Free Echo Burning by Lee Child Page B

person with no money.”
    “Mail order,” she said. “I have to get approval from Sloop’s lawyer. He signs the checks. So I’ve got clothes. But what I haven’t got is cash.”
    “You could sell the diamond.”
    “I tried to,” she said. “It’s a fake. He told me it was real, but it’s stainless steel and cubic zirconium. The jeweler laughed at me. It’s worth maybe thirty bucks.”
    He paused a beat.
    “There must be money in the house,” he said. “You could steal some.”
    She went quiet again, another fast mile south.
    “Then I’m a double fugitive,” she said. “You’re forgetting about Ellie’s legal status. And that’s the whole problem. Always has been. Because she’s Sloop’s child, too. If I transport her across a state line without his consent, then I’m a kidnapper. They’ll put her picture on milk cartons, and they’ll find me, and they’ll take her away from me, and I’ll go to jail. They’re very strict about it. Taking children out of a failed marriage is the number one reason for kidnapping today. The lawyers all warned me. They all say I need Sloop’s agreement. And I’m not going to get it, am I? How can I even go up there and ask him if he’d consent to me disappearing forever with his baby? Someplace he’ll never find either of us?”
    “So don’t cross the state line. Stay in Texas. Go to Dallas.”
    “I’m not staying in Texas,” she said.
    She said it with finality. Reacher said nothing back.
    “It’s not easy,” she said. “His mother watches me, on his behalf. That’s why I didn’t go ahead and sell the ring, even though I could have used the thirty bucks. She’d notice, and it would put her on her guard. She’d know what I’m planning.She’s smart. So if one day money is missing and Ellie is missing, I might get a few hours start before she calls the sheriff and the sheriff calls the FBI. But a few hours isn’t too much help, because Texas is real big, and buses are real slow. I wouldn’t make it out.”
    “Got to be some way,” he said.
    She glanced back at her briefcase on the rear seat. The legal paperwork.
    “There are lots of ways,” she said. “Procedures, provisions, wards of the court, all kinds of things. But lawyers are slow, and very expensive, and I don’t have any money. There are pro-bono people who do it for free, but they’re always very busy. It’s a mess. A big, complicated mess.”
    “I guess it is,” he said.
    “But it should be possible in a year,” she said. “A year’s a long time, right?”
    “So?”
    “So I need you to forgive me for wasting the first year and a half. I need you to understand why. It was all so daunting, I kept putting it off. I was safe. I said to myself, plenty of time to go. You just agreed, twelve months is plenty of time for anything. So even if I was starting cold, right now, I could be excused for that, right? Nobody could say I’d left it too late, could they?”
    There was a polite beep from somewhere deep inside the dashboard. A little orange light started flashing in the stylized shape of a gas pump, right next to the speedometer.
    “Low fuel,” she said.
    “There’s Exxon up ahead,” he said. “I saw a billboard. Maybe fifteen miles.”
    “I need Mobil,” she said. “There’s a card for Mobil in the glove box. I don’t have any way of paying at Exxon.”
    “You don’t even have money for gas?”
    She shook her head. “I ran out. Now I’m charging it all to my mother-in-law’s Mobil account. She won’t get the bill for a month.”
    She steered one-handed and groped behind her for her pocketbook. Dragged it forward and dumped it on his lap.
    “Check it out,” she said.
    He sat there, with the bag on his knees.
    “I can’t be poking through a lady’s pocketbook,” he said.
    “I want you to,” she said. “I need you to understand.”
    He paused a beat and snapped it open and a soft aroma came up at him. Perfume and makeup. There was a hairbrush, tangled