Lee Child - Echo Burning

She turned, like she had been waiting for the question. "We need to get over the rise," she said. "Down into the gulches."

The limestone smoothed out into broader unbroken shelves and she slowed to let his horse move up alongside hers. But it stayed just short of level, which kept him behind her. Kept him from seeing her face. "Bobby told me you had a key," he said.

"Did he?"

"He said you lost it."

"No, that's not true. They never gave me one."

He said nothing.

"They made a big point of not giving me one," she said. "Like it was a symbol."

"So he was lying?"

She nodded, away from him. "I told you, don't believe anything he says."

"He said the door's never locked, anyway."

"Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't."

"He told me you don't have to knock, either."

"That's a lie, too," she said. "Since Sloop's been gone, if I don't knock, they run and grab a rifle. Then they go, oh sorry, but strangers prowling around the house make us nervous. Like a big pretend show."

He said nothing.

"Bobby's a liar, Reacher," she said. "I told you that."

"I guess he is. Because he also told me you brought some other guy down here, and he got Josh and Billy to run him off. But Josh and Billy didn't know anything about any guy."

She was quiet for a long moment.

"No, that was true," she said. "I met a man up in Pecos, about a year ago. We had an affair. At first just at his place up there. But he wanted more."

"So you brought him here?"

"It was his idea. He thought he could get work, and be close to me. I thought it was crazy, but I went along with it. That's where I got the idea to ask you to come. Because it actually worked for a spell. Two or three weeks. Then Bobby caught us."

"And what happened?"

"That was the end of it. My friend left."

"So why would Josh and Billy deny it to me?"

"Maybe it wasn't Josh and Billy who ran him off. Maybe they didn't know about it. Maybe Bobby did it himself. My friend wasn't as big as you. He was a schoolteacher, out of work."

"And he just disappeared?"

"I saw him again, just once, back in Pecos. He was scared. Wouldn't talk to me."

"Did Bobby tell Sloop?"

"He promised he wouldn't. We had a deal."

"What kind of a deal?"

She went quiet again. Just rode on, sitting slackly on the swaying horse.

"The usual kind," she said. "If I'd do something for him, he'd keep quiet."

"What kind of something?"

She paused again.

"Something I really don't want to tell you about," she said.

"I see."

"Yes, you see."

"And did he keep quiet?"

"I really have no idea. He made me do it twice. It was disgusting. He's disgusting. But he promised faithfully. But he's a liar, so I'm assuming he told Sloop anyway. On one of his brotherly visits. I always knew it was a lose-lose gamble, but what could I do? What choice did I have?"

"Bobby figures that's why I'm here. He thinks we're having an affair, too."

She nodded. "That would be my guess. He doesn't know Sloop hits me. Even if he did, he wouldn't expect me to do anything about it."

Reacher was quiet for a spell. Another twenty yards, thirty, at the slow patient pace of a walking horse.

"You need to get out," he said. "How many times do you have to hear it?"

"I won't run," she answered.

They reached the top of the rise and she made a small sound and her horse stopped walking. His stopped, too, at her shoulder. They were about fifty feet above the plain. Ahead of them, to the west, the caliche sloped gently down again, pocked by dry gulches the size of ballparks. Behind them, to the east, the red house and the other buildings in the compound were spread out a mile away, flat on the baked land like a model. The road ran like a gray ribbon, north and south. Behind the tiny motor barn the dirt track wandered south and east through the desert, like a scar on burned and pockmarked skin. The air was dry and unnaturally clear all the way to both horizons, where it broke up into haze. The heat was a nightmare. The sun was fearsome. Reacher could feel his face burning.

"Take care as we go down," Carmen said. "Stay balanced."

She moved off ahead of him, letting her horse find its own way down the incline. He kicked with his heels and followed her. He lost the rhythm as his horse stepped short and he started bouncing uncomfortably.

"Follow me," she called.

She was moving to the right, toward a dry gulch with a flat floor, all stone and sand. He started trying to figure which rein he should pull on, but his horse turned anyway. Its feet crunched on gravel and slipped occasionally. Then it stepped right down into the gulch, which jerked him violently backward and forward. Ahead of him Carmen was slipping out of the saddle. Then she was standing on the ground, stretching, waiting for him. His horse stopped next to hers and he shook his right foot free of the stirrup and got off by doing the exact opposite of what had got him on a half hour before.

"So what do you think?" she asked.

"Well, I know why John Wayne walked funny."

She smiled briefly and led both horses together to the rim of the gulch and heaved a large stone over the free ends of both sets of reins. He could hear absolute silence, nothing at all behind the buzz and shimmer of the heat. She lifted the flap of her saddlebag and took out her pocketbook. Zipped it open and slipped her hand in and came out with a small chromium handgun.

"You promised you'd teach me," she said.

"Wait," he said.

"What?"

He said nothing. Stepped left, stepped right, crouched down, stood tall. Stared at the floor of the gulch, moving around, using the shadows from the sun to help him.

"What?" she said again.

"Somebody's been here," he said. "There are tracks. Three people, a vehicle driving in from the west."

"Tracks?" she said. "Where?"

He pointed. "Tire marks. Some kind of a truck. Stopped here. Three people, crawled up to the edge on their knees."

He put himself where the tracks ended at the rim of the gulch. Lay down on the hot grit and hauled himself forward on his elbows. Raised his head.

"Somebody was watching the house," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Nothing else to see from here."

She knelt alongside him, the chromium pistol in her hand.

"It's too far away," she said.

"Must have used field glasses. Telescopes, even."

"Are you sure?"

"You ever see reflections? The sun on glass? In the mornings, when the sun was in the east?"

She shuddered. "No," she said. "Never."

"Tracks are fresh," he said. "Not more than a day or two old."

She shuddered again.

"Sloop," she said. "He thinks I'm going to take Ellie. Now I know he's getting out. He's having me watched."

Reacher stood up and walked back to the center of the bowl.

"Look at the tire tracks," he said. "They were here four or five times."

He pointed down. There were several overlapping sets of tracks in a complex network. At least four, maybe five. The tire treads were clearly pressed into the powdered sand. There was a lot of detail. The outside shoulder of the front right tire was nearly bald.

"But they're not here today," Carmen said. "Why not?"

"I don't know," Reacher said.

Carmen looked away. Held out the gun to him.

"Please show me how to use this," she said.

He moved his gaze from the tracks in the sand and looked at the gun. It was a Lorcin L-22 automatic, two-and-a-half-inch barrel, chrome frame, with plastic molded grips made to look like pink mother-of-pearl. Made in Mira Loma, California, not too long ago, and probably never used since it left the factory.

"Is it a good one?" she asked.

"How much did you pay for it?"

"Over eighty dollars."

"Where?"