Echo Burning

you employed by her? Like officially?”
    Reacher shrugged. “More or less.”
    “She paying you? You got a contract we can see?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “So get in the car.”
    “She’s in danger.”
    “We get a call, we’ll come running.”
    “She can’t call. Or if she does, the sheriff won’t pass it on.”
    “Then there’s nothing we can do. Now get in the car.”
    Reacher said nothing. The sergeant opened the rear door. Then he paused.
    “You could come back tomorrow,” he said, quietly. “No law says a man can’t try to get himself rehired.”
    Reacher took a second look at the shotgun. It was a big handsome Ithaca with a muzzle wide enough to stick his thumb in. He took a second look at the sergeant’s handgun. It was a Glock, secured into an oiled leather holster by a strap that would take about half a second to unfasten.
    “But right now, get in the car.”
    Checkmate .
    “O.K.,” Reacher said. “But I’m not happy.”
    “Very few of our passengers are,” the sergeant said back.
    He used his hand on the top of Reacher’s head and foldedhim into the back seat. It was cold in there. There was a heavy wire barrier in front of him. Either side, the door handles and the window winders had been removed. Small squares of aluminum had been riveted over the holes in the trim. The seat was vinyl. There was a smell of disinfectant and a heavy stink from an air freshener shaped like a pine tree hanging from the mirror in front. There was a radar device built up on top of the dash and quiet radio chatter coming from a unit underneath it.
    The sergeant and the trooper swung in together in front and drove him up to the house. All the Greers except Ellie were on the porch to see him go. They were standing in a line at the rail, first Rusty, then Bobby, then Sloop and Carmen. They were all smiling. All except Carmen. The sergeant stopped the car at the foot of the steps and buzzed his window down.
    “This guy says you owe him wages,” he called.
    There was silence for a second. Just the sound of the insects.
    “So tell him to sue us,” Bobby called back.
    Reacher leaned forward to the metal grille.
    “¡Carmen!” he shouted. “¡Si hay un problema, llama directamente a estos hombres!”
    The sergeant turned his head. “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    “So what do you want to do?” the sergeant asked. “About your money?”
    “Forget about it,” Reacher said.
    The sergeant buzzed his window up again and pulled out toward the gate. Reacher craned his neck and saw them all turn to watch him go, all except for Carmen, who stood absolutely still and stared rigidly ahead at the spot where the car had just been. The sergeant made a right onto the road and Reacher turned his head the other way and saw them all filing back into the house. Then the sergeant accelerated hard and they were lost to sight.
    “What was that you called out to them?” he asked.
    Reacher said nothing. The trooper answered for him.
    “It was Spanish,” he said. “For the woman. It meant ‘Carmen, if there’s trouble, call these guys direct.’ Terrible accent.”
    Reacher said nothing.

    * * *

    They drove the same sixty miles he had covered the other way in the white Cadillac, back to the crossroads hamlet with Ellie’s school and the gas station and the old diner. The sergeant stuck to a lazy fifty-five all the way, and it took an hour and five minutes. When they got there, everything was closed up tight. There were lights burning in two of the houses, and nothing else. Then they drove the stretch where Carmen had chased the school bus. Nobody talked. Reacher sprawled sideways on the vinyl bench and watched the darkness. Another twenty minutes north he saw the turn where Carmen had come down out of the hills. They didn’t take it. They just kept on going, heading for the main highway, and then Pecos beyond it.
    They never got there. The radio call came in a mile short of the county line. An hour and thirty-five minutes into the ride. The call was bored and laconic and loud with static. A woman dispatcher’s voice.
    “Blue Five, Blue Five,” it said.
    The trooper unhooked the microphone and stretched the cord and clicked the switch.
    “Blue Five, copy, over,” he said.
    “Required at the Red House Ranch immediately, sixty miles south of north Echo crossroads, domestic disturbance reported, over.”
    “Copy, nature of incident, over?”
    “Unclear at this time, believed violent, over.”
    “Well, shit,”