Never Go Back

get Turner back to the hotel, and Colonel Temple’s sedan was better than walking. Except they didn’t go back to the hotel. Evidently Turner had given Rock Creek as their destination, because Temple drove over the water into Virginia. The old stone building. Her command. Her base. Her home base. Her home. When I get back I’m going to have my office steam-cleaned. I don’t want any trace of Morgan left behind .
    Which was when he had known for sure. She loved the campfire. As had he, once upon a time, but only briefly, and only that special fire inside the 110th Special Unit. Which was now hers.
    It was well into the morning when they arrived, and everyone was there. The night watch had stayed. Espin had kept them in the loop, and they had followed the play by play. The day watch had gotten in to find it a done deal, all bar the shouting. Sergeant Leach was there, and the duty captain. Reacher wondered if Turner would ever mention the doodling. Probably not. More likely promote him sideways.
    Her first hour was largely ceremonial, with a lot of fist bumps, and shooting the shit, and slaps on the back, and then somehow she ended the tour in her office, and she stayed there, starting where she had left off, reviewing every piece of information, and checking every disposition. Reacher hung out with Leach for a spell, and then he went down the old stone steps and took a long walk, a random figure-eight around bland three-lane blocks. He got back and found her still occupied, so he hung out with Leach some more, and then it went dark, and then she came down the stairs, with a car key in her hand.
    She said, ‘Ride with me.’
    The little red sports car had been down a few days, but it started fine, and it ran steady, if a little loud and throaty, but Reacher figured that might have been dialled in on purpose by the guy who designed the muffler. Turner put the heater dials in the red and unlatched the top, and dropped it down behind the seats.
    ‘Like a rock-and-roll song on the radio,’ she said.
    She backed out of her slot, and she drove out through the gate, and she turned left, and she followed the bus route, past the motel and onward to the mall, where she pulled up in front of the big stucco place with the Greek style of menu.
    ‘Buy you dinner?’ she said.
    There were all kinds of people in the restaurant. Couples, and families, and children. Some of the children were girls, and some of them might have been fourteen. Turner chose a booth at the front window, and they watched a bus go by, and Reacher said, ‘I’m a detective, and I know what you’re going to say.’
    She said, ‘Do you?’
    ‘It was always fifty-fifty. Like flipping a coin.’
    ‘That easy?’
    ‘You have no obligation even to think about it. This was my thing, not yours. I came here. You didn’t come to South Dakota.’
    ‘That’s true. That’s how it started. I wasn’t sure. But it changed. For a time. Starting in that cell, in the Dyer guardhouse. You were taking Temple away, and you looked over your shoulder at me and told me to wait there. And I did.’
    ‘You had no choice. You were in the guardhouse.’
    ‘And now I’m not.’
    ‘I understand,’ Reacher said. ‘The 110th is better.’
    ‘And I got it back. I can’t just walk away.’
    ‘I understand,’ Reacher said again. ‘And I can’t stay. Not here. Not anywhere. So it’s not just you. We’re both saying no.’
    ‘The 110th was your creation. If that makes you feel better.’
    ‘I wanted to meet you,’ Reacher said. ‘That was all. And I did. Mission accomplished.’
    They ate, and paid, and they emptied their pockets on the table. Turner took the wallets, and the credit cards, and Shrago’s phone, for processing, and Reacher took the cash money, for the upcoming weeks, less thirty dollars, which Turner promised to return to Sullivan. Then they walked out to the lot. The air was cold, and a little damp. The middle of the evening, in the middle of winter, in the northeastern corner of Virginia. The lazy Potomac was not far away. Beyond it in the east D.C.’s glow lit up the clouds. The nation’s capital, where all kinds of things were going on. They kissed for the last time, and hugged, and wished each other luck, and then Turner got in her little red car and drove away. Reacher watched her until she was lost to sight. Then he dropped his cell phone in the trash, and he crossed the street, and he walked until he found a bus bench. North, not south.