Never Go Back

what I wanted. Anything else is collateral damage. So you don’t owe me shit.’
    Turner said, ‘I feel unsettled.’
    ‘You just got arrested and broke out of jail. And now you’re running for your life and stealing cars and money.’
    ‘No, it’s because of you.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You make me feel uncomfortable.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Not your fault,’ she said. ‘It’s just the way you are.’
    ‘And what way is that?’
    ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings.’
    ‘You can’t,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m a military cop. And a man. I have no feelings.’
    ‘That’s what I mean.’
    ‘I was kidding.’
    ‘No, you weren’t. Not entirely.’
    She paused a long moment.
    Then she said, ‘You’re like something feral.’
    Reacher said nothing in reply to that. Feral , from the Latin adjective ferus , wild, via bestia fera , wild animal. Generally held to mean having escaped from domestication, and having devolved back to a natural state.
    Turner said, ‘It’s like you’ve been sanded down to nothing but yes and no, and you and them, and black and white, and live or die. It makes me wonder, what does that to a person?’
    ‘Life,’ Reacher said. ‘Mine, anyway.’
    ‘You’re like a predator. Cold, and hard. Like this whole thing. You have it all mapped out. The four guys in the car, and their bosses. You’re swimming towards them, right now, and there’s going to be blood in the water. Yours or theirs, but there’s going to be blood.’
    ‘Right now I hope I’m swimming away from them. And I don’t even know who they are or where they are.’
    ‘But you will. You’re thinking about it all the time. I can see you doing it. You’re worrying away at it, trying to catch the scent.’
    ‘What else should I do? Buy us bus tickets straight to Leavenworth?’
    ‘Is that the only alternative?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    She took her first sip of coffee, slow and contemplative. She said, ‘I agree with you. And that’s the problem, right there. That’s what’s making me uncomfortable. I’m just like you. Except not yet. And that’s the point. Looking at you is like looking into the future. You’re what I’m going to be one day. When I’m all sanded down too.’
    ‘So I’m too similar? Most women say no because I’m too different.’
    ‘You scare me. Or the prospect of becoming you scares me. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m not sure I ever will be.’
    ‘Doesn’t have to happen. This is a bump in the road. You’ll still have a career.’
    ‘If we win.’
    ‘We will.’
    ‘So best case, I step off the path to stay on it. Worst case, I’m off it for ever.’
    ‘No, worst case is you’re dead or locked up. Worst case is the wrong guys win.’
    ‘It’s always win or lose with you, isn’t it?’
    ‘Is there a third option?’
    ‘Does it burn you up to lose?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘It’s a kind of paralysing arrogance. Normal people don’t get all burned up if they lose.’
    ‘Maybe they should,’ Reacher said. ‘But you’re not really like me. You’re not looking at yourself when you look at me. That’s why I came all this way. You’re a better version. That’s what I sensed on the phone. You’re doing it the way it should be done.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘Everything. Your job. Your life. Being a person.’
    ‘Doesn’t feel that way. Not right now. And don’t think of me like a better version. If I can’t look at you and see what’s going to be, you can’t look at me and see what should have been.’
    Then the griddle man came back, this time with plates full of eggs and bacon and fried biscuits, all of which looked good, and all of which looked perfectly cooked. The eggs had clean, crisp edges. Clearly the guy cared for his metal well. After he was gone again Turner said, ‘This is all assuming you have a definite preference, that is, one way or the other, about the number of rooms.’
    Reacher said, ‘Honest answer?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I do have a definite preference.’
    ‘For?’
    ‘I have to tell you my thing first.’
    ‘Which is?’
    ‘The other item designed to make me run.’
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘A paternity suit,’ Reacher said. ‘Apparently I have a daughter in Los Angeles. By a woman I can’t remember.’

THIRTY-THREE
    REACHER TALKED, AND Turner ate. He told her the things he had been told. Red Cloud, between Seoul and the DMZ, and Candice Dayton, and her diary, and her home in LA, and her homelessness in LA,