She glanced across at him and shrugged. Eased back to the road and continued south.
He got a couple of paces toward the door and stopped dead. There was a yellow light off to one side of the lot, casting a low glow over the soaked blacktop. It showed him his footsteps. They were a line of curious fluid imprints blotted into the dampness. He could see his heels and his toes and his arches. Mostly toes, because he’d been running. The prints were filmy and wet. They weren’t about to dry up and disappear anytime soon. But he couldn’t see her footprints.
There was just one set of tracks, and they were his. No doubt about it. She hadn’t come out. Not unless she could levitate herself and fly. Which was impossible. He smiled.
She was hiding in the room.
He ran the final eight steps and ducked back inside. Closed the door gently and fastened the chain and clicked the lock.
“Come on out,” he called softly.
There was no response, but he hadn’t really expected one.
“I’m coming to get you,” he called.
He started by the window, where there was an upholstered chair across the corner of the room with a space behind it large enough for a kid to hide. But she wasn’t there. He got on his knees and bent down and looked under the beds. Not there, either.
“Hey, kid,” he called. “Enough already.”
There was a shared bedside cabinet with a little door. She wasn’t in there. He straightened up and adjusted his towels. She wasn’t in the bathroom, he knew that. So where was she? He looked around the room. The closet. Of course. He smiled to himself and danced over.
“Here I come, honey,” he called.
He slid the doors and checked the floor. There was a folded valise rack and nothing else. There was a set of vertical shelves on the right, nothing in them. A high shelf above, running the whole width of the space. He stretched tall and checked it out. Nothing there. Just dust bunnies and an old wire coat hanger and a plastic bag from a grocery called Subrahamian’s in Cleveland.
He turned around, temporarily defeated.
The third motel had a painted sign. No neon. Just a board hung from a gallows with chains. It was carefully lettered in a script so fancy Reacher wasn’t sure what it said. SOMETHING CANYON, maybe, with old-fashioned spelling, canon, like Spanish. The letters were shadowed in gold.
“I like this,” he said. “Very tasteful.”
“Go in?” Alice asked.
“You bet.”
There was a little entrance road through twenty yards of garden. The plantings were sad and scorched by the heat, but they were an attempt at something.
“I like this,” he said again.
It was the same shape as the last place. An office first, with a U-shaped parking lot snaking around two back-to-back rows of cabins set at ninety degrees to the road. Alice drove the complete circle. Ten cabins to a row, twenty in total, twelve cars parked neatly next to twelve random doors. Two Chevrolets, three Hondas, two Toyotas, two Buicks, an old Saab, an old Audi, and a five-year-old Ford Explorer.
“Two thirds minus two,” Reacher said.
“Is this the place?” Alice asked.
He said nothing. She stopped next to the office.
“Well?”
He said nothing. Just opened the door and slid out. The heat was coming back. It was full of the smell of soaked earth. He could hear drains running and gutters dripping. The office was dark and full of shadows. The door was locked. There was a neat brass button for the night bell. He leaned his thumb on it and peered in through the window.
There was no soda machine. Just a neat counter and a large rack full of flyers. He couldn’t make out what they referred to. Too dark. He kept his thumb on the bell. A light came on in a doorway in back of the office and a man stepped out. He was running his hand through his hair. Reacher took the Echo County deputy’s star out of his pocket and clicked it flat against the glass. The man turned the office light on and walked to the door and undid the lock. Reacher stepped inside and walked past him. The flyers in the rack covered all the tourist attractions within a hundred miles. Old Fort Stockton featured prominently. There was something about a meteor crater at Odessa. All worthy stuff. Nothing about rodeos or gun shows or real estate. He waved to Alice. Gestured her in after him.