18 - Never Go Back by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child [Lee Child]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Suspense, Adventure, Thriller
ISBN: 9781409030805
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Published: 2013-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

They stopped for gas and a meal in a place called Macomber, and then they rolled on, ever westward, through Grafton, and then they took the right fork, through a village called McGee, and eventually they came to the I-79 entrance ramp, which the Toyota told them was about an hour south of the Pittsburgh International Airport, which meant they would arrive there at about eight in the evening. The sky was already dark. Night had closed in, secure, and enveloping, and concealing.

Turner said, ‘Why do you like to live like this?’

Reacher said, ‘Because my brain is wired backward. That’s what they missed, all those years ago. They looked at the wrong part of me. I don’t like what normal people like. A little house with a chimney and a lawn and a picket fence? People love that stuff. They work all their lives, just to pay for it. They take thirty-year mortgages. And good for them. If they’re happy, I’m happy. But I’d rather hang myself.’

‘Why?’

‘I have a private theory. Involving DNA. Far too boring to talk about.’

‘No, tell me.’

‘Some other time.’

‘Reacher, we slept together. I didn’t even get a cocktail or a movie. The least you can do is tell me your private theories.’

‘Are you going to tell me one of yours?’

‘I might. But you go first.’

‘OK, think about America, a long time ago. The nineteenth century, really, beginning to end. The westward migration. The risks those people took. As if they were compelled.’

‘They were,’ Turner said. ‘By economics. They needed land and farms and jobs.’

‘But it was more than that,’ Reacher said. ‘For some of them, at least. Some of them never stopped. And a hundred years before that, think about the British. They went all over the world. They went on sea voyages that lasted five years.’

‘Economics again. They wanted markets and raw materials.’

‘But some of them couldn’t stop. And way back there were the Vikings. And the Polynesians, just the same. I think it’s in the DNA, literally. I think millions of years ago we were all living in small bands. Small groups of people. So there was a danger of inbreeding. So a gene evolved where every generation and every small band had at least one person who had to wander. That way the gene pools would get mixed up a little. Healthier all around.’

‘And you’re that person?’

‘I think ninety-nine of us grow up to love the campfire, and one grows up to hate it. Ninety-nine of us grow up to fear the howling wolf, and one grows up to envy it. And I’m that guy.’

‘Compelled to spread his DNA worldwide. Purely for the good of the species.’

‘That’s the fun part.’

‘That’s probably not an argument to make at your paternity hearing.’

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