Echo Burning by Lee Child Page B

that.”
    â€œStop the car,” he said.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I’ve had enough of this.”
    She jammed her foot down hard on the gas. The car leapt forward. He glanced back at the traffic and leaned over toward her and knocked the transmission into N. The engine unloaded and screamed and the car coasted and slowed. He used his left hand on the wheel and hauled it around against her desperate grip and steered the car to the shoulder. It bounced off the blacktop and the gravel bit against the tires and the speed washed away. He jammed the lever into P and opened his door, all in one movement. The car skidded to a stop with the transmission locked. He slid out and stood up unsteadily. Felt the heat on his body like a blow from a hammer and slammed the door and walked away from her.

4
    He was sweating heavily twenty yards after getting out of the car. And already regretting his decision. He was in the middle of nowhere, on foot on a major highway, and the slowest vehicles were doing sixty. Nobody was going to want to stop for him. Even if they did want to, give them a little reaction time, give them a little time to check their mirrors, a little braking time, they’d be more than a mile away before they knew it, and then they’d shrug their shoulders and speed up again and keep on going. Dumb place to hitch a ride, they’d think.
    It was worse than dumb. It was suicidal. The sun was fearsome and the temperature was easily a hundred and twelve degrees. The slipstream from the cars was like a hot gale, and the suction from the giant trucks wasn’t far from pulling him off his feet. He had no water. He could barely breathe. There was a constant stream of people five yards away, but he was as alone as if he was stumbling blind through the desert. If a state trooper didn’t come by and arrest him for jaywalking, he could die out there.
    He turned and saw the Cadillac, still sitting inert on theshoulder. But he kept on walking away from it. He made it about fifty yards and stopped. Turned to face east and stuck out his thumb. But it was hopeless, like he knew it would be. After five minutes, a hundred vehicles, the nearest thing he’d gotten to a response was some trucker blasting his air horn, a huge bass sound roaring past him with a whine of stressed tires and a hurricane of dust and grit. He was choking and burning up.
    He turned again. Saw the Cadillac lurch backward and start up the shoulder toward him. Her steering was imprecise. The rear end was all over the place. It was close to slewing out into the traffic. He started walking back to it. It came on to meet him, fishtailing wildly. He started running. He stopped alongside the car as she braked hard. The suspension bounced. She buzzed the passenger window down.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said.
    He didn’t hear it in the noise, but he caught the shape of the words.
    â€œGet in,” she said.
    His shirt was sticking to his back. He had grit in his eyes. The howl of sound from the road was deafening him.
    â€œGet in,” she mouthed. “I’m sorry.”
    He got in. It felt exactly the same as the first time. The air roaring, the freezing leather seat. The small cowed woman at the wheel.
    â€œI apologize,” she said. “I’m sorry. I said stupid things.”
    He slammed the door. There was sudden silence. He put his hand in the chill stream from the vents.
    â€œI didn’t mean them,” she said.
    â€œWhatever,” he said back.
    â€œReally, I didn’t mean them. I’m just so desperate I can’t tell right from wrong anymore. And I’m very sorry for the thing about the sex. It was a crass thing to say.”
    Then her voice went small. “It’s just that some of the guys I’ve picked up, I figured that was what it was going to have to be.”
    â€œYou’d have sex with them so they’d kill your husband?”
    She nodded. “I told you,