Ли Чайлд - Past Tense

No one spoke.

Mark asked, ‘Did you talk about splitting up and going solo?’

Shorty looked away.

‘I know,’ Mark said. ‘Tough choice. The percentage play would be go for it. Problem is, you would never know what happened to the other person. In their final moments, I mean.’

Burke drove north. The phone died bar by bar. Reacher laid down the law. Burke was to let him out at the mouth of the track, and then go home and stay home, safe and secure. Never to return. Not saying yes and then doubling back and waiting. Not following on foot, just to see what was happening. None of that. Go home, stay home, forget all about it. No argument. No discussion. Not a democracy. That was the deal.

Burke agreed.

Reacher asked him again.

Burke agreed again.

They drove into the trees. It was already full dark under the canopy. Burke used his headlights. The twisted posts showed up five miles later. Right on time. Right where they should be. Burke stopped the car. Reacher got out. Burke drove away. Reacher stood on the road and watched him go. Eventually his tail lights disappeared, way far in the distance. Silence came down. There was thin moonlight on the road, from a grey night sky. Under the trees was darkness. Reacher set out walking. Alone in the dark.

Patty tried the door. She hoped it wouldn’t open. Not yet. They weren’t ready. They were leaning towards staying together. At least at first. As long as they could. But they hadn’t said so out loud. Not yet. They were leaning towards heading west. Directly away from the track. The opposite direction. A longer route out. Counterintuitive. Maybe a good idea. Maybe predictable. They didn’t know. They hadn’t committed. Not yet. They had debated taking a map from the car. In the end they decided not to. It was a compass they needed. They were worried about getting lost in the woods. They might walk in circles for ever.

The door was still locked.

Patty stepped back and sat on the bed.

Two minutes later Reacher arrived at the tow truck. Its hard bulk loomed up out of the gloom. The darkness made its paint look black. Its chrome looked dull and grey. He knelt behind it and felt ahead for the fat rubber wire. He found it and logged its position in his mind. He stepped over it. He forced his way along the side of the truck, leading with his shoulder, elbow high, one side of him sliding easy on the waxed and polished paint, the other side of him getting pelted and scratched with twigs and leaves. He came out at the front and felt his way around to the centre of the radiator grille. Which was the centre of the track. He lined himself up and set out walking. Two miles to go.

They heard the quad bikes start up. First one, and then another. The distant shriek of a starter motor, the nervous bark of a high-strung engine, the fast and anxious idle. Then a third machine, and a fourth. The noise beat back off the barn wall. Then a fifth and a sixth. Then all of them, growling and rumbling and buzzing, milling about, snicking into gear, accelerating away one by one, across the grass, on to the track, turning right, away from the house, towards the motel.

For a second Shorty wondered who had gotten the bike they had pushed to the road and back.

Patty tried the door.

Still locked.

The bikes formed up into what sounded like single file. They drove through the lot. Shorty turned and watched out the window. A procession. The boardwalk lights were still on. The bikes drove by, left to right, one by one. The riders were all dressed in black. They all had bows slung across their backs. They all had quivers full of arrows. They all had weird one-eyed night-vision goggles strapped to their heads. Some of them were blipping their engines. Some of them were up out of their saddles, raring to go.

They all rode away.

For a second Shorty wondered who had bet on the west.

Patty tried the door.

It opened.

PATTY PULLED THE door all the way open, and stood staring out, from one inch inside the threshold. The outside air was soft and sweet. The sky was dark as iron.

‘This is crazy,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to go. I want to stay here. I feel safe here.’

‘We aren’t safe here,’ Shorty said. ‘We’re sitting ducks here.’

‘We’re sitting ducks everywhere. They have night vision.’

‘There are only six of them.’

‘Nine,’ Patty said. ‘You think the assholes are going to be impartial?’

‘We can’t stay here.’

Patty said nothing. She put her hand out the door. She opened her fingers. She felt the air. She pushed it and cupped it, like swimming.

‘We’ll go to Florida,’ Shorty said. ‘We’ll have a windsurfer business. Maybe jet skis too. We’ll sell T-shirts. That’s where the money is. Patty and Shorty’s Aquatic Emporium. We could have a fancy design.’

Patty looked back at him.

‘Jet skis need servicing,’ she said.

‘I’ll hire a mechanic,’ he said. ‘Regular as clockwork. I promise.’

She paused a beat.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to Florida.’

They took nothing except the flashlights. They hustled out between the dead Honda and a pick-up parked next door. They tracked around room twelve, and came back on the blind side, along the back wall, to where they guessed their bathroom was. They pressed their backs against the siding. West was dead ahead. A faint grey acre of grass, and then a wall of trees, low and black beyond it. They listened hard, and they looked for lights. They heard nothing, and they saw nothing.

They held hands and set out walking. Fast, but not running. They slipped and stumbled. Soon they were out in the open. Shorty imagined weird one-eyed night-vision goggles turning in his direction. Zooming in, and focusing. Patty thought, If they see you early, they might just track you for a spell . They fixed their eyes on the dark horizon. The wall of trees. They hustled on towards it. Closer and closer. Faster and faster. They ran the last fifty yards.

They slipped between the first trunks and stopped dead, bent over, breathing hard, gasping, for air, from relief, with primitive joy at having survived. Some kind of ancient victory. Making them stronger. They stood up again. They listened. They heard nothing. They moved deeper into the woods. On and on. Slow going, because of vines and low stuff around their ankles, and because of stepping left, and stepping right, around all the trees. Plus it was dark. They didn’t risk the flashlights. Not yet. Because of the night vision. They figured it would be like setting themselves on fire.

Five minutes later Patty said, ‘Are we still heading west?’

Shorty said, ‘I think so.’

‘We should turn south now.’

‘Why?’

‘We were out in the open an awful long time. They could have been watching from a distance. They saw us heading west, so now they think we’re going to continue heading west.’

‘Do they?’

‘Because unconsciously people project spatial things in straight lines.’

‘Do they?’

‘So we need to turn off one way or the other. North or south. They can project us west all they want. We’ll never show up. I like south better. If we find a road, it’s a straight shot to town.’

‘OK, we should make a left turn.’

‘If we’re really heading west right now.’

‘I’m pretty sure,’ Shorty said.

So Patty turned what she hoped was exactly ninety degrees. She checked it carefully. She was shoulder-on to Shorty. She was sideways on to the way they had just been walking. She set out in the new direction. Shorty followed. On and on. The same slow progress. Grabby vines, and whip-like saplings. Sometimes fallen boughs, propped diagonally across their path. Which meant a detour, and a long look back, to make sure they hadn’t gotten turned around.