Echo Burning

inside the barn, its engine idling to keep the air going. The barn had an exterior staircase leading up to a hayloft, with a small platform outside the door at the top. The woman was out in the heat, up on the platform, where she could survey the meandering approach road. She saw the watchers’ pick-up two miles away. It was traveling fast and kicking up a plume of dust. She waited until she was sure it was unaccompanied and then she turned and walked down the stairs. Signaled to the others.
    They got out of the car and stood waiting in the heat. They heard the pick-up on the road, and then it pulled around the corner of the barn and slowed in the yard. They directed it with hand signals, like traffic cops. They pointed into the barn. One of them led the truck on foot, gesturing like the guy on the airport apron. He brought it tight up to the rear wall, gesturing all the time, and then he gave a thumbs-up tohalt it. He stepped alongside the driver’s window and his partner stepped to the passenger door.
    The driver shut off the motor and relaxed. Human nature. The end of a fast drive to a secret rendezvous, the intrigue of new instructions, the prospect of a big payday. He wound down his window. On the passenger’s side, the second man did the same thing. Then they both died, shot in the side of the head with nine-millimeter bullets. The boy in the middle lived exactly one second longer, both sides of his face splattered with blood and brain tissue, his notebook clutched in his hands. Then the small dark man leaned in and shot him twice in the chest. The woman pushed him out of the way and adjusted the window winders on both doors to leave the glass cracked open about an inch. An inch would let insects in and keep scavengers out. Insects would help with decomposition, but scavengers could drag body parts away, which would risk visibility.

    Reacher dozed a couple of hours before Josh and Billy got back. They didn’t give him any instructions. They just got cleaned up for lunch. They told him they were invited inside the house to eat. And he wasn’t, because he had refused to drive.
    “Bobby told me you ran some guy off,” he said.
    Joshua just smiled.
    “What guy?” Billy said.
    “Some guy came down here with Carmen.”
    “The Mexican?”
    “Some friend of hers.”
    Billy shook his head. “Don’t know anything about it. We never ran any guy off. What are we, cops?”
    “You’re the cop,” Joshua said.
    “Am I?”
    Joshua nodded. “Bobby said so. You were a military cop.”
    “You been discussing me?”
    Joshua shrugged and went quiet.
    “Got to go,” Billy said.
    Twenty minutes later Carmen herself brought his armadillo lunch to him. It was in a covered dish and smelledstrongly of chili. She left, nervous and in a hurry, without saying a word. He tried the meal. The meat was halfway between sweet and ordinary. It had been shredded and chopped and mixed with beans and two-alarm sauce from a bottle. Then slightly overdone in a warm oven. He had eaten worse, and he was hungry, which helped. He took his time, and then carried the dish back to the kitchen. Bobby was standing out on the porch steps, like a sentry.
    “Horses need more feed supplement,” he called. “You’ll go with Josh and Billy to pick it up. After siesta. Get as many bags as fit in the truck.”
    Reacher nodded and walked on to the kitchen. Gave the used dish to the maid, and thanked her for the meal. Then he walked down to the barn and went inside and sat on a bale of straw to wait. The horses turned around in their stalls to watch him do it. They were patient and listless in the heat. One of them was chewing slowly. There were hay stalks stuck to its lips.
    Carmen came in ten minutes later. She had changed into faded blue jeans and a checked cotton shirt with no sleeves. She was carrying a straw hat and her pocketbook. She looked tiny and afraid.
    “Bobby doesn’t know you called the IRS,” he said. “He thinks it was random snooping. So maybe Sloop does, too.”
    She shook her head. “Sloop knows.”
    “How?”
    She shrugged. “Actually, he doesn’t know . But he convinced himself it had to be me. He was looking for somebody to blame, and who else is there? No evidence or anything, but as it happens he’s right. Ironic, isn’t it?”
    “But he didn’t tell Bobby.”
    “He wouldn’t. He’s too stubborn to agree with them. They hate me, he hates me, he keeps it a secret, they keep it a secret. From him, I mean.