by Lee Child
“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 doing. 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.
“What names?” she asked.
“No idea,” he said. “Just look at the cars.”
There were five columns to a page. Date, name, home address, vehicle make, date of departure. There were twenty lines, for twenty cabins. Sixteen were occupied. Seven of them had arrows originating on the previous page, indicating guests who were staying a second or subsequent night. Nine cabins held new arrivals. Eleven cabins had a vehicle make entered directly against them. Four cabins were marked in two pairs of two, each sharing a vehicle.
“Families,” the night clerk said. “Or large parties.”
“Did you check them in?” Reacher asked.
The guy shook his head.
“I’m the night man,” he said. “I’m not here until midnight.”
Reacher stared at the page. Went very still. Looked away.
“What?” Alice said.
“This isn’t the right place. This is the wrong place. I blew it.”
“Why?”
“Look at the cars,” he said.
He ran the gun muzzle down the fourth column. Three Chevrolets, three Hondas, two Toyotas, two Buicks, one Saab, one Audi. And one Ford.
“Should be two Fords,” he said. “Their Crown Vic and the Explorer that’s already parked out there.”
“Shit,” she said.
He nodded. Shit. He went completely blank. If this wasn’t the right place, he had absolutely no idea what was. He had staked everything on it. He had no plan B. He glanced at the register. Ford. Pictured the old Explorer sitting out there, square and dull. Then he glanced back at the register again.
The handwriting was all the same.
“Who fills this out?” he asked.
“The owner,” the clerk said. “She does everything the old-fashioned way.”
He closed his eyes. Retraced in his mind Alice’s slow circle around the lot. Thought back to all the old-fashioned motels he’d used in his life.
“O.K.,” he said. “The guest tells her the name and the address, she writes it down. Then maybe she just glances out of the window and writes down the vehicle make for herself. Maybe if the guests are talking or busy getting their money out.”
“Maybe. I’m the night man. I’m never here for that.”
“She’s not really into automobiles, is she?”
“I wouldn’t know. Why?”
“Because there are three Chevrolets in the book and only two in the lot. I think she put the Explorer down as a Chevy. It’s an old model. Kind of angular. Maybe she confused it with an old-model Blazer or something.”
He touched the gun muzzle to the word Ford.
“That’s the Crown Vic,” he said. “That’s them.”
“You think?” Alice said.
“I know. I can feel it.”
They had taken two rooms, not adjacent, but in the same wing. Rooms five and eight.
“O.K.,” he said again. “I’m going to take a look.”
He pointed to the night guy. “You stay here and keep quiet.”
Then he pointed to Alice. “You call the state police and start doing your thing with the federal judge, O.K.?”
“You need a key?” the night clerk asked.
“No,” Reacher said. “I don’t need a key.”
Then he walked out into the damp warmth of the night.
The right-hand row of cabins started with number one. There was a concrete walkway leading past each door. He moved quickly and quietly along it and his shoes left damp prints all the way. There was nothing to see except doors. They came at regular intervals. No windows. The windows would be at the back. These were standard-issue motel rooms, like he had seen a million times before, no doubt about it. Standard layout, with a door, a short hallway, closet on one side and bathroom on the other, the hallway opening out into a room occupying the full width of the unit, two beds, two chairs, a table, a credenza, air conditioner under the window, pastel pictures on the wall.
Cabin number five had a Do Not Disturb tag lying on the concrete a foot from the doorway. He stepped over it. If you’ve got a stolen kid, you keep her in the room farthest from the office. No-brainer. He walked on and stopped outside number eight. Put his ear to the crack of the door and listened. Heard nothin
g. He walked silently on, past number nine, past ten, to the end of the row. Walked around the bend of the U. The two cabin blocks were parallel, facing each other across a thirty-foot-wide rectangle of garden. It was desert horticulture, with low spiky plants growing out of raked gravel and crushed stone. There were small yellow lanterns here and there. Large rocks and boulders, carefully placed, a Japanese effect.
The crushed stone was noisy under his feet. He had to walk slow. He passed by ten’s window, then nine’s, then crouched low and eased against the wall. Crawled forward and positioned himself directly under eight’s window sill. The air conditioner was running loud. He couldn’t hear anything over it. He raised his head, slowly and carefully. Looked into the room.
Nothing doing. The room was completely empty. It was completely undisturbed. It might never have been occupied. It was just sitting there, still and sterile, cleaned and readied, the way motel rooms are. He felt a flash of panic. Maybe they made multiple bookings all over the place. Two or three similar places, to give themselves a choice. Thirty or forty bucks a night, why not? He stood up straight. Stopped worrying about the noise from the gravel. Ran past seven and six, straight to five’s window. Put himself right in front of it and looked in.
And saw a small dark man wearing two white towels dragging Ellie out of the bathroom. Bright light was spilling out behind him. He had both her wrists caught in one hand above her head. She was kicking and bucking violently in his grip. Reacher stared in for maybe a quarter of a second, long enough to sense the layout of the room and see a black 9-mm handgun with a silencer lying on the credenza. Then he took a breath and one long fluid step away and bent down and picked up a rock from the garden. It was bigger than a basketball and could have weighed a hundred pounds. He heaved it straight through the window. The screen disintegrated and glass shattered and he followed it headfirst into the room with the window frame caught around his shoulders like a wreath of victory.
The small dark man froze in shock for a split second and then let Ellie go and turned and scrabbled desperately toward the credenza. Reacher batted away the splintered frame and got there first and caught him by the throat with his right hand and jammed him back against the wall and followed up with a colossal left to the gut and let him fall and kicked him once in the head, very hard. Saw his eyes roll up into his skull. Then he breathed in and out like a train and gasped and shuffled his feet and flexed his hands and fought the temptation to kick him to death.
Then he turned to Ellie.
“You O.K.?” he asked.
She nodded. Paused in the sudden silence.
“He’s a bad man,” she said. “I think he was going to shoot me.”
He paused in turn. Fought to control his breathing.
“He can’t do that now,” he said.
“There was thunder and lightning.”
“I heard it too. I was outside. Got all wet.”
She nodded. “It rained a whole lot.”
“You O.K.?” he asked for the second time.
She just thought about it and nodded. She was very composed. Very serious. No tears, no screaming. The room went absolutely quiet. The action had lasted all of three seconds, beginning to end. It was like it hadn’t happened at all. But the rock from the garden was lying there in the middle of the floor, nested in shards of broken glass. He picked it up and carried it to the shattered window and tipped it through. It crunched on the gravel and rolled away.
“You O.K.?” he asked for the third time.
Ellie nodded. He picked up the phone and dialed zero. The night guy answered. Reacher told him to send Alice down to room five. Then he walked over and unlatched the chain and unlocked the door. Left it propped open. It set up a breeze, all the way through the room to the broken window. The outside air was damp. And warm. Warmer than the inside air.
“You O.K.?” he asked for the fourth time.
“Yes,” Ellie said. “I’m O.K.”
Alice stepped inside a minute later. Ellie looked at her, curiously.
“This is Alice,” Reacher said. “She’s helping your mom.”
“Where is my mom?”
“She’ll be with you soon,” Alice said.
Then she turned and looked down at the small dark guy. He was inert on the floor, pressed up against the wall, arms and legs tangled.
“Is he alive?” she whispered.
Reacher nodded. “Concussed, is all. I think. I hope.”
“State police is responding,” she whispered. “And I called my boss at home. Got him out of bed. He’s setting up a chambers meeting with a judge, first thing. But he says we’ll need a straightforward confession from this guy if we want to avoid a big delay.”
Reacher nodded. “We’ll get one.”
He bent down and twisted one of the small dark man’s towels tight around his neck like a noose and used it to drag him across the floor and into the bathroom.
Twenty minutes later he came out again and found two state cops standing in the room. A sergeant and a trooper, both Hispanic, both composed and immaculate in their tan uniforms. He could hear their car idling outside the door. He nodded to them and walked over and picked up the driver’s clothes from the chair. Tossed them back into the bathroom.
“So?” the sergeant said.
“He’s ready to talk,” Reacher said. “He’s offering a full and voluntary confession. But he wants you to understand he was just the driver.”
“He wasn’t a shooter?”
Reacher shook his head. “But he saw everything.”
“What about the kidnap?”
“He wasn’t there. He was guarding her afterward, is all. And there’s a lot of other stuff, too, going back a number of years.”
“Situation like this, he talks, he’s going away for a long time.”
“He knows that. He accepts it. He’s happy about it. He’s looking for redemption.”
The cops just glanced at each other and went into the bathroom. Reacher heard people shuffling and moving around and handcuffs clicking.
“I have to get back,” Alice said. “I have to prepare the writ. Lot of work involved, with habeas corpus.”
“Take the Crown Vic,” Reacher said. “I’ll wait here with Ellie.”
The cops brought the driver out of the bathroom. He was dressed and his hands were cuffed behind him and each cop had hold of an elbow. He was bent over and white with pain and already talking fast. The cops hustled him straight out to their cruiser and the room door swung shut behind them. There was the muffled sound of car doors slamming and the growl of an engine.
“What did you do to him?” Alice whispered.
Reacher shrugged. “I’m a hard man. Like you said.”
He asked her to send the night clerk down with a master key and she walked away toward the office. He turned to Ellie.
“You O.K.?” he said.
“You don’t need to keep asking me,” she replied.
“Tired?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Your mom will come soon,” he said. “We’ll wait for her right here. But let’s change rooms, shall we? This one’s got a broken window.”
She giggled. “You broke it. With that rock.”
He heard the Crown Vic start up in the distance. Heard its tires on the road.
“Let’s try room eight,” he said. “It’s nice and clean. Nobody’s been in it. It can be ours.”
She took his hand and they walked out together and along the concrete walkway to number eight, a dozen steps for him, three dozen for her, damp filmy tracks left in the wet behind both of them. The clerk met them with a pass key and Ellie got straight into the bed nearest the window. Reacher lay down on the other and watched her until she was sound asleep. Then he wrapped his arm under his head and tried to doze.
* * *
Less than two hours later the new day dawned bright and hot and the air stirred and the metal roof clicked and cracked and the timbers under it creaked and moved. Reacher opened his
eyes after a short uneasy rest and swung his legs to the floor. Crept quietly to the door and opened it up and stepped outside. The eastern horizon was far off to his right beyond the motel office. It was flaring with pure white light. There were rags of old cloud in the sky. They were burning off as he watched. No storm today. People had talked about it for a week, but it wasn’t going to happen. Last night’s hour of rain was all it was ever going to be. A complete misfire.
He crept back into the room and lay down again. Ellie was still asleep. She had kicked the sheet down and her shirt had ridden up and he could see the plump band of pink skin at her waist. Her legs were bent, like she had been running in her dreams. But her arms were thrown up above her head, which some army psychiatrist had once told him was a sign of security. A kid sleeps like that, he had said, deep down it feels safe. Safe? She was some kid. That was for damn sure. Most adults he knew would be wrecks after an experience like hers. For weeks. Or longer. But she wasn’t. Maybe she was too young to fully comprehend. Or maybe she was just a tough kid. One or the other. He didn’t know. He had no experience. He closed his eyes again.
He opened them for the second time thirty minutes later because Ellie was standing right next to him, shaking his shoulder.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Me too,” he said back. “What would you like?”
“Ice cream,” she said.
“For breakfast?”
She nodded.
“O.K.,” he said. “But eggs first. Maybe bacon. You’re a kid. You need good nutrition.”
He fumbled the phone book out of the bedside drawer and found a diner listed that was maybe a mile nearer Fort Stockton. He called them and bribed them with the promise of a twenty-dollar tip to drive breakfast out to the motel. He sent Ellie into the bathroom to get washed up. By the time she came out, the food had arrived. Scrambled eggs, smoked bacon, toast, jelly, cola for her, coffee for him. And a huge plastic dish of ice cream with chocolate sauce.
Breakfast changes everything. He ate the food and drank the coffee and felt some energy coming back. Saw the same effect in Ellie. They propped the room door wide open while they ate to smell the morning air. Then they dragged chairs out to the concrete walk and set them side by side and sat down to wait.
