Echo Burning

behind him. Looked over at the bed. Looked at the sleeping child in it.

    * * *

    “You drive,” he called. “North, O.K.?”
    He pushed her toward the driver’s door and ran around the hood. She pulled her seat forward and he racked his backward. Unfolded the maps on his knees. To his left the Red House was burning fiercely. All the windows were bright with flame. Both floors now. The maid ran out of the kitchen door, wrapped in a bathrobe. The light of the fire caught her face. There was no expression on it.
    “O.K., let’s go,” he said.
    She slammed the selector into Drive and gunned the motor. The transfer case was still locked in four-wheel drive and all four tires spun and scattered wet stones and the car took off. She slewed past Walker’s Lincoln. Made the right under the gate without pausing. Accelerated hard. He turned his head and saw the first flames appear at the eaves of the roof. They licked outward and paused and ran horizontally, searching for sustenance. Steam was pouring off the soaked shingles and mixing with smoke. Rusty and Bobby and the maid were watching it drift, hypnotized. He glanced away and didn’t look back again. Just stared ahead and then riffed through the maps on his knees and found the large-scale sheet showing Pecos County in its entirety. Then he reached up and clicked the dome light on.
    “Faster,” he said. “I’ve got a real bad feeling about this.”

    The four hours were long gone, but he waited anyway. He felt a certain reluctance. How could he not? He wasn’t a monster. He would do what he had to do, for sure, but he wasn’t going to enjoy it, exactly.
    He walked over and opened the door again and hung the Do Not Disturb tag on the outside handle. Closed the door and locked it from the inside. He appreciated the locks motels put on their doors. A big lever to turn on the inside, a satisfying heavy click, smooth and oily, no corresponding catch on the outside. It helped. Absolute undisturbed security was a useful thing. He slipped the chain on and started into the room.

    Alice drove as fast as she dared. The Jeep wasn’t a great road vehicle. It rolled too much and rocked violently fromside to side. The steering was vague. It required constant correction. It was a problem. But Reacher ignored it and just held the map high, where it caught the light from the roof console. He stared hard at it and checked the scale and held his finger and thumb apart like a little compass and traced a circle.
    “You done any tourist stuff around here?” he asked.
    She nodded at the wheel. “Some, I guess. I went to the McDonald Observatory. It was great.”
    He checked the map. The McDonald Observatory was southwest of Pecos, high up in the Davis Mountains.
    “That’s eighty miles,” he said. “Too far.”
    “For what?”
    “For them to have been today. I think they’ll have been a half hour from Pecos by road, max. Twenty-five miles, thirty tops.”
    “Why?”
    “To be close to Walker. He might have planned on smuggling Carmen out, if necessary. Or maybe bringing Ellie in to see her. Whatever it took to convince her that the threat was real. So I think they’ll have holed up somewhere nearby.”
    “And near a tourist attraction?”
    “Definitely,” he said. “That’s key.”
    “Can this work?” she asked. “Finding the right place in your head?”
    “It’s worked for me before.”
    “How many times? As a percentage?”
    He ignored the question. Went back to the map. She gripped the wheel and drove. Dropped her eyes to the speedometer.
    “Oh God,” she whispered.
    He didn’t look up. “What?”
    “We’re out of gas. It’s right on empty. The warning light is on.”
    He was quiet for a second.
    “Keep going,” he said. “We’ll be O.K.”
    She kept her foot hard down.
    “How? You think the gauge is broken?”
    He looked up. Glanced ahead.
    “Just keep going,” he said.
    “We’re going to run out,” she said.
    “Don’t worry,” he said.
    She drove on. The car rocked hard. The headlights bounced ahead of them. The tires whined on the streaming blacktop. She glanced down again.
    “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