Never Go Back

fast and easy, and stepped inside the room. He turned and bent and placed Sullivan’s briefcase against the jamb, to stop the door from closing again. He turned back, and saw both Turner and her lawyer looking up at him, nothing much in the lawyer’s face, but what looked like dawning recognition in Turner’s.
    He said, ‘Colonel, I need to see your ID.’
    The guy said, ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Defense Intelligence Agency. Purely routine, sir.’
    Command presence. Much prized by the military. The guy stalled a second, and then he fished in an inside pocket and came out with his ID. Reacher stepped over and took it from him and looked hard at it. John James Temple . He raised his eyebrows, as if surprised, and he looked again, and then he slipped the ID into his shirt pocket, right next to Sullivan’s.
    He said, ‘I’m sorry, colonel, but I need a minute of your time.’
    He stepped back to the door and held it open. After you . The guy looked uncertain for a moment, and then he got up from the table, slowly. Reacher glanced over his shoulder at Turner and said, ‘You wait here, miss. We’ll be right back.’
    The lawyer paused a beat and then shuffled out ahead of him. Reacher said, ‘Sir, to your right, please,’ and followed after him, also shuffling, literally, because of the loose boots. Which were the weak points. Lawyers weren’t necessarily the most physically observant of people, but they had brains and they were generally logical. And this phase of the plan was a low-speed proposition. No urgency. No rush. No panic. Practically slow-motion. This guy had time to think.
    Which, evidently, he used.
    About twenty feet short of the first vacant cell the guy stopped suddenly and turned around and looked down. Straight at Reacher’s boots. Instantly Reacher spun him face-front again and put him in the kind of arresting-a-senior-officer grip that any MP learns early in his career, about which there was nothing in the field manual, and which was not taught in any way except by hints and example. Reacher grabbed the guy’s right elbow from behind, in his left hand, and simultaneously squeezed it hard and pulled it downward and propelled it forward. As always the guy was left fighting the downward force so hard he forgot all about resisting the forward motion. He just stumbled onward, crabwise, twisted and bent, gasping a little, not really from pain, but from outraged dignity. Which Reacher was happy about. He didn’t want to hurt the guy. This was not his fault.
    Reacher manoeuvred the guy to an open and empty cell, which he guessed might have been Turner’s, from the look of it, and pushed him inside, and closed the door on him, and bolted it.
    Then he stood in the corridor, just a beat, and he breathed in, and he breathed out.
    Good to go .
    He shuffled back to the second conference room and stepped inside. Susan Turner was on her feet, between the table and the door. He held out his hand. He said, ‘I’m Jack Reacher.’
    ‘I know you are,’ she said. ‘I saw your photo. From your file. And I recognized your voice. From the phone.’
    And he recognized hers. From the phone. Warm, slightly husky, a little breathy, a little intimate. Just as good as he remembered. Maybe even better, live and in person.
    He said, ‘I’m very pleased to meet you.’
    She shook his hand. Her touch was warm, not hard, not soft. She said, ‘I’m very pleased to meet you too. But what exactly are you doing?’
    He said, ‘You know what I’m doing. And why. At least, I hope you do. Because if you don’t, you’re not worth doing it for.’
    ‘I didn’t want you to get involved.’
    ‘Hence the thing about not visiting?’
    ‘I thought you might show up. Just possibly. If you did, I wanted you to turn tail and get the hell out, immediately. For your own sake.’
    ‘Didn’t work.’
    ‘What are our chances of getting out of here?’
    ‘We’ve been lucky so far.’ He fished in his shirt pocket and took out Sullivan’s ID. He checked the picture against Turner’s face. Same gender. Roughly the same hair colour. But that was about all. He gave her the ID. She said, ‘Who is she?’
    ‘My lawyer. One of my lawyers. I met her this morning.’
    ‘Where is she now?’
    ‘In a cell. Probably hammering on the door. We need to get going.’
    ‘And you’re taking my lawyer’s ID?’
    Reacher patted his pocket. ‘I’ve got it right here.’
    ‘But you don’t look anything like him.’
    ‘That’s why