Echo Burning by Lee Child

by Echo Burning (com v2. 0) (lit)

  Ten miles south and west of Fort Stockton itself, the road curved to the right and switchbacked over the top of the ridge, then fell away down the far slope and ran parallel to the Big Canyon Draw for a spell. Then it leveled out and speared straight for the I-10 interchange which was represented on the map like a spider, with eight roads all coming together in one place. The northwest leg was Route 285 to Pecos, which showed up on paper as a ninety-degree left turn. Then there were maybe twenty miles of it between the Fort Stockton city limit and a highway bridge that recrossed the Coyanosa Draw.

  “That’s the target area,” Reacher said. “Somewhere in those twenty miles. We’ll drive north to the bridge and turn around and come back south. See it like they saw it.”

  Alice nodded silently and accelerated down the slope. The tires pattered on the rough surface and the big soft car pitched and rolled.

  She woke up because of the noise of the shower. It drummed against the tiles on the other side of the wall and sounded a little like rain coming down on the roof again. She pulled the sheet over her head and then pulled it back down. Watched the window. There was no lightning anymore. She listened hard. She couldn’t hear any more thunder. Then she recognized the sound for what it was. The shower was running. In the bathroom. It was louder than hers at home, but quieter than her mom’s.

  The man was in the shower.

  She pushed the sheet down to her waist. Struggled upright and sat there. There were no lights on in the room, but the drapes weren’t drawn and a yellow glow was coming in from outside. It was wet out there. She could see raindrops on the window and reflections.

  The room was empty.

  Of course it is, silly, she said to herself. The man is in the shower.

  She pushed the sheet down to her ankles. Her clothes were folded on the table by the window. She crept out of the bed and tiptoed over and stretched out her hand and took her underpants from the pile. Stepped into them. Pulled her T-shirt over her head. Threaded her arms through the sleeves. Then she took her shorts and checked they were the right way around and put them on. Pulled the waistband up over her shirt and sat down cross-legged on the floor to buckle her shoes.

  The shower was still running.

  She stood up and crept past the bathroom door, very quietly, because she was worried about her shoes making noise. She kept on the rug where she could. Stayed away from the linoleum. She stood still and listened.

  The shower was still running.

  She crept down the little hallway, past the closet, all the way to the door. It was dark back there. She stood still and looked at the door. She could see a handle, and a lever thing, and a chain thing. She thought hard. The handle was a handle, and the lever was probably a lock. She didn’t know what the chain thing was for. There was a narrow slot with a wider hole at one end. She imagined the door opening. It would get a little ways and then the chain would stop it.

  The shower was still running.

  She had to get the chain thing off. It might slide along. Maybe that was what the narrow slot was for. She studied it. It was very high. She stretched up and couldn’t really reach it. She stretched up taller and got the flat of her fingertips on it. She could slide it that way. She slid it all the way sideways until the end fell into the hole. But she couldn’t pull it out.

  The shower was still running.

  She put her other hand flat on the door and flipped her toes over until she was right up on the points of her shoes. Stretched until her back started to hurt and picked at the chain with her fingertips. It wouldn’t come out. It was hooked in. She came down off her toes and listened.

  The shower was still running.

  She went back on her toes and kicked and pushed against them until her legs hurt and reached up with both hands. The end of the chain was a little circle. She waggled it. It moved up a little. She let it down again. Pushed it up and picked at it at the same time and it came out. It rattled down and swung and hit the door frame with a noise that sounded very loud. She held her breath and listened.

  The shower was still running.

  She came down off her toes and tried the lock lever. She put her thumb on one side and her finger on the other and turned it. It wouldn’t move at all. She tried it the other way. It moved a little bit. It was very stiff. She closed her mouth in case she was breathing too loud and used both hands and tried harder. It moved some more, like metal rubbing on metal. She strained at it. It hurt her hands. It moved some more. Then it suddenly clicked back all the way.

  A big click.

  She stood still and listened.

  The shower was still running.

  She tried the handle. It moved easily. She looked at the door. It was very high and it looked very thick and heavy. It had a thing at the top that would close it automatically behind her. It was made from metal. She had seen those things before. They made a lot of noise. The diner opposite her school had one.

  The shower had stopped.

  She froze. Stood still, blank with panic. The door will make a noise. He’ll hear it. He’ll come out. He’ll chase me. She whirled around and faced the room.

  The I-10 interchange was a huge concrete construction laid down like a healing scar on the landscape. It was as big as a stadium and beyond it dull orange streetlights in Fort Stockton lit up the thinning clouds. Fort Stockton still had electricity. Better power lines. Alice kept her foot hard down and screamed three-quarters of the way around the interchange and launched northwest on 285. She passed the city limit doing ninety. There was a sign: Pecos 48 miles. Reacher leaned forward, moving his head rapidly side to side, scanning both shoulders of the road at once. Low buildings flashed past. Some of them were motels.

  “This could be entirely the wrong place,” Alice said.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” he replied.

  He turned the water off and rattled the curtain back and stepped out of the tub. Wrapped a towel around his waist and used another to dry his face. Looked at himself in the misty mirror and combed his hair with his fingers. Strapped his watch to his wrist. Dropped both towels on the bathroom floor and took two fresh ones off the little chrome rack. Wrapped one around his waist and draped the other over his shoulder like a toga.

  He stepped out of the bathroom. Light spilled out with him. It fell across the room in a broad yellow bar. He stopped dead. Stared at the empty bed.

  Inside three minutes they had passed three motels and Reacher thought all three of them were wrong. It was about guessing and feeling now, about living in a zone where he was blanking out everything except the tiny murmurs from his subconscious mind. Overt analysis would ruin it. He could make a lengthy case for or against any particular place. He could talk himself into paralysis. So he was listening to nothing at all except the quiet whispers from the back of his brain. And they were saying: not that one. No. No.

  He took a dazed involuntary step toward the bed, like seeing it from a different angle might put her back in it. But nothing changed. There was just the rumpled sheet, half pushed down, half pushed aside. The pillow, at an angle, dented with the shape of her head. He turned and checked the window. It was closed tight and locked from the inside. Then he ran to the door. Short desperate steps, dodging furniture all the way. The chain was off. The lock was clicked back.

  What?

  He eased the handle down. Opened the door. The Do Not Disturb tag was lying on the concrete walk, a foot from the doorway.

  She’d gotten out.

  He fixed the door so it wouldn’t lock behind him and ran out into the night, barefoot, wearing just his towels, one around his waist and the other like a toga. He ran ten paces into the parking lot and stood still. He was panting. Shock, fear, sudden exertion. It was warm again. There was a heavy vegetable stink in the air, wet earth and flowers and leaves. Trees were dripping. He spun a complete circle. Where the hell did she go? Where? A kid that age, she’d have just run for it. As fast as she could. Probably toward the road. He took a single step after her and then
whirled around. Back toward the door. He’d need his clothes. Couldn’t chase her in a couple of towels.

  The low clumps of buildings petered out three or four miles before they were due to hit the bridge. They just stopped being there. There was just desert. He stared through the windshield into the empty distance and thought of every road he had ever seen and asked himself: are there going to be more buildings up ahead? Or nothing now until we hit the outskirts of Pecos thirty miles away?

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Now?”

  “We’ve seen all we’re going to see.”

  She hit the brakes and pulled a violent turn, shoulder to shoulder across the road. Fishtailed a little on the wet gravel and straightened and headed back south.

  “Slower now,” he said. “Now we’re them. We’re looking at this with their eyes.”

  Ellie was lying completely still on the high shelf in the closet. She was good at hiding. Everybody said so. She was good at climbing, too, so she liked to hide high up. Like in the horse barn. Her favorite place was high up on top of the straw bales. The closet shelf wasn’t as comfortable. It was narrow and there were old dust bunnies up there. A wire coat hanger and a plastic bag with a word on it too long to read. But she could lie down flat and hide. It was a good place, she thought. Difficult to get up to. She had climbed on the smaller shelves at the side. They were like a ladder. Very high. But it was dusty. She might sneeze. She knew she mustn’t. Was she high enough? He wasn’t a very tall man. She held her breath.

  Alice kept the speed steady at sixty. The first motel they came back to was on the left side of the road. It had a low tended hedge running a hundred yards to screen the parking lot. There was a center office and two one-story wings of six rooms each. The office was dark. There was a soda machine next to it, glowing red. Five cars in the lot.

  “No,” Reacher said. “We don’t stop at the first place we see. We’d more likely go for the second place.”

  The second place was four hundred yards south.

  And it was a possibility.

  It was built at right angles to the road. The office was face-on to the highway but the cabins ran away into the distance behind it, which made the lot U-shaped. And concealed. There were planted trees all around it, wet and dripping from the rain.

  Possible.

  Alice slowed the car to a crawl.

  “Drive through,” he said.

  She swung into the lot and nosed down the row. It was eight cabins long. Three cars were parked. She swung around the far end and up the other side. Eight more cabins. Another three cars. She paused alongside the office door.

  “Well?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Occupancy ratio is wrong. Sixteen cabins, six cars. I’d need to see eight cars, at least.”

  “Why?”

  “They didn’t want a place that’s practically empty. Too likely to be remembered. They were looking for somewhere around two-thirds full, which would be ten or eleven cars for sixteen cabins. They’ve got two rooms but right now no car at all, so that would be eight or nine cars for sixteen cabins. That’s the ratio we need. Two-thirds minus two. Approximately.”

  She glanced across at him and shrugged. Eased back to the road and continued south.

  He got a couple of paces toward the door and stopped dead. There was a yellow light off to one side of the lot, casting a low glow over the soaked blacktop. It showed him his footsteps. They were a line of curious fluid imprints blotted into the dampness. He could see his heels and his toes and his arches. Mostly toes, because he’d been running. The prints were filmy and wet. They weren’t about to dry up and disappear anytime soon.

  But he couldn’t see her footprints.

  There was just one set of tracks, and they were his. No doubt about it. She hadn’t come out. Not unless she could levitate herself and fly. Which was impossible. He smiled.

  She was hiding in the room.

  He ran the final eight steps and ducked back inside. Closed the door gently and fastened the chain and clicked the lock.

  “Come on out,” he called softly.

  There was no response, but he hadn’t really expected one.

  “I’m coming to get you,” he called.

  He started by the window, where there was an upholstered chair across the corner of the room with a space behind it large enough for a kid to hide. But she wasn’t there. He got on his knees and bent down and looked under the beds. Not there, either.

  “Hey, kid,” he called. “Enough already.”

  There was a shared bedside cabinet with a little door. She wasn’t in there. He straightened up and adjusted his towels. She wasn’t in the bathroom, he knew that. So where was she? He looked around the room. The closet. Of course. He smiled to himself and danced over.

  “Here I come, honey,” he called.

  He slid the doors and checked the floor. There was a folded valise rack and nothing else. There was a set of vertical shelves on the right, nothing in them. A high shelf above, running the whole width of the space. He stretched tall and checked it out. Nothing there. Just dust bunnies and an old wire coat hanger and a plastic bag from a grocery called Subrahamian’s in Cleveland.

  He turned around, temporarily defeated.

  The third motel had a painted sign. No neon. Just a board hung from a gallows with chains. It was carefully lettered in a script so fancy Reacher wasn’t sure what it said. Something Canyon, maybe, with old-fashioned spelling, cañon, like Spanish. The letters were shadowed in gold.

  “I like this,” he said. “Very tasteful.”

  “Go in?” Alice asked.

  “You bet.”

  There was a little entrance road through twenty yards of garden. The plantings were sad and scorched by the heat, but they were an attempt at something.

  “I like this,” he said again.

  It was the same shape as the last place. An office first, with a U-shaped parking lot snaking around two back-to-back rows of cabins set at ninety degrees to the road. Alice drove the complete circle. Ten cabins to a row, twenty in total, twelve cars parked neatly next to twelve random doors. Two Chevrolets, three Hondas, two Toyotas, two Buicks, an old Saab, an old Audi, and a five-year-old Ford Explorer.

  “Two-thirds minus two,” Reacher said.

  “Is this the place?” Alice asked.

  He said nothing. She stopped next to the office.

  “Well?”

  He said nothing. Just opened the door and slid out. The heat was coming back. It was full of the smell of soaked earth. He could hear drains running and gutters dripping. The office was dark and full of shadows. The door was locked. There was a neat brass button for the night bell. He leaned his thumb on it and peered in through the window.

  There was no soda machine. Just a neat counter and a large rack full of flyers. He couldn’t make out what they referred to. Too dark. He kept his thumb on the bell. A light came on in a doorway in back of the office and a man stepped out. He was running his hand through his hair. Reacher took the Echo County deputy’s star out of his pocket and clicked it flat against the glass. The man turned the office light on and walked to the door and undid the lock. Reacher stepped inside and walked past him. The flyers in the rack covered all the tourist attractions within a hundred miles. Old Fort Stockton featured prominently. There was something about a meteor crater at Odessa. All worthy stuff. Nothing about rodeos or gun shows or real estate. He waved to Alice. Gestured her in after him.

  “This is the place,” he said.

  “Is it?”

  He nodded. “Looks right to me.”

  “You cops?” the office guy asked, looking out at the car.

  “I need to see your register,” Reacher said. “For tonight’s guests.”

  It was impossible. Totally impossible. She wasn’t outside, she wasn’t inside. He ran his eyes over the room again. The beds, the furniture, the closet. Nothing d
oing. She wasn’t in the bathroom, because he had been in the bathroom.

  Unless . . .

  Unless she had been under the bed or in the closet and then had ducked into the bathroom while he was outside. He stepped over and opened the bathroom door. Smiled at himself in the mirror. The mist had cleared off it. He pulled back the shower curtain in one dramatic sweeping move.

  “There you are,” he said.

  She was pressed up into the corner of the tub, standing straight, wearing a T-shirt and shorts and shoes. The back of her right hand was jammed in her mouth. Her eyes were wide open. They were dark and huge.

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “I was going to take you with me.”

  She said nothing. Just watched him. He reached out to her. She shrank back. Took the hand away from her mouth.

  “It’s not been four hours,” she said.

  “Yes, it has,” he said. “Way more than four.”

  She put her knuckles back in her mouth. He reached out again. She shrank away. What had her mommy told her to do? If you’re worried about something, just scream and scream. She took a deep breath and tried. But no sound would come out. Her throat was too dry.

  “The register,” Reacher said again.

  The office guy hesitated like there were procedures involved. Reacher checked his watch and pulled the Heckler & Koch from his pocket, all in one simple movement.

  “Right now,” he said. “We don’t have time to mess around.”

  The guy’s eyes went wide and he ducked around the counter and reversed a big leather ledger. Pushed it toward the near edge. Reacher and Alice crowded together to look at it.