Echo Burning

Pleading with us not to cut. But we cut just a little anyway. For the fun of it. There was blood everywhere. Then we let him go. Butwe told him if we ever saw his face again, we’d take it all the way off for real. And you know what? We never saw his face again.”
    “So it worked,” Josh said. “It worked real good. Only problem was he nearly bled out, from the wound. We should have called ahead for the ambulance. We figured we should remember that, for the next time. Live and learn, that’s what we always say. So this time, we did call ahead. Especially for you. So you should be grateful.”
    “You cut the guy?” Reacher asked.
    “We sure did.”
    “Sounds like you’re real proud of yourselves.”
    “We do what it takes. We look after the family.”
    “And you’re admitting it to me?”
    Josh nodded. “Why shouldn’t we? Like, who the hell are you?”
    Reacher shrugged. “Well, I’m not a schoolteacher.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means you aim to cut me, it’ll be you goes in the ambulance.”
    “You think?”
    Reacher nodded. “That horse I was on shit more trouble than you guys are going to give me.”
    He looked at each of them in turn, openly and evenly. Serene self-confidence works wonders, in a situation like that. And he felt confident. It was confidence born of experience. It was a long, long time since he’d lost a two-on-one bar fight.
    “Your choice,” he said. “Quit now, or go to the hospital.”
    “Well, you know what?” Josh said, smiling. “I think we’ll stay with the program. Because whatever the hell kind of a guy you think you are, we’re the ones got a lot of friends in here. And you don’t.”
    “I didn’t inquire about your social situation,” Reacher said.
    But it was clearly true. They had friends in there. Some kind of a subliminal vibe was quieting the room, making people restless and watchful. They were glancing over, then glancing at each other. The atmosphere was building. The pool game was slowing down. Reacher could feel tension inthe air. The silences were starting. The challenges. Maybe it was going to be worse than two-on-one. Maybe a lot worse.
    Billy smiled.
    “We don’t scare easy,” he said. “Call it a professional thing.”
    They get in the ring with bulls that weigh a ton and a half, Bobby had said. They ain’t going to be too worried about you . Reacher had never been to a rodeo. He knew nothing about them, except for occasional passing impressions from television or the movies. He guessed the riders sat on some kind of a fence, near the pen, and they jumped on just as the bull was released out into the ring. Then they had to stay on. What was it, eight seconds? And if they didn’t, they could get kicked around pretty badly. They could get stomped. Or gored, with the horns. So these guys had some kind of dumb courage. And strength. And resilience. And they were accustomed to pain and injury. But they were also accustomed to some kind of a pattern . Some kind of a structured buildup. Some kind of a measured countdown, before the action suddenly started. He didn’t know for sure how it went. Maybe three, two, one, go . Maybe ten, nine, eight . Whatever, they were accustomed to waiting, counting off the seconds, tensing up, breathing deeply, getting ready for it.
    “So let’s do it,” he said. “Right now, in the yard.”
    He came out from behind the table and stepped past Josh before he could react. Walked ahead, away from the jukebox, to the right of the pool table, heading for the rest room exit. Knots of people blocked him and then parted to let him through. He heard Josh and Billy following right behind him. He felt them counting down, tensing up, getting ready. Maybe twenty paces to the exit, maybe thirty seconds to the yard. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight . He kept his steps even, building on the rhythm. Twenty-seven, twenty-six . Arms loose by his side. Twenty-five, twenty-four .
    He snatched the last pool cue from the rack and reversed it in his hands and scythed a complete hundred-eighty-degree turn and hit Billy as hard as he could in the side of the head, one . There was a loud crunch of bone clearly audible over the jukebox noise and a spray of blood and Billy went down likehe had been machine-gunned. He swung again, chopping full-force at Josh like a slugger swinging for the fences, two . Josh’s hand came up to block the blow and his forearm broke clean in half. He screamed and Reacher swung again