Lee Child - Echo Burning

"Don't you?"

"Of course not. It was some guy, threatening her, forcing her to lie. Think about it, Walker. First time your ADA saw her, she wouldn't say a word. Twenty-seven hours later, she's confessing. Only thing that happened in between was a bunch of calls from this guy."

"But what kind of threat could make her say that?"

* * *

The killing crew was uneasy in its new role as baby-sitter. Each member felt exactly the same way, each for the exact same reasons. Holding a child hostage was not a normal part of their expertise. Taking her in the first place had been. That was a fairly standard operation, based as always on lure and deception. The woman and the tall fair man had gone to the Red House as a pair, because they figured that would match the public's perception of how social workers operate. They had arrived in the big official-looking sedan and used a brisk professional manner. They had mixed it with a generous helping of pious do-gooder sanctimony, like they were desperately concerned with the child's welfare above all else. They had a thick wad of bogus papers to display. The papers looked exactly like Family Services warrants and relevant authorizations from state agencies. But the grandmother hardly even looked at them. She offered no resistance at all. It struck them as unnatural. She just handed the kid over, like she was real glad about it.

The kid put up no resistance, either. She was very earnest and silent about the whole thing. Like she was trying to be on her best behavior. Like she was trying to please these new adults. So they just put her in the car and drove her away. No tears, no screaming, no tantrums. It went well, all things considered. Very well. About as effortless as the Al Eugene operation.

But then they departed from the usual. Radically. Standard practice would have been to drive straight to a scouted location and pull the triggers. Conceal the body and then get the hell out. But this task was different. They had to keep her hidden. And alive and unharmed. At least for a spell. Maybe days and days. It was something they had never done before. And professionals get uneasy with things they've never done before. They always do. That's the nature of professionalism. Professionals feel best when they stick to what they know.

* * *

"Call Family Services," Reacher said. "Right now."

Hack Walker just stared at him.

"You asked the question," Reacher said. "What kind of a threat could make her confess to something she didn't do? Don't you see? They must have gotten her kid."

Walker stared a beat longer, frozen. Then he wrestled himself into action and unlocked another drawer and rattled it open. Lifted out a heavy black binder. Opened it up and thumbed through and grabbed his phone and dialed a number. There was no answer. He dabbed the cradle and dialed another. Some kind of an evening emergency contact. It was picked up and he asked the question, using Ellie's full name, Mary Ellen Greer. There was a long pause. Then an answer. Walker listened. Said nothing. Just put the phone down, very slowly and carefully, like it was made out of glass.

"They never heard of her," he said.

Silence. Walker closed his eyes, and then opened them again.

"O.K.," he said. "Resources are going to be a problem. State police, of course. And the FBI, because this is a kidnap. But we've got to move immediately. Speed is absolutely paramount here. It always is, with kidnap cases. They could be taking her anywhere. So I want you two to go down to Echo right now, get the full story from Rusty. Descriptions and everything."

"Rusty won't talk to us," Reacher said. "She's too hostile. What about the Echo sheriff?"

"That guy is useless. He's probably drunk right now. You'll have to do it."

"Waste of time," Reacher said.

Walker opened another drawer and took two chromium stars from a box. Tossed them onto the desk.

"Raise your right hands," he said. "Repeat after me."

He mumbled his way through some kind of an oath. Reacher and Alice repeated it back, as far as they could catch it. Walker nodded.

"Now you're sheriff's deputies," he said. "Valid throughout Echo County. Rusty will have to talk to you."

Reacher just stared at him.

"What?" Walker said.

"You can still do that here? Deputize people?"

"Sure I can," Walker said. "Just like the Wild West. Now get going, O.K.? I've got a million calls to make."

Reacher took his chromium star and stood up, an accredited law enforcement official again for the first time in four and a quarter years. Alice stood up alongside him.

"Meet back here directly," Walker called. "And good luck."

Eight minutes later they were in the yellow VW again, heading south toward the Red House for the second time that day.

* * *

The woman took the call. She let the phone ring four times while she got the voice-altering device out of her bag and switched it on. But she didn't need it. She didn't need to talk at all. She just listened, because it was a one-sided message, long and complex but basically clear and concise and unambiguous, and the whole thing was repeated twice. When it was over, she hung up the phone and put the electronics back in her bag.

"It's tonight," she said.

"What is?" the tall man asked.

"The supplementary job," she said. "The Pecos thing. Seems like the situation up there is unraveling slightly. They found Eugene's body."

"Already?"

"Shit," the dark man said.

"Yes, shit," the woman said. "So we move on the supplementary right away, tonight, before things get any worse."

"Who's the target?" the tall man asked.

"His name is Jack Reacher. Some drifter, ex-military. I've got a description. There's a girl lawyer in the picture, too. She'll need attention as well."

"We do them simultaneous with this baby-sitting gig?"

The woman shrugged. "Like we always said, we keep the baby-sitting going as long as possible, but we reserve the right to terminate when necessary."

The men looked at each other. Ellie watched them from the bed.

Reacher was not good company on the ride south. He didn't talk at all for the first hour and a half. Evening dark had fallen fast and he kept the VW's dome light on and studied the maps from the glove compartment. In particular he concentrated on a large-scale topographical sheet that showed the southern part of Echo County. The county boundary was a completely straight line running east to west. At its closest point, it was fifty miles from the Rio Grande. That made no sense to him.

"I don't understand why she lied about the diamond," he said.

Alice shrugged. She was pushing the little car as fast as it was willing to go.

"She lied about everything," she said.

"The ring was different," he said.

"Different how?"

"A different sort of lie. Like apples are different from oranges."

"I don't follow."

"The ring is the only thing I can't explain to myself."

"The only thing?"

"Everything else is coherent, but the ring is a problem."

She drove on, another mile. The power line poles came and went, flashing through the headlight beams for a split second each.

"You know what's going on, don't you?" she said.

"You ever done computer-aided design?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Me neither."

"So?"

"Do you know what it is?"

She shrugged again. "Vaguely, I guess."

"They can build a whole house or car or whatever, right there on the computer screen. They can paint it, decorate it, look at it. If it's a house, they can go in it, walk around. They can rotate it, look at the front, look at the back. If it's a car, they can see how it looks in daylight and in the dark. They can tilt it up and down, spin it around, examine it from every angle. They can crash it and see how it holds up. It's like a real thing, except it isn't. I guess it's a virtual thing."