Never Go Back

you’re going to drive.’
    ‘Is it dark yet?’
    ‘Heading that way.’
    ‘So let’s go,’ she said.
    They stepped out to the corridor and walked to the quarantine door. It was still held open an inch by Sullivan’s car key. Reacher pulled the door, and Turner scooped up the key, and they stepped into the small square lobby, and the door sucked shut behind them. The exit door was locked, with a small neat mechanism, no doubt expensive and highly secure. Reacher took out the clerk’s keys, and started trying them, one after the other. There were eight in total. The first was no good. Neither was the second. Nor the third. Nor the fourth.
    But the fifth key did the trick. The lock snicked open. Reacher turned the handle and pulled the door. Cold air came in, from the outside. The afternoon light was fading.
    Turner said, ‘What car are we looking for?’
    ‘Dark-green sedan.’
    ‘That helps,’ she said. ‘On a military base.’
    Warm, husky, breathy, intimate.
    They stepped out together. Reacher closed the door behind them, and locked it. He figured that might buy an extra minute. Ahead of them to the left was a small parking lot, about thirty yards away, across an expanse of blank blacktop. Seventeen cars in it. Mostly POVs. Only two plain sedans, neither one of them green. Beyond the lot a road curved away west. On the right the same road turned a corner and ran out of sight.
    ‘Best guess?’ Turner said.
    ‘If in doubt, turn left,’ Reacher said. ‘That was always my operating principle.’
    They turned left, and found another lot hidden beyond the corner of the building. It was small, nothing more than a bumped-out strip with diagonal bays. Six cars in it, all of them nose-in. All of them identical dark-green sedans.
    Turner said, ‘That’s better.’
    She lined herself up equidistant from the six rear bumpers and pressed the button on the key fob.
    Nothing happened.
    She tried again. Nothing. She said, ‘Maybe the battery is out.’
    ‘In the car?’ Reacher said.
    ‘In the key,’ she said.
    ‘Then how did Sullivan get here?’
    ‘She stuck the key in the door. Like we used to, back in the day. We’ll have to try them one by one.’
    ‘We can’t do that. We’ll look like car thieves.’
    ‘We are car thieves.’
    ‘Maybe none of these is the right car,’ Reacher said. ‘I didn’t see the plate. It was dark this morning.’
    ‘We can’t wander about this base much longer.’
    ‘Maybe we should have turned right.’
    They tracked back, as brisk and unobtrusive as they could be in boots without laces, past the rear door to the guardhouse again, and onward around the corner. It felt good to walk. Freedom, and fresh air. Reacher had always figured the best part of getting out of jail was the first thirty yards. And he liked having Turner next to him. She was nervous as a cat, but she was holding it together. She looked confident. They were just two people walking, like con artists everywhere: act like you’re supposed to be there .
    There was another bumped-out bay around the east corner, six diagonal slots, symmetrical with the one they had already seen to the west. There were three cars in it. Only one of them was a sedan. And it was dark green. Turner hit the key fob button.
    Nothing happened.
    She stepped up close and tried the key in the door.
    It didn’t fit.
    She said, ‘Where does a lawyer who’s visiting the guardhouse come in? The front entrance, right? Is there a parking lot out front?’
    ‘Bound to be,’ Reacher said. ‘But I wish there wasn’t. We’ll be very exposed out front.’
    ‘We can’t just hang around here. We’re sitting ducks.’
    They walked on, to the front corner of the building, and stopped short, in the shadows. Reacher sensed open space ahead, and maybe lights, and maybe traffic.
    ‘On three,’ Turner said. ‘One, two, three.’
    They turned the corner. Act like you’re supposed to be there . They walked fast, like busy people going somewhere. There was a fire lane along the front face of the building, and then a kerbed divider, with a long one-row lot beyond it, full of parked cars except for one empty slot. And to the left of the empty slot was a dark-green sedan.
    ‘That’s it,’ Reacher said. ‘I kind of recognize it.’
    Turner headed straight for it and hit the key fob button, and the car lit up inside and its turn signals flashed once, and its door locks clunked open. Ahead on the left, about a hundred yards away, a car