“I don’t have any family.”
“Really? None?”
Jed thought about an honest answer. He didn’t want to lie. But neither did he want to get into the specifics. Not with a stranger. Not then. So he said, “Nope. Just me.”
“No parents?”
“Never knew my dad. My mom—cancer.”
“That’s harsh, man. No brothers or sisters? Uncles or aunts?”
“Nope.”
“So who’s meeting you when you get wherever you’re going?”
“No one. Why?”
“Just seems like you got dealt a tough hand, man, if you’re all alone in the world. I’m sorry about that.”
Jed shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“Tell you what—let’s ride together. At least as far as Texas. Keep each other company.”
Jed shrugged again. “OK. If you want.”
“This your first time riding the ’hound?”
Jed nodded.
The blond guy put his arm around Jed’s shoulder, pulled him close, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I’m going to ask you something. It’s real important, so listen up. Your bag? The little backpack thing you got going on? You got anything valuable in there? Laptop? Tablet? Nintendo?”
“No. I don’t have anything like that.”
“That’s good. Real good. The road’s not a safe place. But all the same, never let your bag out of your sight. Don’t leave it anywhere. Don’t let the driver put it in the hold. And keep an arm through the straps when you sleep. You got me?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Now I need to siphon the python. You go ahead. Through the doors, turn left. All the way to the end. Pier sixteen. Get us a pair of seats. Midway between the wheels, if you can. That’s the most comfortable. I’ll catch up in a minute.”
* * *
—
Jed found the correct bus, climbed in, showed the driver his ticket, and made his way down the aisle. More than half the seats were already taken. Everyone on board was older than Jed. Some by three or four years. Some by sixty or seventy. Some people were traveling alone. Some were in pairs. Some were in groups. Many of them had headphones on. Some had pillows. A few were wrapped in blankets. Most had things to occupy themselves with, like books or phones or computers. Jed suddenly felt horribly unprepared. He wanted to turn around. Jump off the bus. Run back to his foster home. Pretend that he had never tried to leave. Forget everything his birth mother had told him. But instead he forced himself into the first empty pair of seats he came to. He shuffled across to the window. Hauled his bag onto his lap. Hugged it to his chest. And focused on the thrum of the engine. The hiss of the ventilation. The murmur of the conversations going on all around him. The smell of disinfectant and other people’s food. He told himself that everything was going to be OK. Just as long as he could pull himself together before the blond guy showed up. He didn’t need to be any more embarrassed than he already was.
Two minutes before departure time the door at the front of the bus hissed shut. Jed started to rise up in his seat. He was about to call out to the driver. To tell him a passenger was missing. That they had to wait. But he didn’t make a sound. He stopped moving. Slid back down. And shifted his bag to the space next to him. Dallas was more than thirty-six hours away. He didn’t even know the blond guy’s name. He wasn’t some kind of lifelong companion. He was grateful to have gotten his ticket back. But he didn’t need a day and a half of questions and opinions and dumb-ass advice being shoved down his throat before he switched to the next bus. He was happy to be on his own.
Until 10:00 a.m. on Friday, anyway.
Whether he would be alone after that was a whole other question.
Chapter 10
The lock’s mechanism clicked and whirred. Reacher’s door swung open. A quadrant of light unfurled across the garish carpet. Two men crept inside. Both mid-twenties. Both holding guns. One eased the door back into place in its frame. They stood still for a moment. Then they started toward the bed. It was only semi-visible. The glow filtering through the thin drapes was pale. But the shape beneath the covers was tall. It was broad. It was what they were expecting.
The men separated, one either side of the mattress. They continued to the head of the bed. It was a warm night but the comforter was pulled all the way up over the pillows. The guy nearer the window shrugged, then prodded what he estimated would be Reacher’s shoulder with the muzzle of his gun.
He got no response.