Never Go Back

kerb.
    Reacher said nothing. He didn’t push it. He didn’t need to. Either way Shrago was going to talk to Espin. After getting out of a car, or after getting out of a coma. The choice was his. He had been born free.
    But not smart. He passed on the car, and opted for the coma. Which Reacher understood. Immediate action was always the best bet. Shrago lined himself up, with Reacher to his right, and Turner beyond Reacher’s far shoulder. Reacher figured the guy was planning a left-elbow backhand to his throat, which he would use to claw his way onward, as if propelled by an oar, so he could get to Turner instantly, with a free right hand and time for a single decisive blow, which would have to be hard, and would have to be to the centre of her face. Busted nose, maybe cheekbones, maybe orbital sockets, unconsciousness, concussion. Maybe even a cracked skull, or a broken neck.
    Which wasn’t going to happen.
    ‘Ground rules,’ Reacher said. ‘No ear-biting.’
    Up close the guy looked extraordinary. His head was gleaming in the street lights, and his eyes were socketed way back, and the bones in his face looked hard and sharp, like a person could break his hand just by hitting them. The waistband of his pants was cinched in tight with a belt, and below it his thighs ballooned outward, and above it his chest swelled wide. He was maybe fifteen years younger than Reacher, a young bull, hard as a rock, with aggression coming off him like a smell. His ears had the centre whorls intact like any other guy, but the flatter parts around them had been cut away, probably with scissors, very tight in, so that what was left looked like pasta, like uncooked tortellini florets, shiny, the colour of a white man’s flesh. Not exactly hexagons. A hexagon was a regular shape, with six equal sides, and Shrago’s stubs had been trimmed for extreme closeness, not geometric regularity. They were irregular polygons, more accurately. Reacher figured if the kid had been his, he would have had a discussion. No point in being a pedant, unless you got it exactly right.
    He said, ‘Last chance, sergeant. Time to make the big decision. We know all about Scully, and Montague, and Morgan. The only way to save yourself is to start talking. A soldier’s best weapon is his brain. Time to start using yours. But either way I’m going to break your arm. Full disclosure. Because you hurt the girl in the Berryville Grill. Which was uncalled for. Do you have a problem with women? Was it women who cut your ears off?’
    Shrago planted his feet and twisted from the waist, violently, to his right, and downward a little, so fast that his left arm was flung way beyond him, so far that his bent back showed in the light. Next up would have been the same twist back again, even faster, even more violent, with the left arm carefully marshalled this time, with the elbow aiming for the far side of Reacher’s throat, with extension, so the blow would both do its job and serve as a kind of foothold, to lever himself onward to Turner.
    Would have been.
    Reacher knew it was coming, so he was moving a hair-trigger split second after Shrago was, matching Shrago’s twist with a twist of his own, like two dancers almost coordinated, with Reacher’s giant right fist hooking low to exactly where Shrago’s exposed kidney was about to arrive, because of his big turn, with Reacher all the time trying to parse the emotion, trying to judge how much of it was about the ears, and how much of it was about Scully and Montague, because the degree of passion in a cause’s defence was an indicator of its depth, and in the end he figured a lot of it was the ears, but some of it was defence, of something sweet and cosy and lucrative.
    Then Shrago reached his point of equilibrium, all wound up like a spring, and he started to unwind the violent twist in the opposite direction, with his elbow coming up on target, but before he got even an inch into it Reacher’s right fist landed, a perfect hit, a paralysing blow to the kidney, a sick, stunning, spreading pain, and Shrago staggered, his coordination lost, his stance opening wide, and Reacher was left to unwind his own twist, all by himself in his own good time, which he did, with his left fist coming up low to high and finding the side of Shrago’s neck, below the corner of his jaw, a fast and heavy double tap, one, two, right, left, the kidney, the neck, which rocked Shrago the other way, leaving him upright but good for an