Never Go Back

tonight?’
    ‘Not a one.’
    ‘No excitement at all?’
    The woman said, ‘That’s a nice car you’re riding in.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Because I always wanted a Corvette.’
    ‘Did you hear about us on the scanner?’
    ‘Been speeding?’
    ‘Hard not to.’
    ‘Then you’ve been lucky. You got away with it.’
    Reacher said, ‘Long may it continue,’ and he smiled what he hoped was a conspiratorial little smile, and headed back to the car. Turner was already pumping the gas. She had the nozzle hooked into the filler neck, and she was turned three-quarters away from him, with the back of one thigh against the flank of the car, and the other foot up on the kerb of the island. She had her hands behind her, and her back was arched, as if she was easing an ache. Her face was turned up to the night sky. Reacher imagined her shape, like a slender S under the big shirt.
    Totally worth it.
    He said, ‘The clerk is listening in on a scanner. We’re clean so far.’
    ‘You asked her? She’ll remember us now.’
    ‘She will anyway. She always wanted a Corvette.’
    ‘We should trade with her. We should take whatever she’s got.’
    ‘Then she’d remember us for ever.’
    ‘Maybe those hillbillies won’t call it in. Maybe their trucks were stolen too. Maybe they just vanished into the woods.’
    ‘Possible,’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t see why they would wait so long.’
    ‘We could park way in the back of the motel. Right out of sight. I think we should risk it. We really need to eat and sleep.’
    The pump clicked off, just short of twelve gallons. Either the tank was smaller than they had guessed, or the gauge was pessimistic.
    Turner said, ‘Now she knows it’s not our car. We’re not familiar with how much gas it takes.’
    ‘Will she give us the change?’
    ‘Maybe we should leave it.’
    ‘It’s twelve bucks. This is West Virginia. We’d stick out like sore thumbs.’
    ‘Tell her we’re heading south on 220. Tell her we’ve got a long way to go before daybreak. Then when she hears about us on the scanner she’ll call it in wrong.’
    Reacher collected twelve dollars and fifty-two cents in change, and said something about trying to make it to I-64 before dawn. The AM radio murmured its tunes, and the police scanner stayed quiet. The woman looked out the window and smiled a little sadly, as if it was going to be a long time before she saw a Corvette again.
    Turner picked Reacher up at the pay-hut door, and they drove back towards town, and pulled in again three hundred yards later, at the motel.
    She said, ‘Check in first, and then hit the café?’
    Reacher said, ‘Sure.’
    She paused a long beat, and looked straight at him.
    She said, ‘How many rooms are we going to get?’
    He paused a long beat in turn, and said, ‘Let’s eat first. Then check in.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
    ‘What?’
    Samantha Dayton.
    Sam.
    Fourteen years old .
    ‘After we order,’ he said. ‘It’s a long story.’

THIRTY-TWO
    THE CAFÉ WAS a rural greasy spoon as perfect as anything Reacher had ever seen. It had a black guy in a white undershirt next to a lard-slick griddle three feet deep and six feet wide. It had battered pine tables and mismatched chairs. It smelled of old grease and fresh coffee. It had two ancient white men in seed caps, one of them sitting way to the left of the door, the other way to the right. Maybe they didn’t get along. Maybe they were victims of a feud three hundred years old.
    Turner chose a table in the middle of the room, and they rattled the chairs out over the board floor, and they sat down. There were no menus. No chalkboards with handwritten lists of daily specials. It wasn’t that kind of a place. Ordering was clearly telepathic between the cook and his regular customers. For new customers, it was going to be a matter of asking out loud, plain and simple. Which the cook confirmed, by raising his chin and rotating his head a little, so that his right ear was presented to the room.
    ‘Omelette,’ Turner said. ‘Mushrooms, spring onions and cheddar cheese.’
    No reaction from the cook.
    None at all.
    Turner said it again, a little louder.
    Still no reaction. No movement. Just total stillness, and a raised chin, and an averted gaze, and a dignified and implacable silence, like a veteran salesman insulted by a counter-offer. Turner looked at Reacher and whispered, ‘What’s with this place?’
    ‘You’re a