The Affair: A Reacher Novel

turning the wheel and taking off forward. We were in my hotel room five minutes later. In bed. She went straight to sleep. I didn’t. I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and thought.
    Mostly I thought about my last conversation with Leon Garber. My commanding officer. An honest man, and my friend, as far as I knew. But cryptic.
It’s the truth
, he had said.
She was a Marine, Reacher. Sixteen years in. She knew all about cutting throats. She knew how to do it, and she knew how to pretend she didn’t
. Then he had gotten a little impatient.
A man with your instincts
, he had said, about me. Later I had pushed the issue.
You could order me not to go back to Mississippi
, I had said.
I could
, he had said.
But I won’t. Not you. I trust you to do the right thing
.
    The conversation replayed endlessly in my head.
    The truth.
    Instincts.
    The right thing.
    In the end I fell asleep very late and completely unsure whether Garber had been telling me something, or asking me something.
    My long-held belief that there is no better time than the second time was put to a severe test when we woke up, because the fifth time was also pretty terrific. We were both a little stiff and sore after our outdoor extravaganza, so we took it gently, long and slow, and the warmth and the comfort of the bed helped a lot. Plus neither one of us knew whether there would ever be a sixth time, which added alittle poignancy to the occasion. Afterward we lay quiet for a while, and then she asked me when I was leaving, and I said I didn’t know.
    We ate breakfast together in the diner, and then she went to work, and I went to use the phone. I tried to call Frances Neagley at her desk in D.C., but she wasn’t back yet. Probably still on an all-night bus somewhere. So I dialed Stan Lowrey instead, and got him right away. I said, “I need you to do something else for me.”
    He said, “No jokes this morning? About how you’re surprised I’m still here?”
    “I didn’t have time to think of any. I wanted Neagley, not you. You should try to get hold of her as soon as you can. She’s better than you at this kind of stuff.”
    “Better than you, too. What do you need?”
    “Fast answers,” I said.
    “To what questions?”
    “Statistically speaking, where would we be most likely to find U.S. Marines and concrete flood sluices in close proximity?”
    “Southern California,” Lowrey said. “Statistically speaking, almost certainly Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego.”
    “Correct,” I said. “I need to trace a jarhead MP who was there five years ago. His name is Paul Evers.”
    “Why?”
    “Because his parents were Mr. and Mrs. Evers and they liked the name Paul, I guess.”
    “No, why do you want to trace him?”
    “I want to ask him a question.”
    Lowrey said, “You’re forgetting something.”
    “Like what?”
    “I’m in the army, not the Marine Corps. I can’t get into their files.”
    “That’s why you need to call Neagley. She’ll know how to do it.”
    “Paul Evers,” he said, slowly, like he was writing it down.
    “Call Neagley,” I said again. “This is urgent. I’ll get back to you.”
    * * *
    I hung up with Lowrey and shoveled more coins into the slot and called the Kelham number Munro had given Deveraux, right back at the beginning. The call went through to some guy who wasn’t Munro. He told me Munro had left at first light, in a car to Birmingham, Alabama. I said I knew that had been the plan. I asked the guy to check if it had actually happened. So the guy called the visiting officers’ quarters and came back to me and said no, it hadn’t actually happened. Munro was still on the post. The guy gave me a number for his room and I hung up and redialed.
    Munro answered and I said, “Thank you for sticking around.”
    He said, “But what am I sticking around for? Right now I’m just hiding out in my room. I’m not very popular here, you know.”
    “You didn’t join the army to be popular.”
    “What do you need?”
    “I need to know Reed Riley’s movements today.”
    “Why?”
    “I want to ask him a question.”
    “That could be difficult. As far as I know he’s going to be pretty much tied up all day. You might be able to grab him over lunch. If he gets time for lunch, that is. And if he does, it will be very early.”
    “No, I need him to come to me. In town.”
    “You don’t understand. The mood has changed here. Bravo Company is out from under the cloud. Riley’s father is