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Echo Burning

"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 Rodriguez’s number in Abilene. Rodriguez 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?"

Rodriguez 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 just looked at him.

"You’re crazy," she said.

He nodded. "It’s only a theory. It needs to be tested. But we can do that."

"How?"

"We just wait and see who comes for us."

She said nothing.

"Let’s go check in with Walker," he said.

* * *

They walked through the heat to the courthouse building. There was a breeze again, blowing in from the south. It felt damp and urgent. Walker was on his own in his office, looking very tired. His desk was a mess of phone books and paper.

"Well, it’s started," he said. "Biggest thing you ever saw. FBI and state police, roadblocks everywhere, helicopters in the air, more than a hundred and fifty people on the ground. But there’s a storm coming in, which ain’t going to help."

"Reacher thinks they’re holed up in a motel," Alice said.

Walker nodded, grimly. "If they are, they’ll find them. Manhunt like this, it’s going to be pretty relentless."

"You need us anymore?" Reacher asked.

Walker shook his head. "We should leave it to the professionals now. I’m going home, grab a couple hours rest."

Reacher looked around the office. The door, the floor, the windows, the desk, the filing cabinets.

"I guess we’ll do the same thing," he said. "We’ll go to Alice’s place. Call us if you need us. Or if you get any news, O.K.?"

Walker nodded.

"I will," he said. "I promise."

* * *

"We’ll go as FBI again," the woman said. "It’s a no-brainer."

"All of us?" the driver asked. "What about the kid?"

The woman paused. She had to go, because she was the shooter. And if she had to split the team two and one, she wanted the tall guy with her, not the driver.

"You stay with the kid," she said.

There was a moment’s silence.

"Abort horizon?" the driver asked.

It was their standard operating procedure. Whenever the team was split, the woman set an abort horizon. Which meant that you waited until the time had passed, and then, if the team wasn’t together again, you got the hell out, every man for himself.

"Four hours, O.K.?" the woman said. "Done and dusted."

She stared at him a second longer, eyebrows raised, to make sure he understood the implication of her point. Then she knelt and unzipped the heavy valise.

"So let’s do it," she said.

They did the exact same things they had done for Al Eugene, except they did them a whole lot faster because the Crown Vic was parked in the motel’s lot, not hidden in a dusty turnout miles from anywhere. The lot was dimly lit and mostly empty, and there was nobody around, but it still wasn’t a secure feeling. They pulled the wheel covers off and threw them in the trunk. They attached the communications antennas to the rear window and the trunk lid. They zipped blue jackets over their shirts. They loaded up with spare ammunition clips. They squared the souvenir ballcaps on their heads. They checked the loads in their nine-millimeter pistols and racked the slides and clicked the safety catches and jammed the guns in their pockets. The tall fair man slipped into the driver’s seat. The woman paused outside the motel room door.

"Four hours," she said again. "Done and dusted."

The driver nodded and closed the door behind her. Glanced over at the kid in the bed. Done and dusted meant leave nothing at all behind, especially live witnesses.

* * *

Reacher took the Heckler & Koch and the maps of Texas and the FedEx packet out of the VW and carried them into Alice’s house, straight through the living room and into the kitchen area. It was still and cool inside. And dry. The central air was running hard. He wondered for a second what her utility bills must be like.

"Where’s the scale?" he asked.

She pushed past him and squatted down and opened a cupboard. Used two hands and lifted a kitchen scale onto the countertop. It was a big piece of equipment. It was new, but it looked old. A retro design. It had a big white upright face the size of a china plate, like the speedometer on an old-fashioned sedan. It was faced with a bulbous plastic window with a chromium bezel. There was a red pointer behind the window and large numbers around the circumference. A manufacturer’s name and a printed warning: Not Legal For Trade.

"Is it accurate?" he asked.

Alice shrugged.

"I think so," she said. "The nut roast comes out O.K."

There was a chromium bowl resting in a cradle above the dial. He tapped on it with his finger and the pointer bounced up to a pound and then back down to zero. He took the magazine out of the Heckler & Koch and laid the empty gun in the bowl. It made a light metallic sound. The pointer spun up to two pounds and six ounces. Not an especially light weapon. About right, he figured. His memory told him the catalog weight was in the region of forty-three ounces, with an empty magazine.

He put the gun back together and opened cupboards until he found a store of food. He lifted out an unopened bag of granulated sugar. It was in a gaudy yellow packet that said 5 Ibs. on the side.

"What are you doing?" Alice asked.

"Weighing things," he said.

He stood the sugar upright in the chromium bowl. The pointer spun up to five pounds exactly. He put the sugar back in the cupboard and tried a cellophane-wrapped packet of chopped nuts. The pointer read two pounds. He looked at the label on the packet and saw 2 Ibs.

"Good enough," he said.

He folded the maps and laid them across the top of the bowl. They weighed one pound and three ounces. He took them off and put the nuts back on. Still two pounds. He put the nuts back in the cupboard and tried the FedEx packet. It weighed one pound and one ounce. He added the maps and the pointer inched up to two pounds and four ounces. Added the loaded gun on top and the pointer jerked around to five pounds and three ounces. If he had wanted to, he could have calculated the weight of the bullets.

"O.K., let’s go," he said. "But we need gas. Long ride ahead. And maybe you should get out of that dress. You got something more active?"

"I guess," she said, and headed for the stairs.

"You got a screwdriver?" he called after her.

"Under the sink," she called back.

He bent down and found a brightly colored toolbox in the cupboard. It was made out of plastic and looked like a lunch pail. He clicked it open and selected a medium-sized screwdriver with a clear yellow handle. A minute later Alice came back down the stairs wearing baggy khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulder seams.

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