Echo Burning

holes thesize of shell craters. The horses picked their way between them. They seemed pretty sure on their feet. So far, he hadn’t had to do any conscious steering. Which he was happy about, because he wasn’t exactly sure how to.
    “Watch for rattlesnakes,” Carmen called.
    “Great,” he called back.
    “Horses get scared by anything that moves. They’ll spook and run. If that happens, just hang on tight and haul on the reins.”
    “Great,” he said again.
    There were scrubby plants rooting desperately in cracks in the rock. There were smaller holes, two or three feet across, some of them with undercut sides. Just right for a snake, he thought. He watched them carefully at first. Then he gave it up, because the shadows were too harsh to see anything. And the saddle was starting to wear on him.
    “How far are we going?” he called.
    She turned, like she had been waiting for the question.
    “We need to get over the rise,” she said. “Down into the gulches.”
    The limestone smoothed out into broader unbroken shelves and she slowed to let his horse move up alongside hers. But it stayed just short of level, which kept him behind her. Kept him from seeing her face.
    “Bobby told me you had a key,” he said.
    “Did he?”
    “He said you lost it.”
    “No, that’s not true. They never gave me one.”
    He said nothing.
    “They made a big point of not giving me one,” she said. “Like it was a symbol.”
    “So he was lying?”
    She nodded, away from him. “I told you, don’t believe anything he says.”
    “He said the door’s never locked, anyway.”
    “Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.”
    “He told me you don’t have to knock, either.”
    “That’s a lie, too,” she said. “Since Sloop’s been gone, if I don’t knock, they run and grab a rifle. Then they go, oh sorry,but strangers prowling around the house make us nervous . Like a big pretend show.”
    He said nothing.
    “Bobby’s a liar, Reacher,” she said. “I told you that.”
    “I guess he is. Because he also told me you brought some other guy down here, and he got Josh and Billy to run him off. But Josh and Billy didn’t know anything about any guy.”
    She was quiet for a long moment.
    “No, that was true,” she said. “I met a man up in Pecos, about a year ago. We had an affair. At first just at his place up there. But he wanted more.”
    “So you brought him here?”
    “It was his idea. He thought he could get work, and be close to me. I thought it was crazy, but I went along with it. That’s where I got the idea to ask you to come. Because it actually worked for a spell. Two or three weeks. Then Bobby caught us.”
    “And what happened?”
    “That was the end of it. My friend left.”
    “So why would Josh and Billy deny it to me?”
    “Maybe it wasn’t Josh and Billy who ran him off. Maybe they didn’t know about it. Maybe Bobby did it himself. My friend wasn’t as big as you. He was a schoolteacher, out of work.”
    “And he just disappeared?”
    “I saw him again, just once, back in Pecos. He was scared. Wouldn’t talk to me.”
    “Did Bobby tell Sloop?”
    “He promised he wouldn’t. We had a deal.”
    “What kind of a deal?”
    She went quiet again. Just rode on, sitting slackly on the swaying horse.
    “The usual kind,” she said. “If I’d do something for him, he’d keep quiet.”
    “What kind of something?”
    She paused again.
    “Something I really don’t want to tell you about,” she said.
    “I see.”
    “Yes, you see.”
    “And did he keep quiet?”
    “I really have no idea. He made me do it twice. It was disgusting. He’s disgusting. But he promised faithfully. But he’s a liar, so I’m assuming he told Sloop anyway. On one of his brotherly visits. I always knew it was a lose-lose gamble, but what could I do? What choice did I have?”
    “Bobby figures that’s why I’m here. He thinks we’re having an affair, too.”
    She nodded. “That would be my guess. He doesn’t know Sloop hits me. Even if he did, he wouldn’t expect me to do anything about it.”
    Reacher was quiet for a spell. Another twenty yards, thirty, at the slow patient pace of a walking horse.
    “You need to get out,” he said. “How many times do you have to hear it?”
    “I won’t run,” she answered.
    They reached the top of the rise and she made a small sound and her horse stopped walking. His stopped, too, at her shoulder. They were about fifty feet above the plain. Ahead of them, to