"It's burning down," Bobby screamed. "All of it."
The windows were alive with yellow light. Flames were dancing behind them. Smoke was drifting through the screens and there were loud random cracking sounds from inside as timbers yielded and moved. The soaked roof was already steaming gently.
"It's burning down," Bobby screamed again. "What are we going to do?"
"Go live in the barn," Reacher said. "That's where people like you belong." Then he grabbed Alice's hand and ran straight for the Jeep.
Chapter 17
When the storm moved north the driver knew his partners weren't coming back. It was a sensation so strong it took on the weight of absolute fact. It was like the rain had left a void behind that would never be filled. He turned in his chair and stared at the motel room door. Sat like that for minutes. Then he stood up and walked over and opened it. Looked out into the parking lot, focusing left, focusing right. The blacktop was streaming with water. The air smelled sharp and clean.
He stepped outside and walked ten paces in the dark. There was a running gutter somewhere and the gurgle of street drains and loud dripping from the trees. But nothing else. Nothing else at all. Nobody was coming. Nobody was ever going to come again. He knew it. He turned around. Wet grit slid under his shoes. He walked back. Stepped inside the room and closed the door gently behind him. Looked over at the bed. Looked at the sleeping child in it.
* * *
"You drive," he called. "North, O.K.?"
He pushed her toward the driver's door and ran around the hood. She pulled her seat forward and he racked his backward. Unfolded the maps on his knees. To his left the Red House was burning fiercely. All the windows were bright with flame. Both floors now. The maid ran out of the kitchen door, wrapped in a bathrobe. The light of the fire caught her face. There was no expression on it.
"O.K., let's go," he said.
She slammed the selector into Drive and gunned the motor. The transfer case was still locked in four-wheel drive and all four tires spun and scattered wet stones and the car took off. She slewed past Walker's Lincoln. Made the right under the gate without pausing. Accelerated hard. He turned his head and saw the first flames appear at the eaves of the roof. They licked outward and paused and ran horizontally, searching for sustenance. Steam was pouring off the soaked shingles and mixing with smoke. Rusty and Bobby and the maid were watching it drift, hypnotized. He glanced away and didn't look back again. Just stared ahead and then riffed through the maps on his knees and found the large-scale sheet showing Pecos County in its entirety. Then he reached up and clicked the dome light on.
"Faster," he said. "I've got a real bad feeling about this."
* * *
The four hours were long gone, but he waited anyway. He felt a certain reluctance. How could he not? He wasn't a monster. He would do what he had to do, for sure, but he wasn't going to enjoy it, exactly.
He walked over and opened the door again and hung the Do Not Disturb tag on the outside handle. Closed the door and locked it from the inside. He appreciated the locks motels put on their doors. A big lever to turn on the inside, a satisfying heavy click, smooth and oily, no corresponding catch on the outside. It helped. Absolute undisturbed security was a useful thing. He slipped the chain on and started into the room.
* * *
Alice drove as fast as she dared. The Jeep wasn't a great road vehicle. It rolled too much and rocked violently from side to side. The steering was vague. It required constant correction. It was a problem. But Reacher ignored it and just held the map high, where it caught the light from the roof console. He stared hard at it and checked the scale and held his finger and thumb apart like a little compass and traced a circle.
"You done any tourist stuff around here?" he asked.
She nodded at the wheel. "Some, I guess. I went to the McDonald Observatory. It was great."
He checked the map. The McDonald Observatory was southwest of Pecos, high up in the Davis Mountains.
"That's eighty miles," he said. "Too far."
"For what?"
"For them to have been today. I think they'll have been a half hour from Pecos by road, max. Twenty-five miles, thirty tops."
"Why?"
"To be close to Walker. He might have planned on smuggling Carmen out, if necessary. Or maybe bringing Ellie in to see her. Whatever it took to convince her that the threat was real. So I think they'll have holed up somewhere nearby."
"And near a tourist attraction?"
"Definitely," he said. "That's key."
"Can this work?" she asked. "Finding the right place in your head?"
"It's worked for me before."
"How many times? As a percentage?"
He ignored the question. Went back to the map. She gripped the wheel and drove. Dropped her eyes to the speedometer.
"Oh GW," she whispered.
He didn't look up. "What?"
"We're out of gas. It's right on empty. The warning light is on."
He was quiet for a second.
"Keep going," he said. "We'll be O.K."
She kept her foot hard down.
"How? You think the gauge is broken?"
He looked up. Glanced ahead.
"Just keep going," he said.
"We're going to run out," she said.
"Don't worry," he said.
She drove on. The car rocked hard. The headlights bounced ahead of them. The tires whined on the streaming blacktop. She glanced down again.
"It's right on empty, Reacher," she said. "Below empty."
"Don't worry," he said again.
"Why not?"
"You'll see."
He kept his eyes on the windshield. She drove on, as fast as the Jeep would go. The engine was growling loud. A gruff old straight-six, drinking gasoline at the rate of a pint every minute.
"Use two-wheel drive," he said. "More economical."
She wrestled with the drivetrain lever and wrenched it forward. The front end of the car went quiet. The steering stopped fighting her. She drove on. Another half mile. Then a mile. She glanced down at the dash again.
"We're running on fumes," she said.
"Don't worry," he said for the third time.
Another mile. The engine stumbled and coughed once and ran ragged for a second and then picked up again. Air in the fuel line, he thought, or sludge dredged up from the bottom of the tank.
"Reacher, we're out of gas, "Alice said.
"Don't worry about it."
"Why not?"
Another mile.
"That's why not," he said suddenly.
The right edge of the headlight beam washed over the ragged gravel shoulder and lit up a steel-blue Ford Crown Victoria. It had four VHP antennas on the back and no wheel covers. It was just sitting there, inert and abandoned, facing north.
"We'll use that," he said. "It'll have most of a tank. They were well organized."
She braked hard and pulled in behind it. "This is theirs? Why is it here?"
"Walker left it here."
"How did you know?"
"It's pretty obvious. They came down from Pecos in two cars, this and the Lincoln. They dumped the Lincoln here and used the Ford the rest of the way. Then Walker ran away from the mesa, put the pick-up back in the barn, drove the Ford back up here, retrieved his Lincoln and came back down in it for our benefit. To make us think it was his first visit, if we happened to be still alive and looking."
"What about the keys?"
"They'll be in it. Walker wasn't in the right frame of mind to worry about Hertz losing a rental car."
Alice jumped out and checked. Gave a thumbs-up. The keys were in it. Reacher followed her with the maps. They left the Greers' Jeep with the doors standing open and the motor idling through the last of its gas. They got into the Crown Vic and he racked his seat back and she pulled hers forward. She fired it up and they were on the road again within thirty seconds, already doing sixty miles an hour.
"It's three quarters full," she said. "And it drives much better."
He nodded. It felt low and fast and smooth. Exactly like a big sedan should.
"I'm sitting where Al Eugene sat," he said.
She glanced at him. He smiled.
"Go faster," he said. "Nobody will stop you. We look just like a squad car."
She accelerated to seventy-five, then eighty. He found the dome light and clicked it on and returned to the maps.
"O.K., where were we?" he said.
"The McDonald Observatory," she said. "You didn't like it."
He nodded. "It was too far out."
He tilted the map to catch the light. Stared hard at it. Concentrate, Reacher. Make it work. If you can.
"What's at Balmorhea State Recreation Area?" he asked. It was still southwest of Pecos, but only thirty miles out. The right sort of distance.
"It's a desert oasis," she said. "Like a huge lake, very clear. You can swim and scuba dive there."
But not the right sort of place.
"I don't think so," he said.
He checked northeast, up to thirty miles out.
"What about Monahans Sandhills?"
"Four thousand acres of sand dunes. Looks like the Sahara."
"That's it? And people go there?"
"It's very impressive."