Echo Burning

into the parlor in back. Rusty Greer was sitting at the table in the same chair as the first time he had seen her. She was wearing the same style of clothes. Tight jeans and a fringed blouse. Her hair was lacquered up into a halo as hard as a helmet.
    “We’re here on official business, Mrs. Greer,” Reacher said. He showed her the badge in his palm. “We need some answers.”
    “Or what, big man?” Rusty said. “You going to arrest me?”
    Reacher pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. Just looked at her.
    “I’ve done nothing wrong,” she said.
    Reacher shook his head. “As a matter of fact, you’ve done everything wrong.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like, my grandmother would have died before she let her grandchildren get taken away. Literally. Over her dead body, she’d have said, and she’d have damn well meant every word.”
    Silence for a second. Just the endless tick of the fan.
    “It was for the child’s own good,” Rusty said. “And I had no choice. They had papers.”
    “You given grandchildren away before?”
    “No.”
    “So how do you know they were the right papers?”
    Rusty just shrugged. Said nothing.
    “Did you check?”
    “How could I?” Rusty said. “And they looked right. All full of big words, aforementioned, hereinafter, the State of Texas.”
    “They were fakes,” Reacher said. “It was a kidnap, Mrs. Greer. It was coercion. They took your granddaughter to threaten your daughter-in-law with.”
    He watched her face, for dawning realization, for guilt or shame or fear or remorse. There was some expression there. He wasn’t exactly sure what it was.
    “So we need descriptions,” he said. “How many were there?”
    She said nothing.
    “How many people, Mrs. Greer?”
    “Two people. A man and a woman.”
    “White?”
    “Yes.”
    “What did they look like?”
    Rusty shrugged again.
    “Ordinary,” she said. “Normal. Like you would expect. Like social workers. From a city. They had a big car.”
    “Hair? Eyes? Clothes?”
    “Fair hair, I think. Both of them. Cheap suits. The woman wore a skirt. Blue eyes, I think. The man was tall.”
    “What about their car?”
    “I don’t know about cars. It was a big sedan. But kind of ordinary. Not a Cadillac.”
    “Color?”
    “Gray or blue, maybe. Not dark.”
    “You got any humble pie in the kitchen?”
    “Why?”
    “Because I should cram it down your throat until it chokes you. Those fair-haired white people with the blue eyes are the ones who killed Al Eugene. And you gave your own granddaughter to them.”
    She stared at him. “Killed? Al is dead?”
    “Two minutes after they took him out of his car.”
    She went pale and her mouth started working. She said what about, and then stopped. And again, what about . She couldn’t add the word Ellie .
    “Not yet,” Reacher said. “That’s my guess. And my hope. Ought to be your hope, too, because if they hurt her, you know what I’m going to do?”
    She didn’t answer. Just clamped her lips and shook her head from side to side.
    “I’m going to come back down here and break your spine. I’m going to stand you up and snap it like a rotten twig.”

    They made her take a bath, which was awful, because one of the men watched her do it. He was quite short and had black hair on his head and his arms. He stood inside the bathroom door and watched her all the time she was in the tub. Her mommy had told her, never let anybody see you undressed, especially not a man . And he was right there watching her. And she had no pajamas to put on afterward. She hadn’t brought any. She hadn’t brought anything .
    “You don’t need pajamas,” the man said. “It’s too hot for pajamas.”
    He stood there by the door, watching her. She dried herself with a small white towel. She needed to pee, but she wasn’t going to let him watch her do that . She had to squeeze very near him to get out of the room. Then the other two watched her all the way to the bed. The other man, and the woman. They were horrible. They were all horrible. She got into thebed and pulled the covers up over her head and tried hard not to cry.

    “What now?” Alice asked.
    “Back to Pecos,” Reacher said. “I want to keep on the move. And we’ve got a lot of stuff to do tonight. But go slow, O.K.? I need time to think.”
    She drove out to the gate and turned north into the darkness. Switched the fan on high to blow the night heat away.
    “Think about what?” Alice asked.
    “About where