Echo Burning

maybe strain. Maybe the fearsome heat. But it wasn’t impossible she’d been slapped a couple of times, either.
    “Ellie, come with me to see your pony,” she said.
    “I saw him this morning, Mommy,” Ellie said.
    Carmen held out her hand. “But I didn’t. So let’s go see him again.”
    Ellie looked mystified for a second, and then she took Carmen’s hand. They stepped behind Sloop and set off slowly for the front of the barn. Carmen turned her head and mouthed talk to him as she walked. Sloop turned around and watched them go. Turned back and looked at Reacher, like he was seeing him for the first time.
    “Sloop Greer,” he said, and held out his hand.
    Up close, he was an older, wiser version of Bobby. A little older, maybe a lot wiser. There was intelligence in his eyes. Not necessarily a pleasant sort of intelligence. It wasn’t hard to imagine some cruelty there. Reacher shook his hand. It was big-boned, but soft. It was a bully’s hand, not a fighter’s.
    “Jack Reacher,” he said. “How was prison?”
    There was a split-second flash of surprise in the eyes. Then it was replaced by instant calm. Good self-control, Reacher thought.
    “It was pretty awful,” Sloop said. “You been in yourself?”
    Quick, too .
    “On the other side of the bars from you,” Reacher said.
    Sloop nodded. “Bobby told me you were a cop. Now you’re an itinerant worker.”
    “I have to be. I didn’t have a rich daddy.”
    Sloop paused a beat. “You were military, right? In the army?”
    “Right, the army.”
    “I never cared much for the military, myself.”
    “So I gathered.”
    “Yeah, how?”
    “Well, I hear you opted out of paying for it.”
    Another flash in the eyes, quickly gone. Not easy to rile, Reacher thought. But a spell in prison teaches anybody to keep things well below the surface .
    “Shame you spoiled it by crying uncle and getting out early.”
    “You think?”
    Reacher nodded. “If you can’t do the time, then don’t do the crime.”
    “You got out of the army. So maybe you couldn’t do the time either.”
    Reacher smiled. Thanks for the opening, he thought.
    “I had no choice,” he said. “Fact is, they threw me out.”
    “Yeah, why?”
    “I broke the law, too.”
    “Yeah, how?”
    “Some scumbag of a colonel was beating up on his wife. Nice young woman. He was a furtive type of a guy, did it all in secret. So I couldn’t prove it. But I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. That wouldn’t have been right. Because I don’t like men who hit women. So one night, I caught him on his own. No witnesses. He’s in a wheelchair now. Drinks through a straw. Wears a bib, because he drools all the time.”
    Sloop said nothing. He was so silent, the skin at the inside corners of his eyes turned dark purple. Walk away now, Reacher thought, and you’re confessing it to me . But Sloop stayed exactly where he was, very still, staring into space,seeing nothing. Then he recovered. The eyes came back into focus. Not quickly, but not too slowly, either. A smart guy.
    “Well, that makes me feel better,” he said. “About withholding my taxes. They might have ended up in your pocket.”
    “You don’t approve?”
    “No, I don’t,” Sloop said.
    “Of who?”
    “Either of you,” Sloop said. “You, or the other guy.”
    Then he turned and walked away.

    Reacher went back to the bunkhouse. The maid brought him dinner and came back for the plate. Full darkness fell outside and the night insects started up with their crazy chant. He lay down on his bed and sweated. The temperature stayed rock-steady around a hundred degrees. He heard isolated coyote howls again, and cougar screams, and the invisible beating of bats’ wings.
    Then he heard a light tread on the bunkhouse stair. He sat up in time to see Carmen come up into the room. She had one hand pressed flat on her chest, like she was out of breath, or panicking, or both.
    “Sloop talked to Bobby,” she said. “For ages.”
    “Did he hit you?” Reacher asked.
    Her hand went up to her cheek.
    “No,” she said.
    “Did he?”
    She looked away.
    “Well, just once,” she said. “Not hard.”
    “I should go break his arms.”
    “He called the sheriff.”
    “Who did?”
    “Sloop.”
    “When?”
    “Just now. He talked to Bobby, and then he called.”
    “About me?”
    She nodded. “He wants you out of here.”
    “It’s O.K.,” Reacher said. “The sheriff won’t do anything.”
    “You think?”
    Reacher