Never Go Back

Then Reacher’s phone rang. He was unaccustomed to carrying a phone, and at first he assumed it was someone else’s. So he ignored it. But the girl stared at his pocket, until he pulled it out. Turner’s stored number was on the screen.

He excused himself, and answered.

Turner was breathing hard.

She said, ‘I’m heading back, and I need you out front of the diner, right now.’

Some kind of tight emotion in her voice.

So Reacher clicked off the call, and left Sam Dayton alone in the booth, and went outside, and hustled through the lot to the street. A minute later he saw headlights way to his left, spaced high and wide, coming towards him fast. The old Range Rover, out of the south, in a big hurry. Then its lights lit him up and it jammed to a hard stop right next to him and he yanked the door and slid inside.

He said, ‘What’s up?’

Turner said, ‘A situation got a little out of hand.’

‘How bad?’

‘I just shot a guy.’

FIFTY-FOUR

TURNER TOOK THE Ventura Freeway going west, and she said, ‘I figured the law office would be closed for the night by now, and probably the whole strip with it, and therefore I figured the watchers would be gone by now too, so I went up to take a look around, because there are things we may need to know in the future, including what kind of locks the law office has, and what kind of alarm. Which, by the way, are both fairly basic. You could buy five minutes in there, if you had to. And then I looked at my map and saw how I could get to Mulholland Drive pretty easily, because I’ve always wanted to drive a car on Mulholland Drive, like a G-man in a movie, and I figured if the kid is in there with you for her dinner, then she’s in there for at least thirty minutes more, which gives me time for a personal excursion, so off I went.’

‘And?’ Reacher said, simply to keep her going. Shooting people was stressful, and stress was a complex thing. People reacted to it in all kinds of different ways. Some people bottled it up, and some talked it out. She was a talker, he figured.

She said, ‘I was followed.’

‘That was dumb,’ he said, because she didn’t like mindless agreement.

‘I spotted him early. There were lights behind him and I could see it was only one guy. A solo driver, and that was all. So I didn’t think much of it. And lots of people like Mulholland Drive, so it didn’t bother me he was going the same direction.’

‘So what did?’

‘He was also going the same speed. Which is unnatural. Speed is a personal thing. And I’m pretty slow, most of the time. Usually people are bunching up behind me, or I’m getting passed by altogether. But this guy was just there, always. Like I was towing him on a rope. And I knew it wasn’t the 75th MP or the FBI, because neither one knows what we’re driving, so it had to be our other friends, except there was only one guy in the car, not two, which meant either it was neither one of them, or they’ve split up now and they’re hunting solo, but whatever, it got old real quick, and the movies say Mulholland gets wild real quick, so I figured I better stop at the very first turn-out I saw, like a message, to tell him I had made him, which would then give him a choice, either accept defeat gracefully and keep on rolling down the road, or be a sore loser and stop and harass me in person.’

‘And he stopped?’

‘He sure did. He was the third of the four in the dented car this morning. What you call the driver from the first night. They’ve split up and they’re hunting solo.’

‘I’m glad it was him, and not the other one.’

‘He was bad enough.’

‘How bad?’

‘Real bad.’

‘Bullshit,’ Reacher said. ‘He was a waste of food. He was the one I hit second. Which makes him worse than the one who just bought us dinner.’

‘Busted,’ Turner said. ‘It was like taking candy from a baby.’

‘What kind of taking?’

‘He had a gun.’

‘That would level the playing field a little.’

‘It did, for about three-quarters of a second, and then he didn’t have a gun any more, which meant I did, and some voice in my head was screaming threat threat threat centre mass bang and I blinked and found out I had gone and done it, right through the heart. The guy was dead before he hit the ground.’

‘And you need me right now for what?’

‘Are you telling me you don’t offer counselling?’

‘Not a core strength.’

‘Fortunately I’m a professional soldier, and won’t need counselling.’

‘Then how may I help you?’

‘I need you to move the body. I can’t lift it.’

Mulholland looked exactly like the movies, but smaller. They drove in as cautious as G-men, prepared to stop if the coast was clear, prepared to keep on going if there were flashing lights and crackling radios already on the scene. But there weren’t. So they stopped. Traffic on the road was light. Picturesque, but not practical.

But the night-time view from the turn-out was spectacular.

Turner said, ‘Not the point, Reacher.’