Lee Child - MatchUp

His eyes opened.

He cocked his head at a noise.

Outside the bathroom, but inside the room. Or maybe not inside the room so much as outside in the hallway, because he could’ve sworn he heard the door to the room click closed.

Jeffrey turned off the shower. He opened the door and turned on the light. No girl in the bed. No pager. No wallet. No keys.

She’d even taken his ChapStick.

“Motherfuck.”

He could see every corner of the room, but he still checked on the other side of the bed, under the bed, looking for anything, but especially his pants. He found his right tennis shoe under the desk and jammed his foot into it on his way out the door.

Which closed behind him.

He patted his pockets for the key, but there were no pockets.

Somewhere not far away, a door opened on squeaky hinges. He looked up the hallway, which T-d off at the end, one side going to the elevators, the other to the exit stairs.

The door closed with the heavy, metal clunk of a fire exit door.

He bolted up the hall, lopsided on one shoe, each step jarring some truth into his hungover brain. That he wore wet, orange boxer shorts, a soaked white T-shirt, one sock, one shoe and no wallet, no pager, no ID, no car keys, and no fucking ChapStick.

He rounded the corner on his shoed foot, the waffle sole ripping shag from the carpet. He shouldered open the exit door and grabbed the metal railings of the stairs so that he could slide down on his palms.

Fourth floor, which meant that the sound of feet hitting the treads two floors below was the girl not named Shayna. He glanced over the side and saw two things. Her hand on the railing and the leg of his jeans flapping as she barreled down the stairs.

“Stop.”

Jeffrey swung around the landing like a monkey in a Tarzan movie.

“Stop,” he bellowed again, using his cop voice, which should be just as effective with thieves here as it was back in Birmingham.

Not-Shayna had hit the bottom floor. He saw the door close as his socked foot slipped across the last landing. He caught himself before he slid down the stairs. He pushed himself off the last step, exploding against the exit door, lunging into the lobby, ready to keep running in whatever direction the girl led him, but was stopped cold by a group of missionaries. Or he guessed they were missionaries, because their bright blue T-shirts shouted, ASK ME ABOUT BEING A MISSIONARY FOR JESUS.

“Jesus,” he mumbled, because that was the word that stuck in his head.

There were at least thirty of them crowding the lobby, all blond with eyes as blue as their shirts, all teenagers, both men and women with cherubic cheeks lit up red with zeal for the Lord. He tried to look over the crowd, to discern which direction to go next, but there were no telltale swinging doors or arrows pointing the way.

One of the missionaries said, “Holy crap, mister. You’re in your underwear.”

“Running shorts,” he said, resisting the urge to cover himself. “Training for a marathon.”

“With just one shoe?”

“Half marathon.”

Jeffrey made his way through the crowd of blue shirts, stepping over suitcases and duffel bags, scanning the floor for his jeans or his wallet in case these missionaries, by some miracle, were going to save him.

The woman at the front desk already had her lips pursed when he approached. He’d never met her in his life, but she said, “You again.”

“Me again,” he echoed, switching up the inflection so that it could be a statement or a question.

The corner of her lip trilled, but not like an old lady pucker, more like what you’d see from a pit bull right before it ripped off your nut sack with its bare teeth.

“Whatchu doin’ down here in your underwear again?” she asked.

He chose to ignore the “again,” asking, “Did you see that woman I was with come through here?”

“You mean my daughter?”

Jeffrey took a moment to collect his thoughts.

He’d taken reports off idiots who’d been rolled by women. At least Not-Shayna hadn’t been a prostitute, though then again he’d had sex with her and she’d taken all his money, and on the other hand as a cop himself, he knew that no cop believed the guy in his boxers who said he was rolled by a woman who wasn’t a prostitute. But goddamn, he’d never paid for sex in his life. He’d played football at Auburn for two years. He was pretty much guaranteed sex until they carted him off to the old folks home, and even then he was pretty sure there’d be some Tigers who would take care of his War Eagle. Though it pained him to say this, for right now, at this moment, the football didn’t matter. Half of policing was knowing how to lay down a threat.

He could talk his way out of this.

He was in the process of opening his mouth when he heard the distinctive, guttural roar of a 1968 Mustang with a hole in the carburetor and a length of twine holding up the muffler.

“Shit.”

He turned toward the front door.

The missionaries parted like the Red Sea for everybody except Moses, which was to say not at all. He shoved them out of his way, going faster than he ever had up the football field, which likely was why he’d only played two years for Auburn.

He ran through the parking lot, arms and legs pumping under the clouded glow of the receding moon. The Mustang had a healthy head start. It was already making a right onto the main road.

Jeffrey kept running, even as he became aware of three things.

One was that it was pointless to chase a car on foot. Even with two shoes, the car was always going to win.

Two took longer to register, and that was the knowledge that the temperature had dropped about thirty degrees from the day before. This didn’t come as a revelation so much as a series of contractions. The muscles in his legs cramped. His abs cramped. His arms cramped. Other things started to shrink from the cold, too.

But none of this distracted from number three, which was the real killer. The Mustang was not his Mustang. It was likely a ’68, and it had the same mixture of faded paint and primer, but his Mustang was sitting exactly where he’d parked it last night.

Somehow, Not-Shayna had stolen the wrong car.

He slowed to a jog.

The Mustang that wasn’t his Mustang was turning again, this time into the adjacent parking lot. Another Alpine hotel. Another German word for its name. He checked over his shoulder. The moon was squinting over one lone peak, blue early morning sky casting an ominous shadow over the full parking lot. Every pant of breath out of his mouth showed a puff of air in front of his face.

The Mustang slowed as it weaved through the next door parking lot. Not-Shayna looked distracted, which was good because he ran parallel to the car, head low as he shielded himself behind a bunch of other cars. He ended up crouched at the front wheel of a big blue school bus that must have belonged to the missionaries because it too said ASK ME ABOUT BEING A MISSIONARY FOR JESUS.

The Mustang turned a third time, heading down an alleyway that separated the Schussel Mountain Lodge from the Schloss Linderhof, which was done up like a cardboard castle had thrown up on a Motel 6.

Footsteps.

A young black man holding a steaming cup of coffee was leaving the Linderhof lobby. He tipped his Cleveland Indians hat at Jeffrey as he continued down the sidewalk. You didn’t see many Cleveland fans in Helen. Or black people for that matter. He nodded back like it was perfectly normal to be crouched in a parking lot wearing one sock and one shoe and orange underwear in a town built like an Alpine village.

He waited until the man was out of sight, then kept his knees bent low as he headed around the back of the Schussel Lodge on the opposite side of the alleyway. Without the parking lot lights, he could barely see more than a few yards in front of him. His entire body shuddered from the cold. The grass was wet because of course it was wet. His one sock got soaked, basically becoming a cube of ice as he made his way to the rear of the building. He saw the nose of the Mustang peeking out from the alley. Maybe fifty yards away. There was a dip in the pavement, a downhill dive to three giant green Dumpsters that stood sentry. The entire area was bathed in light from the xenon bulbs overhead. His ears tensed in that weird way that reminded him that Darwin had been right.