"Not there, "he said. "But nearby. Think about it, from their point of view. "
"I can't," she said. "I'm not like them. "
"So pretend," he said. "What were they?"
"I don't know. "
"They were professionals. Quiet and unobtrusive. Like chameleons. Instinctively good at camouflage. Good at not being noticed. Put yourself in their shoes, Alice. "
"I can't," she said again.
"Think like them. Imagine. Get into it. Who are they? I saw them and thought they were a sales team. Rusty Greer thought they were social workers. Apparently Al Eugene thought they were FBI agents. So think like them. Be them. Your strength is you look very normal and very ordinary. You're white, and you look very middle-class, and you've got this Crown Victoria, which when it's not all tricked up with radio antennas looks like an ordinary family sedan. The FBI con helped, but basically you looked harmless enough that Al Eugene felt safe to stop for you, but also somehow commanding enough that he also had to. Wanted to. So you're ordinary, but you're respectable and plausible. And businesslike. "
"O. K. "
"But now you've got a kid with you. So what are you now?"
"What?"
"Now you're a normal, ordinary, respectable, plausible middle-class family. "
"But there were three of them. "
He was quiet a beat. Kept his eyes closed.
"One of the men was an uncle," he said. "You're a middle-class family, on vacation together in your sedan. But you're not a loud Disneyland type of family. You're not in shorts and brightly colored T-shirts. You look quiet, maybe a little earnest. Maybe a little nerdy. Or maybe a little studious. Maybe you look like a school principal's family. Or an accountant's. You're obviously from out of state, so you're traveling. Where to? Ask yourself the same question they must have asked themselves. Where will you blend in? Where's the safest place around here? Where would an earnest, studious, middle-class family go, with their six-and-a-half-year-old daughter? Where's a proper, enlightening, educational kind of a place to take her? Even though she's way too young and doesn't care? Even though people laugh behind your back at how politically correct and cloyingly diligent you are?"
"Old Fort Stockton," Alice said.
"Exactly. You show the kid the glorious history of the African-American soldiers, even though you'd have a heart attack if she grew up and wanted to date one. But you're driving a Ford, not a BMW or a Cadillac. You're sensible. Which means not rich, basically. Careful about your expenditure. You resent overpaying for something. Motels, just as much as cars. So you drive in from the north and you stay at a place far enough out to be reasonable. Not the dumps in the middle of nowhere. But on the first distant fringes of the Fort Stockton tourist area. Where the value is good. "
He opened his eyes.
"That's where you would stay, Alice," he said.
"It is?"
He nodded. "A place where they get plenty of earnest, striving, not-rich middle-class families on vacation. The sort of place that gets recommended in boring AAA magazines. A place where you fit right in. A place with lots of people exactly like you. A place where you won't stand out in anybody's memory for a second. And a place where you're only thirty, thirty-five minutes from Pecos by a fast road. "
Alice shrugged and nodded all at the same time.
"Good theory, I guess," she said. "Good logic. Question is, were they following the same logic?"
"I hope so," Reacher said. "Because we don't have time for a big search. I don't think we have much time for anything. I'm getting a bad feeling. I think she's in real danger now. "
Alice said nothing.
"Maybe the others were supposed to call in regularly," he said. "Maybe this third guy is about to panic. "
"So it's a hell of a gamble. "
He said nothing.
"Do the math," she said. "A forty-five-mile radius gives you a circle over six thousand square miles in area. And you want to pick one tiny pinpoint out of it?" He was quiet again, another mile.
Roll the dice, Reacher.
"I think they were pretty smart and careful," he said. "And their priorities were pretty obvious. They were looking at the same maps we are. So I think that's how they'd have done it. "
"But are you sure?"
He shrugged.
"Can't ever be sure," he said. "But that's how I'd have done it. That's the trick, Alice. Think like them. Never fails. "
"Never?"
He shrugged. "Sometimes. "
The sleeping crossroads hamlet was dead ahead. The school, the gas station, the diner. Pecos straight on, Old Fort Stockton to the right.
"Well?" she asked.
He said nothing.
"Well?" she asked again.
He stared through the windshield.
"Decision?" she said.
He said nothing. She braked hard and skidded a yard on the soaked road and came to a complete halt right on the melted stop line.
"Well?"
Roll the damn dice, Reacher.
"Make the turn," he said.
* * *
The driver decided to take a shower first. An excusable delay. He had time. The room was locked. The child was fast asleep. He stripped off his clothes and folded them neatly and placed them on his chair. Stepped into the bathroom. Pulled the shower curtain and set the water running.
Then he unwrapped a new bar of soap. He liked motel soaps. He liked the crisp paper packets, and the smell when you opened them. It bloomed out at you, clean and strong. He sniffed the shampoo. It was in a tiny plastic bottle. It smelled of strawberries. He read the label. Conditioning Shampoo, it said. He leaned in and placed the soap in the porcelain receptacle and balanced the shampoo on the rim of the tub. Pushed the curtain aside with his forearm and stepped into the torrent.
* * *
The road northea
st out of Echo was narrow and winding and clung to a hilly ridge that followed the course of the Coyanosa Draw. Now the big Ford was no longer ideal. It felt oversized and soft and ungainly. The blacktop was running with water flowing right to left across its surface. Heavy rills were pushing mud and grit over it in fan-shaped patterns. Alice was struggling to maintain forty miles an hour. She wasn't talking. Just hauling the wallowing sedan around an endless series of bends and looking pale under her tan. Like she was cold.
"You O. K. ?" he asked.
"Are you?" she asked back.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You just killed two people. Then saw a third die and a house burn down. "
He glanced away. Civilians.
"Water under the bridge," he said. "No use dwelling on it now. "
"That's a hell of an answer. "
"Why?"
"Doesn't stuff like that affect you at all?"
"I'm sorry I didn't get to ask them any questions. "
"Is that all you're sorry for?"
He was quiet for a second.
"Tell me about that house you're renting," he said.
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"My guess is it's a short-term kind of a place, people in and out all the time, not very well maintained. My guess is it was kind of dirty when you moved in. "
"So?"
"Am I right?"
She nodded at the wheel. "I spent the first week cleaning. "
"Grease on the stove, sticky floors?"
"Yes. "
"Bugs in the closets?" She nodded again. "Roaches in the kitchen?"
"A colony," she said. "Big ones. "
"And you got rid of them?"
"Of course I did. "
"How?"
"Poison. "
"So tell me how you felt about that. "
She glanced sideways. "You comparing those people to cockroaches?"
He shook his head. "Not really. I like cockroaches better. They're just little packets of DNA scuttling around, doing what they have to do. Walker and his buddies didn't have to do what they did. They had a choice. They could have been upstanding human beings. But they chose not to be. Then they chose to mess with me, which was the final straw, and they got what they got. So I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. I'm not even going to give it another thought. And if you do, I think you're wrong. "
She was quiet for another twisting mile.