Never Go Back

‘I think it was all supposed to make me run. Which I could have. I could have gone permanently AWOL. They made a big point of saying no one would come after me. No skip tracers. Like a one-two punch, with the Big Dog affidavit. A charge I can’t beat, and a mandate to stick around to face it. I think most guys in my situation would have headed for the hills at that point. I think that was their expectation, strategically. But it didn’t work.’

‘Because when a monster comes up out of the slime, you have to fight it.’

‘Or it could have been a JAG order, simple as that. There might have been a sidebar on the file, saying that if I didn’t cooperate, then I had to be nailed down. Because of some kind of political sensitivity, in the Secretary’s office. Certainly it wasn’t Morgan’s own decision. A light colonel doesn’t decide shit like that. It had to come from a higher level.’

‘From very senior staff officers.’

‘Agreed, but which ones, exactly?’

Turner didn’t answer that. The griddle man brought the coffee, finally. Two large pottery mugs, and a little pink plastic basket full of creamer pots and sugar packets, and two spoons pressed out of metal so thin they felt weightless. Reacher took a mug and sniffed the steam and tried a sip. The mug’s rim was cold and thick, but the coffee was adequate. Hot, and not too weak.

He put the mug back down on the table and linked his hands around it, as if he was protecting it, and he looked at Turner, right in the eye, and he said, ‘So.’

She said, ‘One more thing. And it’s going to be tough to say. So I’m sorry.’

‘What is it?’

‘I shouldn’t have asked about one room or two.’

‘I didn’t mind.’

‘But I did. I’m not sure I’m ready for one room yet. I feel like I owe you. For what you’ve done for me today. I don’t think that’s a good state of mind to be in, under those circumstances. The one-room type of circumstances, I mean.’

‘You don’t owe me anything. I had purely selfish motivations. I wanted to take you out to dinner. Which I’m right now in the middle of doing, I guess. In a way. Perhaps not as planned. But whatever, I got what I wanted. Anything else is collateral damage. So you don’t owe me shit.’

Turner said, ‘I feel unsettled.’

‘You just got arrested and broke out of jail. And now you’re running for your life and stealing cars and money.’

‘No, it’s because of you.’

‘Why?’

‘You make me feel uncomfortable.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault,’ she said. ‘It’s just the way you are.’

‘And what way is that?’

‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings.’

‘You can’t,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m a military cop. And a man. I have no feelings.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘I was kidding.’

‘No, you weren’t. Not entirely.’

She paused a long moment.

Then she said, ‘You’re like something feral.’

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.’