Echo Burning

commitment.”
    “O.K.,” the tall man said. “Who’s the target?”
    “Just some guy,” the woman said. “I’ll give you the details when we’ve done the other thing.”
    She walked to the door.
    “Stay inside now,” she said. “Get to bed, get some sleep. We’ve got a very busy day coming up.”

    “This is a crummy room,” Alice said.
    Reacher glanced around. “You think?”
    “It’s awful.”
    “I’ve had worse.”
    She paused a beat. “You want dinner?”
    He was full of pizza and ice cream, but the inch of midriff was attractive. So was the corresponding inch of her back. There was a deep cleft there. The waistband of the pants spanned it like a tiny bridge.
    “Sure,” he said. “Where?”
    She paused again.
    “My place?” she said. “It’s difficult for me to eat out around here. I’m a vegetarian. So usually I cook for myself.”
    “A vegetarian in Texas,” he said. “You’re a long way from home.”
    “Sure feels like it,” she said. “So how about it? And I’ve got better air conditioning than this.”
    He smiled. “Woman-cooked food and better air? Sounds good to me.”
    “You eat vegetarian?”
    “I eat anything.”
    “So let’s go.”
    He shrugged his damp shirt on. She picked up her jacket. He found his shoes. Locked up the room and followed her over to the car.

    She drove a couple of miles west to a low-rise residential complex built on a square of scrubby land trapped between two four-lane roads. The buildings had stucco walls painted the color of sand with dark-stained wooden beams stuck all over the place for accents. There were maybe forty rental units and they all looked halfhearted and beaten down by the heat. Hers was right in the center, like a small city town house sandwiched between two others. She parked outside her door on a fractured concrete pad. There were parched desert weeds wilting in the cracks.
    But it was gloriously cool inside the house. There was central air running hard. He could feel the pressure it was creating. There was a narrow living room with a kitchen area in back. A staircase on the left. Cheap rented furniture and a lot of books. No television.
    “I’m going to shower,” she said. “Make yourself at home.”
    She disappeared up the stairs. He took a look around. Thebooks were mostly law texts. The civil and criminal codes of Texas. Some constitutional commentaries. There was a phone on a side table with four speed dials programmed. Top slot was labeled Work . Second was J Home . Third was J Work. Fourth was M & D . On one of the bookshelves there was a photograph in a silver frame, showing a handsome couple who could have been in their middle fifties. It was a casual outdoors shot, in a city, probably New York. The man had gray hair and a long patrician face. The woman looked a little like an older version of Alice herself. Same hair, minus the color and the youthful bounce. The Park Avenue parents, no doubt. Mom and Dad, M & D. They looked O.K. He figured J was probably a boyfriend. He checked, but there was no photograph of him. Maybe his picture was upstairs, next to her bed.
    He sat in a chair and she came back down within ten minutes. Her hair was wet and combed, and she was wearing shorts again with a T-shirt that probably said Harvard Soccer except it had been washed so many times the writing was nearly illegible. The shorts were short and the T-shirt was thin and tight. She had dispensed with the sports bra. That was clear. She was barefoot and looked altogether sensational.
    “You played soccer?” he asked.
    “My partner did,” she said.
    He smiled at the warning. “Does he still?”
    “He’s a she. Judith. I’m gay. And yes, she still plays.”
    “She any good?”
    “As a partner?”
    “As a soccer player.”
    “She’s pretty good. Does it bother you?”
    “That she’s pretty good at soccer?”
    “No, that I’m gay.”
    “Why would it?”
    Alice shrugged. “It bothers some people.”
    “Not this one.”
    “I’m Jewish, too.”
    Reacher smiled. “Did your folks buy you the handgun?”
    She glanced at him. “You found that?”
    “Sure,” he said. “Nice piece.”
    She nodded. “A gay Jewish vegetarian woman from New York, they figured I should have it.”
    Reacher smiled again. “I’m surprised they didn’t get you a machine gun or a grenade launcher.”
    She smiled back. “I’m sure they thought about it.”
    “You obviously take your atoning seriously. You must feel like I did