. Randomly. Within a mile of her door, because if she’s out, she’s walking. Surface streets only, also because she’s walking. Shrago will be thinking the same.’

So they fired up the Ford and merged on to the 134, and got off again immediately, and started the search on Vineland, block by block, randomly, except for her own street, which they decided not to risk. Most blocks were about a thousand feet long and two hundred feet deep, which meant there were about a hundred and twenty in a square mile, which meant there were nearly four hundred inside a circle with a two-mile diameter, which meant there were close to ninety miles of road to cover. But not quite, because some blocks were double-wide, and the highway shoulders and the ramps ate up space, and some tracts had never been built. About sixty miles, probably. Three hours’ worth, at a safe speed of twenty. Not that moving around increased the chances of a random encounter. Space and time didn’t work that way. But moving around felt better.

They saw nothing in the first hour, except the background blur of sidewalks and poles and trees and houses and stores, and parked cars in their hundreds. They saw not more than a handful of people, and they paid close attention to all of them, but none of them was the girl, and none of them was Shrago. They saw no cars crawling slow like their own. Most were heading from here to there innocently and normally, at a normal speed, and sometimes more. Which caused the only excitement in the whole of the second hour, when a dull black BMW ran a light about a hundred yards ahead, and was T-boned by an old Porsche on the cross street. Steam came up and a small crowd gathered, and then Reacher turned left and saw no more, until another random turn brought him back in line, by which time a cop car was there, with its light bar flashing, and after three more turns there was a second cop car, and an ambulance.

But apart from that, there was nothing. Nothing at all. Thirty minutes later Turner said, ‘Let’s take an early lunch. Because she might, if she had an early breakfast. Or no breakfast at all.’

‘The diner?’ Reacher said.

‘I think so. Practically every meal means she might skip one, but not two.’

So they worked their way back through the maze, and they joined Vineland just north of the neighbourhood, and they rolled south until they saw the old coach diner dead ahead on the left, all gleaming and shining in the sun.

And crossing Vineland towards it was the girl.

SIXTY-ONE

JULIET CALLED ROMEO, and he said, ‘I’m afraid it fell apart. We had a piece of bad luck. He needed to grab her near his car, obviously. Right next to it, ideally. He couldn’t drag her down the street screaming, not for any appreciable distance. So he leapfrogged ahead and parked the car, and then he looped around on foot and came out again behind her, and it was all going fine, and he was all set to pass her right alongside the car, and they had about twenty yards left to go, and then some idiot ran a light and got into a fender bender, and suddenly there was a crowd of people, and a cop car, and then another cop car, and obviously Shrago couldn’t do anything in front of a crowd of people or the LAPD, so the girl watched the fun for a minute and then walked on, and Shrago had to let her go, because at first he couldn’t get his car out from the middle of all the mess, and then when he finally got going, he’d lost her and he couldn’t find her again.’

Romeo said, ‘So what next?’

‘He’s starting over. All her known haunts. Her house, the law office, the diner. He’ll pick her up again somewhere.’

‘This has to be finished in California. We can’t afford for them to come home.’

Reacher slowed, and let the girl cross fifty yards ahead of him, and then he swung the wheel and followed her into the diner’s lot. She went straight in through the door, and he parked the car, and Turner said, ‘Should I come in with you?’

Reacher said, ‘Yes, I want you to.’

So they went in, and they waited just inside the door, where they had waited before. The diner looked exactly the same as the previous evening, with the blonde waitress back on duty in the left side of the coach, and the long-suffering brunette working the right side, and Arthur behind his counter, and the girl on her stool, way at the end. The blonde waitress came by, like before, with the same blank smile, and Reacher pointed to a booth on the right, one away from directly behind the girl, and the blonde gave them up to the brunette with no marked reluctance at all. They walked in and sat down, Reacher with his back to the room again, Turner facing him across the atomic laminate, the girl with her back to them both, about six feet away.

But she was watching them in the mirror.

Reacher waved at her reflection, partly as a greeting, partly as a join us gesture, and the kid lit up like Christmas was coming and slid off her stool, and caught Arthur’s eye and jerked her thumb at the booth behind her, as if to say I’m moving again , and then she stepped across, and Turner scooted over and the kid sat down next to her on the bench, the three of them all together in a tight little triangle.

Reacher said, ‘Samantha Dayton, Susan Turner, Susan Turner, Samantha Dayton.’

The kid twisted around on the vinyl and shook hands with Turner and said, ‘Are you his assistant?’

Turner said, ‘No, I’m his commanding officer.’

‘Way cool. What agency?’

‘Military police.’

‘Awesome. Who are all the others?’

‘There’s only us and the FBI.’

‘Are you leading or are they leading?’