Echo Burning

swayed withevery step. She was wearing heels and they put tension in the muscles of her legs. He could see tendons in the backs of her knees. Her hair hung down her back and merged with the black pattern on the red fabric of the dress. She turned left and then right and stepped through an archway. There was another staircase, leading down.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    “Separate wing,” she said. “It was added. By Sloop’s grandfather, I think.”
    The staircase led to a long narrow ground-floor hallway that led out of the main building to a master suite. It was as big as a small house. There was a dressing area, and a spacious bathroom, and a sitting room with a sofa and two armchairs. Beyond the sitting room was a broad archway. Beyond the archway, there was a bedroom.
    “In here,” she said.
    She walked straight through the sitting room and led him to the bedroom.
    “You see what I mean?” she said. “We’re a long way from anywhere. Nobody hears anything. And I try to be quiet, anyway. If I scream, he hits me harder.”
    He nodded and looked around. There was a window, facing east, with insects loud beyond the screen. There was a king-size bed close to it, with side tables by the head, and a chest-high piece of furniture full of drawers opposite the foot. It looked like it had been made a hundred years ago, out of some kind of oak trees.
    “Texas ironwood,” she said. “It’s what you get if you let the mesquite grow tall.”
    “You should have been a teacher,” he said. “You’re always explaining things.”
    She smiled, vaguely. “I thought about it, in college. It was a possibility, back then. In my other life.”
    She opened the drawer on the top right.
    “I moved the gun,” she said. “I listened to your advice. Bedside cabinet was too low. Ellie could have found it. This is too high for her.”
    He nodded again and moved closer. The drawer was a couple of feet wide, maybe eighteen inches deep. It was herunderwear drawer. The pistol was lying on top of her things, which were neatly folded, and silky, and insubstantial, and fragrant. The mother-of-pearl plastic on the grips looked right at home there.
    “You could have told me where it was,” he said. “You didn’t need to show me.”
    She was quiet for a beat.
    “He’ll want sex, won’t he?” she said.
    Reacher made no reply.
    “He’s been locked up a year and a half,” she said. “But I’m going to refuse.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “It’s a woman’s right, isn’t it?” she asked. “To say no?”
    “Of course it is,” he said.
    “Even though the woman is married?”
    “Most places,” he said.
    She was quiet for a beat.
    “And it’s also her right to say yes, isn’t it?” she asked.
    “Equally,” he said.
    “I’d say yes to you.”
    “I’m not asking.”
    She paused. “So is it O.K. for me to ask you?”
    He looked straight at her. “Depends on why, I guess.”
    “Because I want to,” she said. “I want to go to bed with you.”
    “Why?”
    “Honestly?” she said. “Just because I want to.”
    “And?”
    She shrugged. “And I want to hurt Sloop a little, I guess, in secret. In my heart.”
    He said nothing.
    “Before he gets home,” she said.
    He said nothing.
    “And because Bobby already thinks we’re doing it,” she said. “I figure, why get the blame without getting the fun?”
    He said nothing.
    “I just want a little fun,” she said. “Before it all starts up again.”
    He said nothing.
    “No strings attached,” she said. “I’m not looking for it to change anything. About your decision, I mean. About Sloop.”
    He nodded.
    “It wouldn’t change anything,” he said.
    She looked away.
    “So what’s your answer?” she asked.
    He watched her profile. Her face was blank. It was like all other possibilities were exhausted for her, and all that was left was instinct. Early in his service career, when the threat was still plausible, people talked about what they would do when the enemy missiles were airborne and incoming. This was absolutely the number-one pick, by a huge, huge margin. A universal instinct. And he could see it in her. She had heard the four-minute warning, and the sirens were sounding loud in her mind.
    “No,” he said.
    She was quiet for a long moment.
    “Will you at least stay with me?” she asked.

    The killing crew moved fifty miles closer to Pecos in the middle of the night. They did it secretly, some hours after booking in for a second