Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

scrawled signature that could have been pretty much anything. In return Cool Al handed over a key and waved a wide arm towards the right side of the lot and said, ‘The black one.’
    The black one turned out to be sun-hazed down to a steely dark purple, and its window tints were lifting and bubbling, and its seats were cracked and sagging. It was from the 1990s, Turner thought. No longer a premium vehicle. But it started, and it turned right, and it rolled down the road. Turner said, ‘It’s lasted this long. Why should it stop now?’

    It stopped a mile later, but on command, for breakfast at the first diner they saw, which was a family-run place on Long Beach Boulevard. It had all the good stuff, including a long-delayed omelette for Turner. She called Sergeant Leach from the payphone and told her to take care. Reacher watched the parking lot, and saw no one. No pursuit, no surveillance, no interest at all. So they got back on the road and headed north and west, looking for a 710 on-ramp, Reacher driving for the first time. The stately old boat suited him well. Its window tints were reassuring. They were nearly opaque. And the mechanical parts seemed up to their task. The car floated along, as if the road surface was just a vague rumour, somewhere far, far away.
    Turner said, ‘What are you going to do if you see them?’
    Reacher said, ‘Who?’
    ‘Your daughter and her mother.’
    ‘You mean what am I going to say?’
    ‘No, I mean from a distance, the very first time you lay eyes on them.’
    ‘I don’t see how I would recognize them.’
    ‘Suppose you did.’
    ‘Then I’m going to look for the trap.’
    ‘Correct,’ Turner said. ‘They’re bait, until proven otherwise. The MPs and the FBI will be there for sure. It’s a known destination. Every single person you see could be undercover. So proceed accordingly.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am.’
    ‘Between here and North Hollywood the danger doubles with every mile. We’re heading straight for the centre of the inferno.’
    ‘Is this a pre-action briefing?’
    ‘I’m your CO. I’m obliged to give one.’
    ‘You’re preaching to the choir.’
    ‘You might recognize them, you know.’
    ‘Daughters don’t necessarily resemble their fathers.’
    ‘I meant you might remember the mother.’

    Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘I have some very bad news.’
    Romeo said, ‘Does it relate in any way to Baldacci using his credit card at a car rental called Cool Al’s?’
    ‘What kind of Al’s?’
    ‘It’s a West Coast thing. What happened?’
    ‘Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets.’
    ‘On the plane?’
    ‘He broke Lozano’s fingers and Baldacci’s arms and no one noticed.’
    ‘That’s not possible.’
    ‘Apparently it is. One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It’s a blatant humiliation. And now he’s renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is?’

    Reacher thought he was a bad driver. At first he had meant it as a safety-first subterfuge, rightly assuming it would remind him to concentrate, but then he had learned it was true. His spatial awareness and his reaction times were all based on a human scale, not a highway scale. They were up close and personal. Animal, not machine. Maybe Turner was right. Maybe he was feral. Not that he was a terrible driver. Just worse than the average driver. But not worse than the average I-710 driver, on that particular morning, on the section known as the Long Beach Freeway. People were eating, and drinking, and shaving, and brushing their hair, and applying make-up, and filing nails, and filing papers, and reading, and texting, and surfing, and holding long conversations on cell phones, some of which were ending in screams, and some of which were ending in tears. In the midst of it all Reacher tried to hold his speed and his line, while watching the drift and the wobble up ahead, and calculating which way he should swerve if he had to.
    He said, ‘We should stop and call Captain Edmonds. I want to know if she can get what we need.’
    ‘Keep it on the back burner,’ Turner said.
    ‘I would if I could. But they won’t let us. Their other two guys might have been on that flight to Orange County. Or else on the next Long Beach departure. Either way they’re only an hour or two behind us.’
    ‘Knowing what Edmonds can or can’t get won’t help us with