Lee Child - Echo Burning

"It's right on empty, Reacher," she said. "Below empty."

"Don't worry," he said again.

"Why not?"

"You'll see."

He kept his eyes on the windshield. She drove on, as fast as the Jeep would go. The engine was growling loud. A gruff old straight-six, drinking gasoline at the rate of a pint every minute.

"Use two-wheel drive," he said. "More economical."

She wrestled with the drivetrain lever and wrenched it forward. The front end of the car went quiet. The steering stopped fighting her. She drove on. Another half mile. Then a mile. She glanced down at the dash again.

"We're running on fumes," she said.

"Don't worry," he said for the third time.

Another mile. The engine stumbled and coughed once and ran ragged for a second and then picked up again. Air in the fuel line, he thought, or sludge dredged up from the bottom of the tank.

"Reacher, we're out of gas, "Alice said.

"Don't worry about it."

"Why not?"

Another mile.

"That's why not," he said suddenly.

The right edge of the headlight beam washed over the ragged gravel shoulder and lit up a steel-blue Ford Crown Victoria. It had four VHP antennas on the back and no wheel covers. It was just sitting there, inert and abandoned, facing north.

"We'll use that," he said. "It'll have most of a tank. They were well organized."

She braked hard and pulled in behind it. "This is theirs? Why is it here?"

"Walker left it here."

"How did you know?"

"It's pretty obvious. They came down from Pecos in two cars, this and the Lincoln. They dumped the Lincoln here and used the Ford the rest of the way. Then Walker ran away from the mesa, put the pick-up back in the barn, drove the Ford back up here, retrieved his Lincoln and came back down in it for our benefit. To make us think it was his first visit, if we happened to be still alive and looking."

"What about the keys?"

"They'll be in it. Walker wasn't in the right frame of mind to worry about Hertz losing a rental car."

Alice jumped out and checked. Gave a thumbs-up. The keys were in it. Reacher followed her with the maps. They left the Greers' Jeep with the doors standing open and the motor idling through the last of its gas. They got into the Crown Vic and he racked his seat back and she pulled hers forward. She fired it up and they were on the road again within thirty seconds, already doing sixty miles an hour.

"It's three quarters full," she said. "And it drives much better."

He nodded. It felt low and fast and smooth. Exactly like a big sedan should.

"I'm sitting where Al Eugene sat," he said.

She glanced at him. He smiled.

"Go faster," he said. "Nobody will stop you. We look just like a squad car."

She accelerated to seventy-five, then eighty. He found the dome light and clicked it on and returned to the maps.

"O.K., where were we?" he said.

"The McDonald Observatory," she said. "You didn't like it."

He nodded. "It was too far out."

He tilted the map to catch the light. Stared hard at it. Concentrate, Reacher. Make it work. If you can.

"What's at Balmorhea State Recreation Area?" he asked. It was still southwest of Pecos, but only thirty miles out. The right sort of distance.

"It's a desert oasis," she said. "Like a huge lake, very clear. You can swim and scuba dive there."

But not the right sort of place.

"I don't think so," he said.

He checked northeast, up to thirty miles out.

"What about Monahans Sandhills?"

"Four thousand acres of sand dunes. Looks like the Sahara."

"That's it? And people go there?"

"It's very impressive."

He went quiet and checked the map all over again.

"What about Fort Stockton?" he asked.

"It's just a town," she said. "No different than Pecos, really." Then she glanced across at him. "But Old Fort Stockton is worth seeing, I guess."

He looked at the map. Old Fort Stockton was marked as a historic ruin, north of the town itself. Nearer Pecos. He measured the distance. Maybe forty-five miles.

Possible.

"What is it exactly?" he asked.

"Heritage site," she said. "An old military fort. The Buffalo Soldiers were there. Confederates had torn the place down. The Buffaloes rebuilt it. Eighteen sixty-seven, I think."

He checked again. The ruins were southeast of Pecos, accessible from Route 285, which looked like a decent road. Probably a fast road. Probably a typical road. He closed his eyes. Alice raced on. The Crown Vic was very quiet. It was warm and comfortable. He wanted to go to sleep. He was very tired. Wet spray from the tires hissed against the underside.

"I like the Old Fort Stockton area," he said.

"You think they were there?"

He was quiet again, another whole mile.

"Not there, "he said. "But nearby. Think about it, from their point of view."

"I can't," she said. "I'm not like them."

"So pretend," he said. "What were they?"

"I don't know."

"They were professionals. Quiet and unobtrusive. Like chameleons. Instinctively good at camouflage. Good at not being noticed. Put yourself in their shoes, Alice."

"I can't," she said again.

"Think like them. Imagine. Get into it. Who are they? I saw them and thought they were a sales team. Rusty Greer thought they were social workers. Apparently Al Eugene thought they were FBI agents. So think like them. Be them. Your strength is you look very normal and very ordinary. You're white, and you look very middle-class, and you've got this Crown Victoria, which when it's not all tricked up with radio antennas looks like an ordinary family sedan. The FBI con helped, but basically you looked harmless enough that Al Eugene felt safe to stop for you, but also somehow commanding enough that he also had to. Wanted to. So you're ordinary, but you're respectable and plausible. And businesslike."

"O.K."

"But now you've got a kid with you. So what are you now?"

"What?"

"Now you're a normal, ordinary, respectable, plausible middle-class family."

"But there were three of them."

He was quiet a beat. Kept his eyes closed.

"One of the men was an uncle," he said. "You're a middle-class family, on vacation together in your sedan. But you're not a loud Disneyland type of family. You're not in shorts and brightly colored T-shirts. You look quiet, maybe a little earnest. Maybe a little nerdy. Or maybe a little studious. Maybe you look like a school principal's family. Or an accountant's. You're obviously from out of state, so you're traveling. Where to? Ask yourself the same question they must have asked themselves. Where will you blend in? Where's the safest place around here? Where would an earnest, studious, middle-class family go, with their six-and-a-half-year-old daughter? Where's a proper, enlightening, educational kind of a place to take her? Even though she's way too young and doesn't care? Even though people laugh behind your back at how politically correct and cloyingly diligent you are?"

"Old Fort Stockton," Alice said.

"Exactly. You show the kid the glorious history of the African-American soldiers, even though you'd have a heart attack if she grew up and wanted to date one. But you're driving a Ford, not a BMW or a Cadillac. You're sensible. Which means not rich, basically. Careful about your expenditure. You resent overpaying for something. Motels, just as much as cars. So you drive in from the north and you stay at a place far enough out to be reasonable. Not the dumps in the middle of nowhere. But on the first distant fringes of the Fort Stockton tourist area. Where the value is good."

He opened his eyes.

"That's where you would stay, Alice," he said.

"It is?"

He nodded. "A place where they get plenty of earnest, striving, not-rich middle-class families on vacation. The sort of place that gets recommended in boring AAA magazines. A place where you fit right in. A place with lots of people exactly like you. A place where you won't stand out in anybody's memory for a second. And a place where you're only thirty, thirty-five minutes from Pecos by a fast road."