Jack Reacher 05: Echo Burning by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781407070261
Publisher: Random House
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Alice’s car was the only VW in the lot behind the building. It was baking in the sun right in the centre, a new-shape Beetle, bright yellow in colour, New York plates, about a year and a half old, and there was more than a bunch of maps in the glove box. There was a handgun in there, too.

It was a beautiful nickel-finished Heckler & Koch P7M10, four-inch barrel, ten .40 calibre shells. In Reacher’s day the Army had wanted the same thing in the 9mm blued-steel version, but the Defense Department had baulked at the cost, which must have been about sixteen times the price of Carmen Greer’s eighty-dollar Lorcin. It was a fine, fine piece. One of the best available. Maybe it was a gift from the family back on Park Avenue. Maybe the car was, too. He could just imagine it. The VW was an easy choice. The perfect graduation present. But the gun might have caused some consternation. The parents would have been sitting up there on their high floor in New York, worrying about it. She’s going to work where? With poor people? She’ll need protection, surely. So they would have researched the whole matter thoroughly and gone out and bought her the best on the market, like they would have bought her a Rolex if she had needed a watch.

Out of habit he took it apart and checked the action and reassembled it. It was new, but it had been fired and cleaned maybe four or five times. It spoke of conscientious hours put in at the practice range. Maybe some exclusive Manhattan basement. He smiled. Slotted it back in the glove box, under the maps. Then he racked the seat all the way back and fiddled with the key and fired the engine up and started the air running. He took the maps out of the glove box and spread them on the empty seat beside him. Took the folded paper from his shirt pocket and checked the maps for the rancher’s address. It seemed to be somewhere north and east of town, maybe an hour away if he hustled hard.

The VW had a manual transmission with a sharp clutch and he stalled twice before he got the hang of driving it. He felt awkward and conspicuous. The ride was firm and there was some kind of a bud vase attached to the dash, loaded with a little pink bloom that was reviving steadily as the car got colder. There was subtle perfume in the air. He had learned to drive nearly twenty-five years before, underage and illegally, in a Marine Corps deuce-and-a-half with the driving seat six feet off the ground, and he felt about as far away from that experience as it was possible to get.

The map showed seven ways out of Pecos. He had come in on the southernmost, and it didn’t have what he was looking for. So he had six to cover. His instinct led him west. The

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