Echo Burning

said. “He’s offering a full and voluntary confession. But he wants you to understand he was just the driver.”
    “He wasn’t a shooter?”
    Reacher shook his head. “But he saw everything.”
    “What about the kidnap?”
    “He wasn’t there. He was guarding her afterward, is all. And there’s a lot of other stuff, too, going back a number of years.”
    “Situation like this, he talks, he’s going away for a long time.”
    “He knows that. He accepts it. He’s happy about it. He’s looking for redemption.”
    The cops just glanced at each other and went into thebathroom. Reacher heard people shuffling and moving around and handcuffs clicking.
    “I have to get back,” Alice said. “I have to prepare the writ. Lot of work involved, with habeas corpus.”
    “Take the Crown Vic,” Reacher said. “I’ll wait here with Ellie.”
    The cops brought the driver out of the bathroom. He was dressed and his hands were cuffed behind him and each cop had hold of an elbow. He was bent over and white with pain and already talking fast. The cops hustled him straight out to their cruiser and the room door swung shut behind them. There was the muffled sound of car doors slamming and the growl of an engine.
    “What did you do to him?” Alice whispered.
    Reacher shrugged. “I’m a hard man. Like you said.”

    He asked her to send the night clerk down with a master key and she walked away toward the office. He turned to Ellie.
    “You O.K.?” he said.
    “You don’t need to keep asking me,” she replied.
    “Tired?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Your mom will come soon,” he said. “We’ll wait for her right here. But let’s change rooms, shall we? This one’s got a broken window.”
    She giggled. “You broke it. With that rock.”
    He heard the Crown Vic start up in the distance. Heard its tires on the road.
    “Let’s try room eight,” he said. “It’s nice and clean. Nobody’s been in it. It can be ours.”
    She took his hand and they walked out together and along the concrete walkway to number eight, a dozen steps for him, three dozen for her, damp filmy tracks left in the wet behind both of them. The clerk met them with a pass key and Ellie got straight into the bed nearest the window. Reacher lay down on the other and watched her until she was sound asleep. Then he wrapped his arm under his head and tried to doze.

    * * *

    Less than two hours later the new day dawned bright and hot and the air stirred and the metal roof clicked and cracked and the timbers under it creaked and moved. Reacher opened his eyes after a short uneasy rest and swung his legs to the floor. Crept quietly to the door and opened it up and stepped outside. The eastern horizon was far off to his right beyond the motel office. It was flaring with pure white light. There were rags of old cloud in the sky. They were burning off as he watched. No storm today . People had talked about it for a week, but it wasn’t going to happen. Last night’s hour of rain was all it was ever going to be. A complete misfire.
    He crept back into the room and lay down again. Ellie was still asleep. She had kicked the sheet down and her shirt had ridden up and he could see the plump band of pink skin at her waist. Her legs were bent, like she had been running in her dreams. But her arms were thrown up above her head, which some army psychiatrist had once told him was a sign of security. A kid sleeps like that, he had said, deep down it feels safe . Safe? She was some kid. That was for damn sure. Most adults he knew would be wrecks after an experience like hers. For weeks. Or longer. But she wasn’t. Maybe she was too young to fully comprehend. Or maybe she was just a tough kid. One or the other. He didn’t know. He had no experience. He closed his eyes again.
    He opened them for the second time thirty minutes later because Ellie was standing right next to him, shaking his shoulder.
    “I’m hungry,” she said.
    “Me too,” he said back. “What would you like?”
    “Ice cream,” she said.
    “For breakfast?”
    She nodded.
    “O.K.,” he said. “But eggs first. Maybe bacon. You’re a kid. You need good nutrition.”
    He fumbled the phone book out of the bedside drawer and found a diner listed that was maybe a mile nearer Fort Stockton. He called them and bribed them with the promise of atwenty-dollar tip to drive breakfast out to the motel. He sent Ellie into the bathroom to get washed up. By the time she came out, the food had