Free Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy by Robert Ludlum, Eric Van Lustbader Page A

while allowing the cars to quickly close ranks if need be. Bourne knew he couldn't allow himself to get anywhere near the roadblock, not, at least, sitting in plain view. He would have to find some other way to get through it. All at once, the neon sign of an all-night convenience store loomed out of the darkness.
    "I think this is as far as I'll go."
    "You sure, Mr. Little? It's still pretty desolate out here."
    "Don't worry about me. I'll just have my wife come and pick me up. We don't live far from here."
    "Then I should take you all the way home."
    "I'll be fine here. Really."
    Kerry pulled over and slowed to a stop just past the convenience store. Bourne got out.
    "Thanks for the lift."
    "Any time." Kerry smiled. "And, Mr. Little, thanks for the advice. I'll think on what you said."
    Bourne watched Kerry drive off, then he turned and walked into the convenience store. The ultra-bright fluorescent lights made his eyes burn. The attendant, a pimply-faced young man with long hair and bloodshot eyes, was smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback book. He looked up briefly as Bourne entered, nodded disinterestedly and went back to his reading. Somewhere a radio was on; someone was singing "Yesterday's Gone," in a world-weary, melancholy voice. She might have been singing it for Bourne. One look at the shelves reminded him that he hadn't eaten since lunch. He grabbed a plastic jar of peanut butter, a box of crackers, some beef jerky, orange juice and water. Protein and vitamins were what he needed. He also purchased a T-shirt, a long-sleeved striped shirt, razor and shaving cream, other items he knew from long experience he would need.
    Bourne approached the counter, and the attendant put down the dogeared book he had been reading. Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. Bourne remembered reading it just after he returned from Nam, a book as hallucinatory as the war. Fragments of his life came hurtling back—the blood, the death, the rage, the reckless killing, all to blot out the excruciating, never-ending pain of what had happened in the river just outside his house in Phnom Penh. "You've got a warm hearth, a happy family to go home to every night," Kerry had said. If only he knew.
    "Anything else?" the pimply-faced young man said.
    Bourne blinked, returning to the present. "Do you have an electrical charger for a cell phone?"
    "Sorry, bud, all out."
    Bourne paid for his purchases in cash, took possession of the brown paper bag and left. Ten minutes later he walked onto the motel grounds. There were few cars. A tractortrailer was parked at one end of the motel, a refrigerated truck, by the look of the compressor squatting on its top. Inside the office a spindly man with the gray face of an undertaker shuffled out from behind a desk in the rear, where he'd been watching an ancient portable black-and-white TV. Bourne checked in using another assumed name, paying for the room in cash. He was left with precisely sixty-seven dollars.
    "Goddamn strange night," the spindly man rasped.
    "How so?"
    The spindly man's eyes lit up. "Don't tell me ya didn't hear about the murders?" Bourne shook his head.
    "Not twenty miles away." The spindly man leaned over the counter. His breath smelled unpleasantly from coffee and bile. "Two men— government people —nobody sayin'
    nothin' else about 'em, an' y'know what that means around here: hush-hush, deep-throat, cloak-an'-dagger, who the hell knows what they was up to? You turn on CNN when you get to the room, we got cable an' everything." He handed Bourne the key. "Putcha in a room at the other end from Guy—he's the trucker, might have seen his semi when you came in. Guy makes a reg'lar run from Florida to D.C.; he'll be leavin' at five, don't wantcha disturbed, now do we?"

    The room was a drab brown, timeworn. Even the smell of an industrial-strength cleaner could not entirely blot out the odor of decay. Bourne turned on the TV, switching channels. He took out the peanut butter and crackers,