Echo Burning

Alice, he didn’t. Because you’re a sharp-looking white lawyer and I’m a big tough-looking white guy. She was a small Mexican woman, all alone and desperate and scared. He saw an opportunity with her that he didn’t see with us.”
    Alice was quiet for a second.
    “So what does it mean?” she asked.
    Reacher clicked off the dome light. Smiled in the dark and stretched. Put his palms on the dash in front of him and flexed his massive shoulders against the pressure.
    “It means we’re good to go,” he said. “It means all our ducks are in a neat little row. And it means you should drive faster, because right now we’re maybe twenty minutes ahead of the bad guys, and I want to keep it that way as long as I can.”

    She blew straight through the sleeping crossroads hamlet once again and made the remaining sixty miles in forty-three minutes, which Reacher figured was pretty good for a yellow four-cylinder import with a bud vase next to the steering wheel. She made the turn in under the gate and braked hard and stopped at the foot of the porch steps. The porch lights were on and the VW’s dust fogged up around them in a khaki cloud. It was close to two o’clock in the morning.
    “Leave it running,” Reacher said.
    He led her up to the door. Hammered hard on it and got no reply. Tried the handle. It was unlocked. Why would it be locked? We’re sixty miles from the nearest crossroads . He swung it open and they stepped straight into the red-painted foyer.
    “Hold your arms out,” he said.
    He unloaded all six .22 hunting rifles out of the rack on the wall and laid them in her arms, alternately muzzle to stock so they would balance. She staggered slightly under the weight.
    “Go put them in the car,” he said.
    There was the sound of footsteps overhead, then creaking from the stairs, and Bobby Greer came out of the parlor door, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He was barefoot and wearing boxers and a T-shirt and staring at the empty gun rack.
    “Hell you think you’re doing?” he said.
    “I want the others,” Reacher said. “I’m commandeering your weapons. On behalf of the Echo County sheriff. I’m a deputy, remember?”
    “There aren’t any others.”
    “Yes, there are, Bobby. No self-respecting redneck like you is going to be satisfied with a bunch of .22 popguns. Where’s the heavy metal?”
    Bobby said nothing.
    “Don’t mess with me, Bobby,” Reacher said. “It’s way too late for that.”
    Bobby paused. Then he shrugged.
    “O.K.,” he said.
    He padded barefoot across the foyer and pushed open a door that led into a small dark space that could have been a study. He flicked on a light and Reacher saw black-and-white pictures of oil wells on the walls. There was a desk and a chair and another gun rack filled with four 30–30 Winchesters. Seven-shot lever-action repeaters, big handsome weapons, oiled wood, twenty-inch barrels, beautifully kept. Wyatt Earp, eat your heart out .
    “Ammunition?” Reacher asked.
    Bobby opened a drawer in the gun rack’s pedestal. Took out a cardboard box of Winchester cartridges.
    “I’ve got some special loads, too,” he said. Took out another box.
    “What are they?”
    “I made them myself. Extra power.”
    Reacher nodded. “Take them all out to the car, O.K.?”
    He took the four rifles out of the rack and followed Bobbyout of the house. Alice was sitting in the car. The six .22s were piled on the seat behind her. Bobby leaned in and placed the ammunition next to them. Reacher stacked the Winchesters upright behind the passenger seat. Then he turned back to Bobby.
    “I’m going to borrow your Jeep,” he said.
    Bobby shrugged, barefoot on the hot dirt.
    “Keys are in it,” he said.
    “You and your mother stay in the house now,” Reacher said. “Anybody seen out and about will be considered hostile, O.K.?”
    Bobby nodded. Turned and walked to the foot of the steps. Glanced back once and went inside the house. Reacher leaned into the VW to talk to Alice.
    “What are we doing?” she said.
    “Getting ready.”
    “For what?”
    “For whatever comes our way.”
    “Why do we need ten rifles?”
    “We don’t. We need one. I don’t want to give the bad guys the other nine, is all.”
    “They’re coming here?”
    “They’re about ten minutes behind us.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “We’re all going out in the desert.”
    “Is there going to be shooting?”
    “Probably.”
    “Is that smart? You said yourself, they’re good