Lee Child - Echo Burning

There was a night-light plugged into an outlet low on the wall and its soft orange glow showed the child sprawled on her back, with her arms thrown up around her head. She had kicked off her sheet and the rabbit T-shirt had ridden up and was showing a band of plump pink skin at her waist. Her hair was tumbled over the pillow. Long dark eyelashes rested on her cheeks like fans. Her mouth was open a fraction.

"She's six and a half," Carmen whispered. "She needs this. She needs a bed of her own, in a place of her own. I can't make her live like a fugitive."

He said nothing.

"Do you see?" she whispered.

He shrugged. He didn't, really. At age six and a half, he had lived exactly like a fugitive. He had at every age, right from birth to yesterday. He had moved from one service base to another, all around the world, often with no notice at all. He recalled days when he got up for school and instead was driven to an airstrip and ended up on the other side of the planet thirty hours later. He recalled stumbling tired and bewildered into dank bungalow bedrooms and sleeping on unmade beds. The next morning, his mother would tell him which country they were in. Which continent they were on. If she knew yet. Sometimes she didn't. It hadn't done him any harm.

Or, maybe it had.

"It's your call, I guess," he said.

She pulled him back into the corridor and eased Ellie's door shut behind him.

"Now I'll show you where I hid the gun," she said. "You can tell me if you approve."

She walked ahead of him down the corridor. The air conditioner was loud. He passed under a vent and a breath of air played over him. It was warm. Carmen's dress swayed with every step. She was wearing heels and they put tension in the muscles of her legs. He could see tendons in the backs of her knees. Her hair hung down her back and merged with the black pattern on the red fabric of the dress. She turned left and then right and stepped through an archway. There was another staircase, leading down.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Separate wing," she said. "It was added. By Sloop's grandfather, I think."

The staircase led to a long narrow ground-floor hallway that led out of the main building to a master suite. It was as big as a small house. There was a dressing area, and a spacious bathroom, and a sitting room with a sofa and two armchairs. Beyond the sitting room was a broad archway. Beyond the archway, there was a bedroom.

"In here," she said.

She walked straight through the sitting room and led him to the bedroom.

"You see what I mean?" she said. "We're a long way from anywhere. Nobody hears anything. And I try to be quiet, anyway. If I scream, he hits me harder."

He nodded and looked around. There was a window, facing east, with insects loud beyond the screen. There was a king-size bed close to it, with side tables by the head, and a chest-high piece of furniture full of drawers opposite the foot. It looked like it had been made a hundred years ago, out of some kind of oak trees.

"Texas ironwood," she said. "It's what you get if you let the mesquite grow tall."

"You should have been a teacher," he said. "You're always explaining things."

She smiled, vaguely. "I thought about it, in college. It was a possibility, back then. In my other life."

She opened the drawer on the top right.

"I moved the gun," she said. "I listened to your advice. Bedside cabinet was too low. Ellie could have found it. This is too high for her."

He nodded again and moved closer. The drawer was a couple of feet wide, maybe eighteen inches deep. It was her underwear drawer. The pistol was lying on top of her things, which were neatly folded, and silky, and insubstantial, and fragrant. The mother-of-pearl plastic on the grips looked right at home there.

"You could have told me where it was," he said. "You didn't need to show me."

She was quiet for a beat.

"He'll want sex, won't he?" she said.

Reacher made no reply.

"He's been locked up a year and a half," she said. "But I'm going to refuse."

Reacher said nothing.

"It's a woman's right, isn't it?" she asked. "To say no?"

"Of course it is," he said.

"Even though the woman is married?"

"Most places," he said.

She was quiet for a beat.

"And it's also her right to say yes, isn't it?" she asked.

"Equally," he said.

"I'd say yes to you."

"I'm not asking."

She paused. "So is it O.K. for me to ask you?"

He looked straight at her. "Depends on why, I guess."

"Because I want to," she said. "I want to go to bed with you."

"Why?"

"Honestly?" she said. "Just because I want to."

"And?"

She shrugged. "And I want to hurt Sloop a little, I guess, in secret. In my heart."

He said nothing.

"Before he gets home," she said.

He said nothing.

"And because Bobby already thinks we're doing it," she said. "I figure, why get the blame without getting the fun?"

He said nothing.

"I just want a little fun," she said. "Before it all starts up again."

He said nothing.

"No strings attached," she said. "I'm not looking for it to change anything. About your decision, I mean. About Sloop."

He nodded.

"It wouldn't change anything," he said.

She looked away.

"So what's your answer?" she asked.

He watched her profile. Her face was blank. It was like all other possibilities were exhausted for her, and all that was left was instinct. Early in his service career, when the threat was still plausible, people talked about what they would do when the enemy missiles were airborne and incoming. This was absolutely the number-one pick, by a huge, huge margin. A universal instinct. And he could see it in her. She had heard the four-minute warning, and the sirens were sounding loud in her mind.

"No," he said.

She was quiet for a long moment.

"Will you at least stay with me?" she asked.

* * *

The killing crew moved fifty miles closer to Pecos in the middle of the night. They did it secretly, some hours after booking in for a second night at their first location. It was the woman's preferred method. Six false names, two overlapping sets of motel records, the confusion built fast enough to keep them safe.

They drove east on I-10 until they passed the I-20 interchange. They headed down toward Fort Stockton until they saw signs for the first group of motels serving the Balmorhea state recreation area. Those motels were far enough from the actual tourist attraction to make them cheap and anonymous. There wasn't going to be a lot of cutesy decor and personal service. But they would be clean and decent. And they would be full of people exactly like themselves. That was what the woman wanted. She was a chameleon. She had an instinct for the right type of place. She chose the second establishment they came to, and sent the small dark man to pay cash for two rooms.

* * *

Reacher woke up on Sloop Greer's sofa with the Sunday dawn. Beyond him, the bedroom window faced east and the night insects were gone and the sky was bright. The bed sheet looked damp and tangled. Carmen wasn't under it. He could hear the shower running in the bathroom. And he could smell coffee.

He got off the sofa and stretched. Wandered through the archway to the bedroom. He saw Carmen's dress on the floor. He went to the window and checked the weather. No change. The sky was hazed with heat. He wandered back to the sitting area. There was a credenza in one corner, set up with a small coffee machine. There were two upturned mugs beside it, with spoons, like a hotel. The bathroom door was closed. The shower sounded loud behind it. He filled a mug with coffee and wandered into the dressing area. There were two large closets there, parallel, one on each side. Not walk-ins, just long deep alcoves screened with sliding doors made out of mirrored glass.