Never Go Back

information?’
    ‘Are you kidding?’
    ‘Then we need to revisit what we said about the top boys here. They’re not very senior staff officers. They’re very, very senior staff officers. Don’t you think? To be inside Homeland Security’s databases, independently, in real time?’
    ‘Maybe not-so-real time. The FBI beat them here, after all.’
    ‘From their Pittsburgh field office. Our guys had further to come. They must have set out much earlier. They must have known before the FBI did. They had an alert of their own.’
    The hotel bus let them out at the terminal, and they ducked inside to check the departure boards. Next out were two flights within a minute of each other, U.S. Airways to Long Beach, and American Airlines to Orange County.
    ‘Got a preference?’ Turner asked.
    ‘Long Beach,’ Reacher said. ‘We can rent a car. Straight shot up the 710. Then the 101. The mother’s affidavit was out of a law office in North Hollywood. I’m guessing that’s where she is.’
    ‘How are you going to find her?’
    ‘I’ll start in her lawyer’s parking lot. That’s one place she won’t get moved on.’
    ‘Her lawyer’s office will be staked out, surely. By elements of the 75th and the FBI for sure. And our four unofficial friends will be there about six hours after they realize we’re not in the hotel.’
    ‘So we’ll have to be very careful.’
    The U.S. Airways ticket counter was opening up. A cheerful woman of about fifty spent a minute booting computers and sorting labels and papers and pens, and then she turned towards them with a smile. Turner asked about seats to Long Beach, on the morning flight. The woman clicked away on her keyboard, flat-fingered because of her nails, and said she didn’t have many. But two was no problem. So first Turner and then Reacher handed over driver’s licences and credit cards, absently and casually, as if they had just pulled them at random from a full deck of documentation. The woman lined them up in front of her, in a neat physical analogue of a window seat and an aisle, and she typed the names, moving her head back and forth as she glanced between the licences and the screen, and then she swiped the cards, and she hunted and pecked and clicked some more, and then a machine kicked in and printed boarding cards. The woman swept them up, and collated them with the right licences and the right credit cards, and she said, ‘Ms Vega, Mr Kehoe, here you go,’ and she handed them over, like a little ceremony.
    They thanked her and walked away, and Reacher said, ‘This is why you made me buy a sweater, right?’
    ‘You’re going to meet your daughter,’ Turner said. ‘And first impressions count.’
    Juliet called Romeo, because there was a division of labour, and some of the responsibilities were his, and he said, all excited, ‘Our boys are in the corridor, right now, directly outside their room.’
    Romeo said, ‘Corridor?’
    ‘Hotel corridor. Hotel room. Our guys say the room is dark, it is quiet, there is a Do Not Disturb notice on the door, and they have not yet checked out.’
    ‘So they’re in the room?’
    ‘They have to be.’
    ‘Then why are our boys in the corridor?’
    ‘There’s a problem.’
    Romeo said, ‘What kind of a problem?’
    ‘The FBI is there.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘With our boys. Literally. In the corridor. Just kind of standing around. One guy. He can’t do anything because he thinks he has four civilian witnesses. We can’t do anything because we know we have one FBI witness. We’re all just standing around.’
    ‘In the corridor?’
    ‘Right outside their room.’
    ‘Do we know they’re in there? For certain?’
    ‘Where else would they be?’
    ‘Are they both in there?’
    ‘Why do you ask?’
    ‘I did some cutting and pasting.’
    ‘Of what?’
    ‘Data. After that call to the mothership. It threw me a little. I thought some precautions might be appropriate. Among the things I put on the alert list was the 110th’s undercover locker. For no good reason. Just for the sake of being able to feel I was doing everything I could. But I just got something back. One of the identities just bought a ticket on U.S. Airways, from Pittsburgh to Long Beach, in California.’
    ‘For when?’
    ‘First flight this morning. About half an hour from now.’
    ‘Only one of them?’
    ‘None of the other identities is showing up as active.’
    ‘And which one is?’
    ‘Michael Dennis Kehoe. The man, in other words.