Echo Burning

sheds clustered loosely around it. There was ranch fencing enclosing arbitrary squares of territory. Everything was painted dull red, all the buildings and all the fences alike. The low orange sun blazed against them and made them glow and shimmer and split horizontally into bands of mirage.
    She slowed still more where the red fence started. Coasted the last hundred yards with her foot off the gas and then turned in on a beaten dirt track running under the gate. There was a name on the gate, high above their heads, red-painted wood on red-painted wood. It said Red House. She glanced up at it as she passed through.
    “Welcome to hell,” she said.

    The Red House itself was the main building in a compound of four impressive structures. It had a wide planked porch with wooden columns and a swinging seat hung from chains, and beyond it eighty yards farther on was a motor barn, but she couldn’t drive down to it because a police cruiser was parked at an angle on the track, completely blocking her way. It was an old-model Chevy Caprice, painted black and white, with Echo County Sheriff on the door, where it had said something else before. Bought by the county secondhand, Reacher thought, maybe from Dallas or Houston, repainted and refurbished for easy duty out here in the sticks. It was empty and the driver’s door was standing open. The light bar on the roof was flashing red and blue, whipping colors horizontally over the porch and the whole front of the house.
    “What’s this about?” Carmen said.
    Then her hand went up to her mouth.
    “God, he can’t be home already,” she said. “Please, no.”
    “Cops wouldn’t bring him home,” Reacher said. “They don’t run a limo service.”
    Ellie was waking up behind them. No more hum from the engine, no more rocking from the springs. She struggled upright and gazed out, eyes wide.
    “What’s that?” she said.
    “It’s the sheriff,” Carmen said.
    “Why’s he here?” Ellie asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Why are the lights flashing?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Did somebody call 911? Maybe there’s been a burglar. Maybe he wore a mask and stole something.”
    She crawled through and knelt on the padded armrest between the front seats. Reacher caught the school smell again and saw delighted curiosity in her face. Then he saw it change to extreme panic.
    “Maybe he stole a horse,” she said. “Maybe my pony, Mommy.”
    She scrambled across Carmen’s lap and scrabbled at the door handle. Jumped out of the car and ran across the yard, as fast as her legs would carry her, her arms held stiff by her sides and her ponytail bouncing behind her.
    “I don’t think anybody stole a horse,” Carmen said. “I think Sloop’s come home.”
    “With the lights flashing?” Reacher said.
    She unclipped her seat belt and swiveled sideways and placed her feet on the dirt of the yard. Stood up and stared toward the house, with her hands on the top of the door frame, like the door was shielding her from something. Reacher did the same, on his side. The fierce heat wrapped around him. He could hear bursts of radio chatter coming from the sheriff’s car.
    “Maybe they’re looking for you,” he said. “You’ve been away overnight. Maybe they reported you missing.”
    Across the Cadillac’s roof, she shook her head. “Ellie was here, and as long as they know where she is, they don’t care where I am.”
    She stood still for a moment longer, and then she took a sideways step and eased the door shut behind her. Reacher did the same. Twenty feet away, the house door opened and a uniformed man stepped out onto the porch. The sheriff, obviously. He was about sixty and overweight, with dark tanned skin and thin gray hair plastered to his head. He was walking half-backward, taking his leave of the gloom inside. He had black pants and a white uniform shirt with epaulettes and embroidered patches on the shoulders. A wide gun belt with a wooden-handled revolver secured into a holster with a leather strap. The door closed behind him and he turned toward his cruiser and stopped short when he saw Carmen. Touched his forefinger to his brow in a lazy imitation of a salute.
    “Mrs. Greer,” he said, like he was suggesting something was her fault.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    “Folks inside will tell you,” the sheriff said. “Too damn hot for me to be repeating everything twice.”
    Then his gaze skipped the roof of the Cadillac and settled on Reacher.
    “And