Echo Burning

barrel. A small weapon. Rusty cradled it in her palm, and it looked right at home in a woman’s hand.
    “Where’s Ellie, Hack?” Reacher asked again.
    “I don’t know,” Walker said. “I really don’t. They use motels. I don’t know which one. They wouldn’t tell me. They said it’s safer that way.”
    “How do you contact them?”
    “A Dallas number. It must be rerouted.”
    “Phones are out,” Bobby said.
    “Where is she, Hack?” Reacher asked again.
    “I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did.”
    Reacher raised Alice’s gun. Held it straight out across the table. His arms were long, and the muzzle came to rest two feet from Walker’s face.
    “Watch the trigger finger, Hack,” he said.
    He tightened his finger until the skin shone white in the candlelight. The trigger moved backward, a sixteenth of an inch, then an eighth.
    “You want to die, Hack?”
    Walker nodded.
    “Yes, please,” he whispered.
    “Tell me first,” Reacher said. “Make it right. Where is she?”
    “I don’t know,” Walker said.
    He stared at the muzzle. It was so close, his eyes were crossing. The candle flames were reflected in the polished nickel. Reacher sighed and slackened his finger and lowered the gun all the way back to the tabletop. It hit the wood with a quiet sound. Nobody spoke. And nobody moved, until Rusty’s hand came up with the tiny revolver in it. She raised it in a wavering circle and it finished up pointing at nobody in particular.
    “Sloop wouldn’t hit a woman,” she whispered. “Those were all riding accidents.”
    Reacher shook his head. “He beat Carmen for five years, Rusty, almost every day they were married, until he went to jail. Broke her bones and split her lips and bruised her flesh. And that was after raping and torturing and murdering twenty-five human beings, at night, in the desert, twelve years ago.”
    She trembled wildly.
    “No,” she said. “That isn’t true.”
    The gun wavered unsteadily.
    “Point that thing at me and I’ll shoot you,” Reacher said. “Believe me, it would be an absolute pleasure.”
    She stared at him for a second and then crooked her arm and touched the gun to the side of her own head, just aboveher ear. The metal penetrated her lacquered hair like a stick thrust through a bird’s nest. She kept it there for a long moment and then pulled it away and turned and twisted in her chair and moved it again and brought it level with Hack Walker’s forehead, with the muzzle no more than two inches from his skin.
    “You killed my boy,” she whispered.
    Walker made no attempt to move. He just nodded, very slightly.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered back.
    No revolver has a safety mechanism. And a Colt Detective Special is a double-action pistol. Which means the first half of the trigger’s travel clicks the hammer back and revolves the cylinder under it, and then, if you keep on pulling, the hammer drops and the gun fires.
    “No, Rusty,” Reacher said.
    “Mom,” Bobby called.
    The hammer clicked back.
    “No,” Alice shouted.
    The hammer tripped. The gun fired. There was colossal noise and flame, and the crown of Walker’s head blasted backward into the candlelit gloom. It just came off like a lid and splintered into mist. Colt Super Autos with hollow points, Reacher’s subconscious mind told him. The flame died abruptly and he saw a blackened hole between Walker’s eyes and his hair on fire from the muzzle flash. Then Rusty fired again. The second bullet followed the first straight through Walker’s head and he went down and Rusty kept the gun rock-steady in the air above him and fired into space, three, four, five, six. The third shot splintered the wall, and the fourth hit the Coleman lantern and shattered its glass, and the fifth hit its kerosene reservoir and exploded it over a ten-foot square of wall. It blew sideways and ignited with a bright flash and the sixth shot hit the exact center of the flames. She kept on pumping the trigger even after the gun was empty. Reacher watched her finger flexing and the hammer clicking and the cylinder stepping around obediently. Then he turned and watched the wall.
    The kerosene was thicker than water and had more surfacetension. It flung outward and dripped and ran and burned fiercely. It set the wall on fire immediately. The dry old wood burned with no hesitation at all. Blue flames crept upward and sideways and the faded red paint bubbled and peeled ahead of them. Tongues of flame found the