Echo Burning

yard. He just walked. Reacher kept pace and looked ahead at the night sky in the east. It was vast and black and filled with stars. Apartfrom dim windows in some of the Greer buildings there was absolute pitch darkness everywhere. It threw the stars into vivid relief, impossibly tiny and numerous points of light dusting backward through billions of cubic miles of space. Reacher liked peering out into the universe. He liked thinking about it. He used it for perspective. He was just a tiny insignificant speck briefly sparked to life in the middle of nowhere. So what really mattered? Maybe nothing at all. So maybe he should just go ahead and bust Sloop Greer’s head and have done with it. Why not? In the context of the whole universe, how was that so very different from not busting it at all?
    “My brother had a problem,” Bobby said, awkwardly. “I guess you know that.”
    “I heard he cheated on his taxes,” Reacher said.
    Bobby nodded in the dark. “IRS snoops are everywhere.”
    “Is that how they found him? Snooping?”
    “Well, how else would they?” Bobby asked.
    He went quiet. Walked ahead a couple of paces.
    “Anyway, Sloop went to jail,” he said.
    Reacher nodded. “Getting out Monday, I heard.”
    “That’s right. So he’s not going to be too happy finding you here, kissing his kid, getting friendly with his wife.”
    Reacher shrugged as he walked. “I’m just here to work.”
    “Right, as a wrangler. Not as a nursemaid.”
    “I get time off, right?”
    “But you need to be careful how you spend it.”
    Reacher smiled. “You mean I need to know my place?”
    “Right,” Bobby said. “And your place ain’t alongside my brother’s wife, or getting cozy with his kid.”
    “A man can’t choose his friends?”
    “Sloop ain’t going to be happy, he gets home and finds some outsider has chosen his wife and kid for his friends.”
    Reacher stopped walking. Stood still in the dark. “Thing is, Bobby, why would I give a rat’s ass what makes your brother happy?”
    Bobby stopped, too. “Because we’re a family. Things get talked about. You need to get that through your head. Or you won’t work here too long. You could get run right out of here.”
    “You think?”
    “Yeah, I think.”
    Reacher smiled again. “Who you going to call? The sheriff with the secondhand car? Guy like that could get a heart attack, just thinking about it.”
    Bobby shook his head. “West Texas, we look after things personally. It’s a tradition. Never had too big of a law enforcement thing around here, so we kind of accustomed ourselves.”
    Reacher took a step closer.
    “So you going to do it?” he said. “You want to do it now?”
    Bobby said nothing. Reacher nodded.
    “Maybe you’d prefer to set the maid on me,” he said. “Maybe she’ll come after me with a skillet.”
    “Josh and Billy will do what they’re told.”
    “The little guys? The maid might be better. Or you, even.”
    “Josh and Billy get in the ring with bulls that weigh a ton and a half. They ain’t going to be too worried about you.”
    Reacher started walking again. “Whatever, Bobby. I only said good night to the kid. No reason to start World War Three over it. She’s starved for company. So is her mother. What can I do about it?”
    “You can get smart about it, is what,” Bobby said. “I told you before, she lies about everything. So whatever big story she’s been telling you, chances are it’s bullshit. So don’t go making a fool out of yourself, falling for it. You wouldn’t be the first.”
    They turned the corner beyond the corrals and headed for the bunkhouse door.
    “What does that mean?” Reacher asked.
    “How dumb do you think I am? She’s gone all day every day for the best part of a month, gone all night as often as she can get away with it, leaving the kid here for us to tend to. And she’s gone where? Some motel up in Pecos, is where, screwing the brains out of whatever new guy she can get to believe her bullshit stories about how her husband doesn’t understand her. Which is entirely her business, but it’s my business if she thinks she can go ahead and bring the guy back here. Two days before her husband gets home? Passing you off as some stranger looking for ranch work? What kind of crap is that?”
    “What did you mean, I wouldn’t be the first?”
    “Exactly what I said. Talk to Josh and Billy about it. They ran him off.”
    Reacher said nothing. Bobby smiled at him.
    “Don’t