Tripwire (Jack Reacher, #3)

by Lee Child

He had watched the battle between her shyness and her curiosity as she sat and worked up the courage to talk to him about death and life and good and evil. Then she would fidget and tuck her bony knees up under her and work the conversation around to love and sex and men and women. Then she would blush and disappear. He would be left alone, icy inside, captivated by her and angry at himself for it. Days later he would see her somewhere around the base, still blushing furiously. And now fifteen years later she was a grown woman, college and law school, married and divorced, beautiful and composed and elegant, standing there in her dead father’s yard with her arm linked through his.

Sark pulled the door and allowed O’Hallinan to go inside ahead of him. She was old enough to appreciate the courtesy.

She wanted to see him again. His lazy, lopsided grin. His tousled hair. His arms, so long they gave him a greyhound’s grace even though he was built like the side of a house.