Never Go Back

SIXTY

Reacher paid the check with Baldacci’s cash, and they got back in the Ford, and Turner said, ‘Either she ate at home today, or she skipped breakfast altogether. She’s a teenage girl. Don’t expect consistency.’

‘She said she ate practically every meal here.’

‘Which is not the same as every meal, period.’

‘The guy said most days.’

‘Which is not the same as every day.’

‘But why would she skip today? She’s curious, and she thinks I’m a source.’

‘Why would she expect you to be here?’

‘Law enforcement has to eat too.’

‘Then the coffee shop would be just as logical, near the lawyer’s office. She knows there are two locations.’

‘We should go take a look.’

‘Too difficult. We wouldn’t see anything from the street, and we can’t go in on foot. Plus she’s an early riser. She’ll have been and gone.’

‘We should cruise her house again.’

‘That wouldn’t tell us anything. The door is shut. We don’t have X-ray vision.’

‘Shrago is out there somewhere.’

Turner said, ‘Let’s go back to the off-ramp.’

Reacher said, ‘In a white car in daylight?’

‘Just for ten minutes. To put our minds at rest.’

In bright daylight the old binoculars were superb. The magnified image was crisp and hyper-vivid. Reacher could see every detail — of the street, of the white compact, of the purple Dodge, of the blue front door. But nothing was happening. Everything looked quiet. Just another sunny day, and just another endless stake-out, boring and uneventful, like most stake-outs are. There was no sign of Shrago. Some of the parked cars had heavy tints or blinding reflections, but they weren’t plain enough to be rentals. And those plain enough to be rentals were empty.

‘He’s not there,’ Turner said.

‘I wish we knew for sure she was,’ Reacher said back.

Then his phone rang. Captain Edmonds, in Virginia. She said, ‘I found another file on Shrago, from five years ago. The decision to keep him out of the Middle East was controversial. We were fighting two wars, we were hurting for numbers, hundreds of people were getting re-upped involuntarily, the National Guard was gone for years at a time, and the idea of paying a loose cannon who couldn’t go to Iraq or Afghanistan was seen as absurd. First choice was involuntary separation, but he was making his case on compassionate grounds, so he had to be heard, and eventually the argument went all the way up the HRC chain of command, to an Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for personnel, who ruled in Shrago’s favour.’

‘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.