Never Go Back

what?’
    ‘Before or after we have sex again.’
    Reacher smiled. In his experience the second time was always better. Still new, but a little less so. Still unfamiliar, but a little less so. Always better than the first time, and in Turner’s case the first time had been spectacular.
    ‘After,’ he said.
    ‘Then take your clothes off,’ she said.
    ‘No, you first this time.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because variety is the spice of life.’
    She smiled. She took her new sweater off. She was wearing nothing under it. No bra. She didn’t really need one, and she wasn’t about to pretend. He liked her for that. He liked her for everything, basically. Not that he had a big problem with any kind of a topless woman in his room. But she was special. Mentally, and physically. Physically she was flawless. She was lean and strong, but she looked soft and tiny. One curve flowed into another, endlessly, seamlessly, like a single contour, like a Möbius strip, from the cleft of her back, to her shoulder, to her waist, to her hips, to her back, where it started all over again. Her skin was the colour of honey. Her smile was wicked, and her laugh was infectious.
    Romeo dialled, and this time Juliet picked up immediately. Romeo said, ‘It’s them. A tall, heavy, fair-haired man, and a younger dark-haired woman, much smaller. That’s what the hotel manager saw.’
    ‘Any indication how long they intend to stay?’
    ‘They paid cash for one night.’
    ‘Did they book a wake-up call?’
    ‘No. They can’t fly. Not with cash, and not with those IDs. Reacher looks nothing like Temple. Even the TSA would notice. I think they’re just holed up. Not a bad choice. Airport hotels are always anonymous, and Pittsburgh isn’t the centre of the known universe. I’d like to know how they got so much money, though.’
    ‘Our boys will get there as soon as they can.’
    ‘The hotel manager said Turner was on the phone.’
    ‘Who to?’
    ‘I’m having it traced now.’
    Afterwards they lay spent and sweaty in tangled sheets, breathing hard, then breathing low. Turner got up on an elbow and stared at Reacher’s face, and ran her fingertips over his brow, slow and searching. She said, ‘It’s not even bruised.’
    ‘All bone,’ he said. ‘All the way through.’
    Her touch moved down to his nose.
    ‘This wasn’t, though,’ she said. ‘Not all the way through. And recent, right?’
    ‘Nebraska,’ Reacher said. ‘Some guy, all worked up about something.’
    Her fingertip traced the cuts, all healed up but not long ago, and the thickened bumps of bone, which now gave his nose a slight right turn. Still a surprise to him, but automatically normal to her. She traced around his ear, and his neck, and his chest. She put the tip of her pinkie in his bullet hole. It fit just right.
    ‘A .38,’ he said. ‘A weak load.’
    ‘Lucky,’ she said.
    ‘I’m always lucky. Look at me now.’
    Her touch moved on, to his waist. To the old shrapnel scar.
    ‘Beirut,’ she said. ‘I read your file. A Silver Star and a Purple Heart. Not bad, but still, I bet overall you got more metal in your gut than on your chest.’
    ‘It was bone,’ Reacher said. ‘Fragments of somebody’s head, who was standing nearer.’
    ‘It said shrapnel in the file.’
    ‘How many times did you read that file?’
    ‘Over and over again.’
    ‘You know where the word shrapnel comes from?’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘An eighteenth-century British guy named Henry Shrapnel.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘He was a captain in their artillery for eight years. Then he invented an exploding shell, and they promoted him major. The Duke of Wellington used the shell in the Peninsular Wars, and at the Battle of Waterloo.’
    ‘Terrific.’
    ‘But thanks for reading that file. It means a lot to me.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because now I don’t have to spend a lot of time telling you a bunch of old stories. You know them already.’
    ‘Telling each other old stories has a nice ring to it.’
    ‘You haven’t told me any.’
    ‘But I will,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you as many as you want to hear.’
    Romeo dialled Juliet and said, ‘She was calling a pre-paid cell phone almost certainly purchased at a Wal-Mart. If it was paid for in cash, it’s untraceable. And I bet it was.’
    Juliet said, ‘It was worth a try.’
    ‘But you know, one big market for pre-paid cell phones is the military. Because some of them don’t make enough for a regular monthly contract. Which is