Echo Burning

automatically behind her. It was made from metal. She had seen those things before. They made a lot of noise. The diner opposite her school had one.
    The shower had stopped .
    She froze. Stood still, blank with panic. The door will make a noise. He’ll hear it. He’ll come out. He’ll chase me . She whirled around and faced the room.

    The I-10 interchange was a huge concrete construction laid down like a healing scar on the landscape. It was as big as a stadium and beyond it dull orange streetlights in Fort Stockton lit up the thinning clouds. Fort Stockton still had electricity. Better power lines. Alice kept her foot hard down and screamed three-quarters of the way around the interchange and launched northwest on 285. She passed the city limit doing ninety. There was a sign: Pecos 48 miles. Reacher leaned forward, moving his head rapidly side to side, scanning both shoulders of the road at once. Low buildings flashed past. Some of them were motels.
    “This could be entirely the wrong place,” Alice said.
    “We’ll know soon enough,” he replied.

    He turned the water off and rattled the curtain back and stepped out of the tub. Wrapped a towel around his waist and used another to dry his face. Looked at himself in the misty mirror and combed his hair with his fingers. Strapped his watch to his wrist. Dropped both towels on the bathroom floor and took two fresh ones off the little chrome rack. Wrapped one around his waist and draped the other over his shoulder like a toga.
    He stepped out of the bathroom. Light spilled out with him. It fell across the room in a broad yellow bar. He stopped dead. Stared at the empty bed.

    Inside three minutes they had passed three motels and Reacher thought all three of them were wrong. It was about guessing and feeling now, about living in a zone where he was blanking out everything except the tiny murmurs from his subconscious mind. Overt analysis would ruin it. He could make a lengthy case for or against any particular place. He could talk himself into paralysis. So he was listening to nothing at all except the quiet whispers from the back of his brain. And they were saying: not that one. No. No .

    He took a dazed involuntary step toward the bed, like seeing it from a different angle might put her back in it. But nothing changed. There was just the rumpled sheet, half pushed down, half pushed aside. The pillow, at an angle, dented with the shape of her head. He turned and checked the window. It was closed tight and locked from the inside. Then he ran to the door. Short desperate steps, dodging furniture all the way. The chain was off. The lock was clicked back.
    What?
    He eased the handle down. Opened the door. The Do Not Disturb tag was lying on the concrete walk, a foot from the doorway.
    She’d gotten out.
    He fixed the door so it wouldn’t lock behind him and ran out into the night, barefoot, wearing just his towels, one around his waist and the other like a toga. He ran ten paces into the parking lot and stood still. He was panting. Shock, fear, sudden exertion. It was warm again. There was a heavy vegetable stink in the air, wet earth and flowers and leaves. Trees were dripping. He spun a complete circle. Where the hell did she go? Where? A kid that age, she’d have just run for it. As fast as she could. Probably toward the road. He took a single step after her and then whirled around. Back towardthe door. He’d need his clothes. Couldn’t chase her in a couple of towels.

    The low clumps of buildings petered out three or four miles before they were due to hit the bridge. They just stopped being there. There was just desert. He stared through the windshield into the empty distance and thought of every road he had ever seen and asked himself: are there going to be more buildings up ahead? Or nothing now until we hit the outskirts of Pecos thirty miles away?
    “Turn around,” he said.
    “Now?”
    “We’ve seen all we’re going to see.”
    She hit the brakes and pulled a violent turn, shoulder to shoulder across the road. Fishtailed a little on the wet gravel and straightened and headed back south.
    “Slower now,” he said. “Now we’re them. We’re looking at this with their eyes.”

    Ellie was lying completely still on the high shelf in the closet. She was good at hiding. Everybody said so. She was good at climbing, too, so she liked to hide high up. Like in the horse barn. Her favorite place was high up on top of the straw bales. The closet shelf