Echo Burning by Lee Child

by Echo Burning (com v2. 0) (lit)

  He said nothing.

  “And because Bobby already thinks we’re doing it,” she said. “I figure, why get the blame without getting the fun?”

  He said nothing.

  “I just want a little fun,” she said. “Before it all starts up again.”

  He said nothing.

  “No strings attached,” she said. “I’m not looking for it to change anything. About your decision, I mean. About Sloop.”

  He nodded.

  “It wouldn’t change anything,” he said.

  She looked away.

  “So what’s your answer?” she asked.

  He watched her profile. Her face was blank. It was like all other possibilities were exhausted for her, and all that was left was instinct. Early in his service career, when the threat was still plausible, people talked about what they would do when the enemy missiles were airborne and incoming. This was absolutely the number-one pick, by a huge, huge margin. A universal instinct. And he could see it in her. She had heard the four-minute warning, and the sirens were sounding loud in her mind.

  “No,” he said.

  She was quiet for a long moment.

  “Will you at least stay with me?” she asked.

  The killing crew moved fifty miles closer to Pecos in the middle of the night. They did it secretly, some hours after booking in for a second night at their first location. It was the woman’s preferred method. Six false names, two overlapping sets of motel records, the confusion built fast enough to keep them safe.

  They drove east on I-10 until they passed the I-20 interchange. They headed down toward Fort Stockton until they saw signs for the first group of motels serving the Balmorhea state recreation area. Those motels were far enough from the actual tourist attraction to make them cheap and anonymous. There wasn’t going to be a lot of cutesy decor and personal service. But they would be clean and decent. And they would be full of people exactly like themselves. That was what the woman wanted. She was a chameleon. She had an instinct for the right type of place. She chose the second establishment they came to, and sent the small dark man to pay cash for two rooms.

  Reacher woke up on Sloop Greer’s sofa with the Sunday dawn. Beyond him, the bedroom window faced east and the night insects were gone and the sky was bright. The bed sheet looked damp and tangled. Carmen wasn’t under it. He could hear the shower running in the bathroom. And he could smell coffee.

  He got off the sofa and stretched. Wandered through the archway to the bedroom. He saw Carmen’s dress on the floor. He went to the window and checked the weather. No change. The sky was hazed with heat. He wandered back to the sitting area. There was a credenza in one corner, set up with a small coffee machine. There were two upturned mugs beside it, with spoons, like a hotel. The bathroom door was closed. The shower sounded loud behind it. He filled a mug with coffee and wandered into the dressing area. There were two large closets there, parallel, one on each side. Not walk-ins, just long deep alcoves screened with sliding doors made out of mirrored glass.

  He opened the left-hand closet. It was hers. It was full of dresses and pants on hangers. There were blouses. There was a rack of shoes. He closed it again and turned around and opened the other one. It was Sloop’s. There were a dozen suits, and rows and rows of chinos and blue jeans. Cedar shelves stacked with T-shirts, and dress shirts folded into plastic wraps. A row of neckties. Belts, with fancy buckles. A long row of dusty shoes on the floor. The shoes looked to be about size eleven. He swapped his coffee cup into his other hand and nudged open a suit coat, looking for the label. It was a forty-four long. It would fit a guy about six feet two or three, maybe a hundred and ninety or two hundred pounds. So Sloop was not an especially big guy. Not a giant. But he was a foot taller and twice the weight of his wife. Not the world’s fairest match-up.

  There was a photograph frame face-down on top of a stack of shirts. He turned it over. There was a five-by-seven color print under a cream card mat glassed into a lacquered wooden surround. The print showed three guys, young, halfway between boyhood and manhood. Maybe seventeen years old, maybe eighteen. They were standing close together, leaning on the bulging fender of an old-fashioned pick-up truck. They were peering expectantly at the camera, like maybe it was perched close by on a rock and they were waiting for the self-timer to click in. They looked full of youthful energy and excitement. Their whole lives ahead of them, full of infinite possibilities. One of them was Hack Walker, a little slimmer, a little more muscular, a lot more hair. He guessed the other two were Al Eugene and Sloop Greer himself. Teen-aged buddies. Eugene was a head shorter than Sloop, and chubby. Sloop looked like a younger version of Bobby.

  He heard the shower shut off and put the photograph back and closed the slider. Moved back to the sitting area. A moment later the bathroom door opened and Carmen came out in a cloud of steam. She was wrapped in two white towels, one around her body, the other bound like a turban around her hair. He looked at her and stayed quiet, unsure of what to say.

  “Good morning,” she said in the silence.

  “To you, too,” he said.

  She unwrapped the turban and shook out her hair. It hung wet and straight.

  “It isn’t, though, is it?” she said. “A good morning? It’s a bad morning.”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “He could be walking out the gate, this exact minute.”

  He checked his watch. It was almost seven.

  “Any time now,” he said.

  “Use the shower if you want,” she said. “I have to go and see to Ellie.”

  “O.K.”

  He stepped into the bathroom. It was huge, and made out of some kind of reconstituted marble with gold tones in it. It looked like a place he’d once stayed, in Vegas. He used the john and rinsed his mouth at the sink and stripped off his stale clothes and stepped into the shower stall. It was enclosed with bronze-tinted glass and it was enormous. There was a shower head the size of a hubcap above him, and tall pipes in each corner with additional water jets pointing directly at him. He turned the faucet and a huge roaring started up. Then a deluge of warm water hit him from all sides. It was like standing under Niagara Falls. The side jets started pulsing hot and cold and he couldn’t hear himself think. He washed as quickly as he could and soaped his hair and rinsed off and shut it all down.

  He took a fresh towel from a stack and dried off as well as he could in the humidity. Wrapped the towel around him and stepped back into the dressing area. Carmen was buttoning her shirt. It was white, and she had white pants on. Gold jewelry. Her skin looked dark against it and her hair was glossy and already curling in the heat.

  “That was quick,” she said.

  “Hell of a shower,” he said.

  “Sloop chose it,” she said. “I hate it. There’s so much water, I can hardly breathe in there.”

  She slid her closet shut and twisted left and right to examine her reflection in the mirrored doors.

  “You look good,” he said.

  “Do I look Mexican enough?” she asked. “With the white clothes?”

  He said nothing.

  “No jeans today,” she said. “I’m sick of trying to look like I was born a cowgirl in Amarillo.”

  “You look good,” he said again.

  “Seven hours,” she said. “Six and a half, if Hack drives fast.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to find Bobby.”

  She stretched tall and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thanks for staying,” she said. “It helped me.”

  He said nothing.

  “Join us for breakfast,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”

  Then she walked slowly out of the room, on her way to wake her daughter.

  Reacher dressed and found a different way back into the house. The whole place was a warren. He came out through a living room he hadn’t seen before and into the foyer with the mirror and the rifles. He opened the front door and stepped out on the porch. It was already hot. The sun was coming from low on
his right, and it was casting harsh early shadows. The shadows made the yard look pocked and lumpy.

  He walked down to the barn and went in the door. The heat and the smell were as bad as ever, and the horses were awake and restless. But they were clean. They had water. Their feed troughs had been filled. He found Bobby asleep in an unoccupied stall, on a bed of clean straw.

  “Rise and shine, little brother,” he called.

  Bobby stirred and sat up, confused as to where he was, and why. Then he remembered, and went tense with resentment. His clothes were dirty and hay stalks clung to him all over.

  “Sleep well?” Reacher asked.

  “They’ll be back soon,” Bobby said. “Then what do you think is going to happen?”

  Reacher smiled. “You mean, am I going to tell them I made you clean out the barn and sleep in the straw?”

  “You couldn’t tell them.”

  “No, I guess I couldn’t,” Reacher said. “So are you going to tell them?”

  Bobby said nothing. Reacher smiled again.

  “No, I didn’t think you would,” he said. “So stay in here until noontime, then I’ll let you in the house to get cleaned up for the main event.”

  “What about breakfast?”

  “You don’t get any.”

  “But I’m hungry.”

  “So eat the horse food. Turns out there’s bags and bags of it, after all.”

  He went back to the kitchen and found the maid brewing coffee and heating a skillet.

  “Pancakes,” she said. “And that will have to do. They’ll want a big lunch, so that’s where my morning is going.”

  “Pancakes are fine,” he said.

  He walked on into the silent parlor and listened for sounds from above. Ellie and Carmen should be moving around somewhere. But he couldn’t hear anything. He tried to map the house in his head, but the layout was too bizarre. Clearly it had started out a substantial ranch house, and then random additions had been made whenever necessary. Overall, there was no coherence to it.

  The maid came in with a stack of plates. Four of them, with four sets of silverware and four paper napkins piled on top.

  “I assume you’re eating in here,” she said.

  Reacher nodded. “But Bobby isn’t. He’s staying in the barn.”

  “Why?”

  “I think a horse is sick.”

  The maid dumped the stack of plates and slid one out, leaving three of everything.

  “So I’ll have to carry it down to him, I guess,” she said, irritated.

  “I’ll take it,” Reacher said. “You’re very busy.”

  He followed her back to the kitchen and she piled the first four pancakes off the skillet onto a plate. Added a little butter and maple syrup. Reacher wrapped a knife and a fork into a napkin and picked up the plate and walked back out into the heat. He found Bobby where he had left him. He was sitting up, doing nothing.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  “Breakfast,” Reacher said. “I had a change of heart. Because you’re going to do something for me.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “There’s going to be some kind of a big lunch, for Sloop getting back.”

  Bobby nodded. “I expect so.”

  “You’re going to invite me. As your guest. Like I’m you’re big buddy.”

  “I am?”

  “Sure you are. If you want these pancakes, and if you want to walk without sticks the rest of your life.”

  Bobby went quiet.

  “Dinner, too,” Reacher said. “You understand?”

  “Her husband’s coming home, for God’s sake,” Bobby said. “It’s over, right?”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions, Bobby. I’ve got no particular interest in Carmen. I just want to get next to Sloop. I need to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “Just do it, O.K.?”

  Bobby shrugged.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  Reacher handed him the plate of pancakes and headed for the house again.

  Carmen and Ellie were sitting side by side at the table. Ellie’s hair was wet from the shower and she was in a yellow seersucker dress.

  “My daddy’s coming home today,” she said. “He’s on his way, right now.”

  Reacher nodded. “I heard that.”

  “I thought it was going to be tomorrow. But it’s today.”

  Carmen was looking at the wall, saying nothing. The maid brought pancakes in on a platter. She served them out, two for the kid, three for Carmen, four for Reacher. Then she took the platter away and went back to the kitchen.

  “I was going to stay home from school tomorrow,” Ellie said. “Can I still?”

  Carmen said nothing.

  “Mom? Can I still?”

  Carmen turned and looked at Reacher, like he had spoken. Her face was blank. It reminded him of a guy he had known who had gone to the eye doctor. He had been having trouble reading fine print. The eye doctor spotted a tumor in the retina. Made arrangements there and then for him to have the eye removed the next day. Then the guy had sat around knowing that tomorrow he was going into the hospital with two eyes and coming back out with one. The certainty had burned him up. The anticipation. The dread. Much worse than a split-second accident with the same result.

  “Mommy? Can I?” Ellie asked again.

  “I guess,” Carmen said. “What?”

  “Mommy, you’re not listening. Are you excited too?”

  “Yes,” Carmen said.

  “So can I?”

  “Yes,” Carmen said again.

  Ellie turned to her food and ate it like she was starving. Reacher picked at his, watching Carmen. She ate nothing.

  “I’m going to see my pony now,” Ellie said.

  She scrambled off her chair and ran out of the room like a miniature whirlwind. Reacher heard the front door open and close and the thump of her shoes on the porch steps. He finished his breakfast while Carmen held her fork in midair, like she was uncertain what to do with it, like she had never seen one before.

  “Will you talk to him?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I think he needs to know it’s not a secret anymore.”

  “I agree.”

  “Will you look at him? When you’re talking to him?”

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “Good. You should. Because you’ve got gunfighter’s eyes. Maybe like Clay Allison had. You should let him see them. Let him see what’s coming.”

  “We’ve been through all of that,” he said.

  “I know,” she answered.

  Then she went off alone and Reacher set about killing time. It felt like waiting for an air raid. He walked out onto the porch and looked across the yard at the road where it came in from the north. He followed it with his eyes to where the red picket fence finished, and beyond that to where it disappeared over the curve of the earth. The air was still clear with morning and there was no mirage over the blacktop. It was just a dusty ribbon framed by the limestone ledge to the west and the power lines to the east.

  He turned back and sat down on the porch swing. The chains creaked under his weight. He settled sideways, facing the ranch gate, one leg up and the other on the floor. Then he did what most soldiers do when they’re waiting for action. He went to sleep.

  Carmen woke him maybe an hour later. She touched him on the shoulder and he opened his eyes and saw her standing over him. She had changed her clothes. Now she was in pressed blue jeans and a checked shirt. She was wearing boots made out of lizard skin. A belt to match. Her hair was tied back and she had made up her face with pale powder and blue eye shadow.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “I don’t want you to talk to him. Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might set him off. If he knows somebody else knows.”

  “You didn’t think that before.”

  “I thought it over again. I think it might be worse, if we start out like that. I
t’s better coming from me. At least at first.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. “Let me talk to him, the first time.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” she said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow how it went.”

  He sat up, with both feet on the ground.

  “You were pretty sure you’d have a busted nose tomorrow,” he said.

  “I think this is best,” she said.

  “Why did you change your clothes?”

  “These are better,” she said. “I don’t want to provoke him.”

  “You look like a cowgirl, born in Amarillo.”

  “He likes me like this.”

  “And dressing like who you are would provoke him?”

  She made a face. A defeated face, he thought.

  “Don’t chicken out, Carmen,” he said. “Stand and fight instead.”

  “I will,” she said. “Tonight. I’ll tell him I’m not going to take it anymore.”

  He said nothing.

  “So don’t talk to him today, O.K.?” she said.

  He looked away.

  “It’s your call,” he said.

  “It’s better this way.”

  She went back into the house. Reacher stared north at the road. Sitting down, he could see a mile less of it. The heat was up, and the shimmer was starting.

  She woke him again after another hour. The clothes were the same, but she had removed the makeup.

  “You think I’m doing this wrong,” she said.

  He sat up and rubbed both hands over his face, like he was washing.

  “I think it would be better out in the open,” he said. “He should know somebody else knows. If not me, then his family, maybe.”

  “I can’t tell them.”

  “No, I guess you can’t.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “You should let me talk to him.”

  “Not right away. It would be worse. Promise me you won’t.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s your call,” he said. “But you promise me something, O.K.? Talk to him yourself, tonight. For sure. And if he starts anything, get out of the room and just scream your head off until we all come running. Scream the place down. Demand the cops. Shout for help. It’ll embarrass him. It’ll change the dynamic.”