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 toward the 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 ofPecos 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 wasn’t as comfortable. It was narrow and there were old dust bunnies up there. A wire coat hanger and a plastic bag with a word on it too long to read. But she could lie down flat and hide. It was a good place, she thought. Difficult to get up to. She had climbed on the smaller shelves at the side. They were like a ladder. Very high. But it was dusty. She might sneeze. She knew she mustn’t. Was she high enough? He wasn’t a very tall man. She held her breath.
Alice kept the Speed steady at sixty. The first motel they came back to was on the left side of the road. It had a low tended hedge running a hundred yards to screen the parking lot. There was a center office and two one-story wings of six rooms each. The office was dark. There was a soda machine next to it, glowing red. Five cars in the lot.
“No,” Reacher said. “We don’t stop at the first place we see. We’d more likely go for the second place.”
The second place was four hundred yards south.
And it was a. possibility.
It was built at right angles to the road. The office was face-on to the highway but the cabins ran away into the distance behind it, which made the lot U-shaped. And concealed. There were planted trees all around it, wet and dripping from the rain.
Possible.
Alice slowed the car to a crawl.
“Drive through,” he said.
She swung into the lot and nosed down the row. It was eight cabins long. Three cars were parked. She swung around the far end and up the other side. Eight more cabins. Another three cars. She paused alongside the office door.
“Well?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Occupancy ratio is wrong. Sixteen cabins, six cars. I’d need to see eight cars, at least.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t want a place that’s practically empty. Too likely to be remembered. They were looking for somewhere around two thirds full, which would be ten or eleven cars for sixteen cabins. They’ve got two rooms but right now no car at all, so that would be eight or nine cars for sixteen cabins. That’s the ratio we need. Two thirds minus two. Approximately.”