Echo Burning

bathroom. It was huge, and made out of some kind of reconstituted marble with gold tones in it. It looked like a place he’d once stayed, in Vegas. He used the john and rinsed his mouth at the sink and stripped off his stale clothes and stepped into the shower stall. It was enclosed with bronze-tinted glass and it was enormous. There was a shower head the size of a hubcap above him, and tallpipes in each corner with additional water jets pointing directly at him. He turned the faucet and a huge roaring started up. Then a deluge of warm water hit him from all sides. It was like standing under Niagara Falls. The side jets started pulsing hot and cold and he couldn’t hear himself think. He washed as quickly as he could and soaped his hair and rinsed off and shut it all down.
    He took a fresh towel from a stack and dried off as well as he could in the humidity. Wrapped the towel around him and stepped back into the dressing area. Carmen was buttoning her shirt. It was white, and she had white pants on. Gold jewelry. Her skin looked dark against it and her hair was glossy and already curling in the heat.
    “That was quick,” she said.
    “Hell of a shower,” he said.
    “Sloop chose it,” she said. “I hate it. There’s so much water, I can hardly breathe in there.”
    She slid her closet shut and twisted left and right to examine her reflection in the mirrored doors.
    “You look good,” he said.
    “Do I look Mexican enough?” she asked. “With the white clothes?”
    He said nothing.
    “No jeans today,” she said. “I’m sick of trying to look like I was born a cowgirl in Amarillo.”
    “You look good,” he said again.
    “Seven hours,” she said. “Six and a half, if Hack drives fast.”
    He nodded. “I’m going to find Bobby.”
    She stretched tall and kissed him on the cheek.
    “Thanks for staying,” she said. “It helped me.”
    He said nothing.
    “Join us for breakfast,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”
    Then she walked slowly out of the room, on her way to wake her daughter.

    Reacher dressed and found a different way back into the house. The whole place was a warren. He came out through a living room he hadn’t seen before and into the foyer with themirror and the rifles. He opened the front door and stepped out on the porch. It was already hot. The sun was coming from low on his right, and it was casting harsh early shadows. The shadows made the yard look pocked and lumpy.
    He walked down to the barn and went in the door. The heat and the smell were as bad as ever, and the horses were awake and restless. But they were clean. They had water. Their feed troughs had been filled. He found Bobby asleep in an unoccupied stall, on a bed of clean straw.
    “Rise and shine, little brother,” he called.
    Bobby stirred and sat up, confused as to where he was, and why. Then he remembered, and went tense with resentment. His clothes were dirty and hay stalks clung to him all over.
    “Sleep well?” Reacher asked.
    “They’ll be back soon,” Bobby said. “Then what do you think is going to happen?”
    Reacher smiled. “You mean, am I going to tell them I made you clean out the barn and sleep in the straw?”
    “You couldn’t tell them.”
    “No, I guess I couldn’t,” Reacher said. “So are you going to tell them?”
    Bobby said nothing. Reacher smiled again.
    “No, I didn’t think you would,” he said. “So stay in here until noontime, then I’ll let you in the house to get cleaned up for the main event.”
    “What about breakfast?”
    “You don’t get any.”
    “But I’m hungry.”
    “So eat the horse food. Turns out there’s bags and bags of it, after all.”

    He went back to the kitchen and found the maid brewing coffee and heating a skillet.
    “Pancakes,” she said. “And that will have to do. They’ll want a big lunch, so that’s where my morning is going.”
    “Pancakes are fine,” he said.
    He walked on into the silent parlor and listened for sounds from above. Ellie and Carmen should be moving aroundsomewhere. But he couldn’t hear anything. He tried to map the house in his head, but the layout was too bizarre. Clearly it had started out a substantial ranch house, and then random additions had been made whenever necessary. Overall, there was no coherence to it.
    The maid came in with a stack of plates. Four of them, with four sets of silverware and four paper napkins piled on top.
    “I assume you’re eating in here,” she said.
    Reacher nodded. “But