Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

worried about them. It takes a lot of strength and training to use one right. And maintenance. The squad machine gun goes to your best guy, not your worst, and are there guys like that on the streets of Los Angeles? I didn’t think so. I figured the SAWs would fire once and end up as boat anchors. Nothing to get upset about there. It was the other stuff that upset me. Claymore mines, and hand grenades. No expertise required. But lots of collateral damage, in an urban situation. Innocent passers-by, and children. And that sneering tub of lard was making a fortune, and spending it all on dope and hookers and twenty Big Macs a day.’
    Turner said, ‘Let’s go get breakfast. And let’s not come back here. Authenticity is losing its charm.’
    They put their toothbrushes in their pockets, and they put on their coats, and they headed out to the lot. The street lights were still brighter than the sky. The car was where they had left it, five rooms away.
    There was something written on it.
    It was written in the grime on the front passenger’s window. Someone had used a broad fingertip and traced three words, a total of thirteen letters, all of them block capitals, neatly, with the punctuation all present and correct: WHERE’S THE GIRL?

FIFTY-NINE

    SAMANTHA DAYTON WOKE early, like she often did, and she came down the narrow attic stair and checked the view from the living-room window. The Hummer was gone. In the middle of the night, probably, due on station at the law office. In its place was the purple Dodge Charger, looking way too cool for a cop car. But a cop car it was, nevertheless. Generically speaking, at least. Technically it was a federal agent’s car, she supposed. DEA, or ATF, or FBI. She recognized the driver. She was getting a handle on the rotation. Further on down the street the small white compact was where it always was. And it was the real mystery. Because it was not a cop car. It was a rental, most likely. Hertz or Avis, from LAX, she thought. But the DEA and the ATF and the FBI all had field offices in Los Angeles, with big staffs and cars of their own. Therefore the guy in the small white compact was from an organization important enough to participate, but too small and too specialized to have its own local office. Therefore the guy had flown in, from somewhere else. From D.C., probably, where all the secrets were.
    She took her shower, and dressed in her favourite black pants and her favourite jean jacket, but with a fresh blue T-shirt, and therefore blue shoes. She combed her hair out, and checked the view again. It was coming up to what she called zero hour. Twice a day the small white compact moved – for meals, she guessed, or bathroom breaks – and about four times a day the Hummer and the Charger swapped positions, but there was apparently no coordination between the agencies, because once a day in the early morning everyone was missing at the same time, for about twenty minutes. Zero agents, zero hour. The street went back to its normal self. Some kind of logic issue, she supposed, or simple math, like in class, with x number of cars, and y number of locations, and z number of hours to cover. Something had to give.
    She looked out and saw that the small white compact was already gone, and then the Charger moved out as she watched. It started up, and eased away from the kerb, and drove away. The street went quiet. Back to its normal self. Zero hour.

    Reacher ran through his earlier reasoning one more time: the 75th MP and the FBI were watching her house, and they were specifically on the alert for an intruder. I’m not going there, and neither is Shrago, because neither one of us could get in .
    He said, ‘It’s a bluff. He’s trying to get in our heads. He’s trying to draw us out. That’s all. He can’t get anywhere near the girl.’
    Turner said, ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘We can’t go there. You’re still on the shit list, until Sullivan makes it official. And I’m still on the shit list, probably for ever.’
    ‘We can go there once.’
    ‘We can’t. They already saw the car once yesterday. Maybe twice. And getting arrested won’t help her or us.’
    ‘We can get another car. At the Burbank airport. Shrago will know about it inside an hour, but we can use that hour.’

    Breakfast was always a problem. There was never anything in the house, and anyway her mother slept late in the morning, all tired and stressed, and she wouldn’t