Lee Child - Echo Burning

* * *

Reacher had ice cream after the pizza, and more water, and then coffee. He lingered over it as long as was reasonable and then he paid his check and walked back to his motel room. The heat felt worse than ever after being cold and dry for an hour. He took a long shower in tepid water and rinsed his clothes in the sink. Shook them hard to eliminate the wrinkles and arranged them on a chair to dry. Then he turned the room air to high and lay down on the bed to wait for Alice. Checked his watch. He figured if she got there anytime after eight o'clock it would be a good sign, because if Carmen decided to get serious they would need to talk for at least an hour. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

She got there at seven-twenty. He woke from a feverish overheated doze and heard a tentative knock at his door. Rolled off the bed and wrapped a damp towel around his waist and padded barefoot across the dirty carpet and opened up. Alice was standing there. He looked at her. She just shook her head. He stared out at the dusk light for a second. Her yellow car was parked in the lot. He turned and stepped back into the room. She followed him inside.

"I tried everything," she said.

She had changed back into her lawyer outfit. The black pants and the jacket. The pants had a very high waistband, so high it almost met the bottom edge of the sports bra. There was an inch of tanned midriff showing. Apart from that, she looked exactly like the real deal. And he couldn't see how an inch of skin would be significant to a woman in Carmen's position.

"I asked her, was it me?" Alice said. "Did she want somebody different? Older? A man? A Hispanic person?"

"What did she say?"

"She said she didn't want anybody at all."

"That's crazy."

"Yes, it is," Alice said. "I described her predicament. You know, in case she wasn't seeing it clearly. It made no difference."

"Tell me everything she said."

"I already have."

Reacher was uncomfortable in the towel. It was too small.

"Let me put my pants on," he said.

He scooped them off the chair and ducked into the bathroom. The pants were wet and clammy. He pulled them on and zipped them up. Came back out. Alice had taken her jacket off and laid it on the chair, next to his wet shirt. She was sitting on the bed with her elbows on her knees.

"I tried everything," she said again. "I said, show me your arm. She said, what for? I said, I want to see how good your veins are. Because that's where the lethal injection will go. I told her she'd be strapped down on the gurney, I described the drugs she'd get. I told her about the people behind the glass, there to watch her die."

"And?"

"It made no difference at all. Like talking to the wall."

"How hard did you push?"

"I shouted a little. But she waited me out and just repeated herself. She's refusing representation, Reacher. We better face it."

"Is that kosher?"

"Of course it is. No law says you have to have counsel. Just that you have to be offered counsel."

"Isn't it evidence of insanity or something?"

She shook her head.

"Not in itself," she said. "Otherwise every murderer would just refuse to have a lawyer and automatically get off with an incapacity defense."

"She's not a murderer."

"She doesn't seem very anxious to prove it."

"Did anybody hear her?"

"Not yet. But I'm worried. Logically her next move is to put it in writing. Then I can't even get in the door. Nor can anybody else."

"So what do we do?"

"We have to finesse her. That's all we can do. We just have to ignore her completely and keep on dealing with Walker behind her back. On her behalf. If we can get him to drop the charges, then we've set her free whether she wants us to or not."

He shrugged. "Then that's what we'll do. But it's completely bizarre, isn't it?"

"It sure is," Alice said. "I never heard of such a thing before."

* * *

A hundred miles away, the two male members of the killing crew returned to their motel after eating dinner. They had chosen pizza, too, but with pitchers of cold beer instead of water and coffee. They found their woman partner waiting for them inside their room. She was alert and pacing, which they recognized as a sign of news.

"What?" the tall man asked.

"A supplementary job," she said.

"Where?"

"Pecos."

"Is that smart?"

She nodded. "Pecos is still safe enough."

"You think?" the dark man asked.

"Wait until you hear what he's paying."

"When?"

"Depends on the prior commitment."

"O.K.," the tall man said. "Who's the target?"

"Just some guy," the woman said. "I'll give you the details when we've done the other thing."

She walked to the door.

"Stay inside now," she said. "Get to bed, get some sleep. We've got a very busy day coming up."

* * *

"This is a crummy room," Alice said.

Reacher glanced around. "You think?"

"It's awful."

"I've had worse."

She paused a beat. "You want dinner?"

He was full of pizza and ice cream, but the inch of midriff was attractive. So was the corresponding inch of her back. There was a deep cleft there. The waistband of the pants spanned it like a tiny bridge.

"Sure," he said. "Where?"

She paused again.

"My place?" she said. "It's difficult for me to eat out around here. I'm a vegetarian. So usually I cook for myself."

"A vegetarian in Texas," he said. "You're a long way from home."

"Sure feels like it," she said. "So how about it? And I've got better air conditioning than this."

He smiled. "Woman-cooked food and better air? Sounds good to me."

"You eat vegetarian?"

"I eat anything."

"So let's go."

He shrugged his damp shirt on. She picked up her jacket. He found his shoes. Locked up the room and followed her over to the car.

She drove a couple of miles west to a low-rise residential complex built on a square of scrubby land trapped between two four-lane roads. The buildings had stucco walls painted the color of sand with dark-stained wooden beams stuck all over the place for accents. There were maybe forty rental units and they all looked half-hearted and beaten down by the heat. Hers was right in the center, like a small city townhouse sandwiched between two others. She parked outside her door on a fractured concrete pad. There were parched desert weeds wilting in the cracks.

But it was gloriously cool inside the house. There was central air running hard. He could feel the pressure it was creating. There was a narrow living room with a kitchen area in back. A staircase on the left. Cheap rented furniture and a lot of books. No television.

"I'm going to shower," she said. "Make yourself at home." She disappeared up the stairs.

He took a look around. The books were mostly law texts. The civil and criminal codes of Texas. Some constitutional commentaries. There was a phone on a side table with four speed dials programmed. Top slot was labeled Work. Second was / Home. Third was / Work. Fourth was M & D. On one of the bookshelves there was a photograph in a silver frame, showing a handsome couple who could have been in their middle fifties. It was a casual outdoors shot, in a city, probably New York. The man had gray hair and a long patrician face. The woman looked a little like an older version of Alice herself. Same hair, minus the color and the youthful bounce. The Park Avenue parents, no doubt. Mom and Dad, M & D. They looked O.K. He figured was probably a boyfriend. He checked, but there was no photograph of him. Maybe his picture was upstairs, next to her bed.

He sat in a chair and she came back down within ten minutes. Her hair was wet and combed, and she was wearing shorts again with a T-shirt that probably said Harvard Soccer except it had been washed so many times the writing was nearly illegible. The shorts were short and the T-shirt was thin and tight. She had dispensed with the sports bra. That was clear. She was barefoot and looked altogether sensational.