Never Go Back

unfortunate guy, coach class to LAX, and then a bare-bones government account with Hertz or Avis. The worst car on the lot, and no upgrade.
    ‘See it?’ Reacher asked.
    Turner nodded beside him. ‘And now we know where the address is. Exactly halfway between the Hummer’s front bumper and that thing’s, I would say. Subtle, aren’t they?’
    ‘As always.’ Reacher had been checking house numbers, and the lot they were looking for was going to be on the left, about ninety feet ahead, if the government’s triangulation was dead-on accurate. He said, ‘Do you see anyone else?’
    ‘Hard to tell,’ Turner said. ‘Any one of these cars could have people in it.’
    ‘Let’s hope so,’ Reacher said. ‘Two people in particular.’
    He rolled on, slow and careful, giving himself a margin of error. The old truck’s steering was a little vague and sloppy. Plus or minus six inches was all it was good for. He passed the silver Malibu, and glanced down to his right. The white-collared shirt had a necktie down the front. FBI for sure. Probably the only necktie inside a square mile. Then next up was the Hummer. It had a fair-haired white guy behind the wheel. With a whitewall crew cut, high and tight. Probably the first whitewall crew cut ever seen inside a pimped-out H2. Government. Tone deaf.
    Then Reacher glanced to his left, and started tracking the numbers. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting. A gap of some kind, basically. Something different from the places before and after. Something boarded up and foreclosed, or burned down and bulldozed, or never built in the first place. With a big old car parked back in the shadow of its neighbours. Maybe a Buick Roadmaster.
    But the address Emily had gotten was a house like all the others. Not different from the places before or after, not boarded up by the bank, and not burned and levelled. Just a regular house, on a regular lot. It had a car on its driveway, but it wasn’t a Buick Roadmaster. It was a two-door coupé, imported, sunfaded red, fairly old, and even smaller than the MP’s white compact. Therefore not big enough for two people to sleep in. Not even close. The house itself was an old one-storey, extended upward, with a ground-floor window on the left, and a groundfloor window on the right, and a new attic window punched out directly above a blue front door.
    And coming out the blue front door was a girl.
    She could have been fourteen years old. Or fifteen. She was blonde.
    And she was tall.

FIFTY-ONE
    TURNER SAID, ‘ DON’T stop,’ but Reacher braked anyway. He couldn’t help it. The girl looped around the parked coupé and stepped out to the sidewalk. She was wearing a yellow T-shirt and a blue denim jean jacket, and big black baggy pants, and yellow tennis shoes on her feet, with no socks, and no laces. She was slender and long-limbed, all knees and elbows, and her hair was the colour of summer straw. It was parted in the centre, and wavy, and it came halfway down her back. Her face was unformed, like teenagers’ faces are, but she had blue eyes, and cheekbones, and her mouth was set in a quizzical half-smile, as if her life was full of petty annoyances best tolerated with patience and goodwill.
    She set off walking, west, away from them.
    Turner said, ‘Eyes front, Reacher. Hit the gas and pass her and do not stop. Drive to the end of the road, right now. That’s an order. If it’s her, we’ll confirm later, and we’ll deal with it.’
    So Reacher speeded up again, from walking pace to jogging, and they passed the girl just as she was passing the MP’s white compact. She didn’t seem to react to it in any way. Didn’t seem to know it was there for her. She hadn’t been told, presumably. Because what could they say? Hi there, miss, we’re here to arrest your father. Who you’ve never met. If he shows up, that is. Having just been told all about you .
    Reacher kept one eye on the mirror and watched her grow smaller. Then he paused at the T, and turned left, and looked at her one more time, and then he drove away, and she was lost to sight.
    No one came after them. They pulled over a hundred yards later, but the street behind them stayed empty. Which theoretically was a minor disappointment. Not that Reacher really registered it as such. In his mind right then the two surviving guys from the dented car were on the backest of all back burners, on a stovetop about ten miles deep.
    He said, ‘They told me she was living in a