Echo Burning

electricity for hairdryers and shavers.”
    “There are hundreds of motels here,” she said. “Thousands, probably.”
    He nodded. “And they’re moving around, almost certainly. A different place every day. Basic security.”
    “So how do we find the right one tonight?”
    He held the map where it caught the light.
    “We find it in our heads. Think like them, figure out what we’d do. Then that should be the same thing as what they’d do.”
    “Hell of a gamble.”
    “Maybe, maybe not.”
    “So are we going to start now?”
    “No, we’re going back to your office now.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I don’t like frontal assaults. Not against people this good, not with a kid in the crossfire.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “We divide and rule. We lure two of them out. Maybe we capture a tongue.”
    “A tongue? What’s that?”
    “An enemy prisoner who’ll talk.”
    “How do we do that?”
    “We decoy them. They’re already aware we know about them. So they’ll come for us, try a little damage control.”
    “They know we know? But how?”
    “Somebody just told them.”
    “Who?”
    Reacher didn’t reply. Just stared down at the map. Looked at the faint red lines that represented roads meandering across thousands of empty miles. Closed his eyes and tried hard to imagine what they looked like in reality.

    Alice parked in the lot behind the law offices. She had a key to the rear door. There were a lot of shadows, and Reacher was very vigilant as they walked. But they made it inside O.K. The old store was deserted and dusty and silent and hot. The air conditioner had been turned off at the end of the day. Reacher stood still and listened for the inaudible quiver of people waiting. It’s a primeval sensation, received and understood far back in the brain. It wasn’t there.
    “Call Walker and give him an update,” he said. “Tell him we’re here.”
    He made her sit back-to-back with him at somebody else’s desk in the center of the room, so he could watch the front entrance while she watched the rear. He rested the pistol in his lap with the safety off. Then he dialed Sergeant Rodríguez’s number in Abilene. Rodríguez was still on duty, and he sounded unhappy about it.
    “We checked with the bar association,” he said. “There are no lawyers licensed in Texas called Chester A. Arthur.”
    “I’m from Vermont,” Reacher said. “I’m volunteering down here, pro bono.”
    “Like hell you are.”
    The line went quiet.
    “I’ll deal,” Reacher said. “Names, in exchange for conversation.”
    “With who?”
    “With you, maybe. How long have you been a Ranger?”
    “Seventeen years.”
    “How much do you know about the border patrol?”
    “Enough, I guess.”
    “You prepared to give me a straight yes-no answer? No comebacks?”
    “What’s the question?”
    “You recall the border patrol investigation twelve years ago?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Was it a whitewash?”
    Rodríguez paused a long moment, and then he answered, with a single word.
    “I’ll call you back,” Reacher said.
    He hung up and turned and spoke over his shoulder to Alice.
    “You get Walker?” he asked.
    “He’s up to speed,” she said. “He wants us to wait for him here, for when he’s through with the FBI.”
    Reacher shook his head. “Can’t wait here. Too obvious. We need to stay on the move. We’ll go to him, and then we’ll get back on the road.”
    She paused a beat. “Are we in serious danger?”
    “Nothing we can’t handle,” he said.
    She said nothing.
    “You worried?” he asked.
    “A little,” she said. “A lot, actually.”
    “You can’t be,” he said. “I’m going to need your help.”
    “Why was the lie about the ring different?”
    “Because everything else is hearsay. But I found out for myself the ring wasn’t a fake. Direct personal discovery, not hearsay. Feels very different.”
    “I don’t see how it’s important.”
    “It’s important because I’ve got a whole big theory going and the lie about the ring screws it up like crazy.”
    “Why do you want to believe her so much?”
    “Because she had no money with her.”
    “What’s the big theory?”
    “Remember that Balzac quotation? And Marcuse?”
    Alice nodded.
    “I’ve got another one,” Reacher said. “Something Ben Franklin once wrote.”
    “What are you, a walking encyclopedia?”
    “I remember stuff I read, is all. And I remember something Bobby Greer said, too, about armadillos.”
    She