Echo Burning

below.
    “Give me the check,” he said. “You can afford it. You’re a rich man. You just got through telling me.”
    “It’s a matter of principle,” Brewer said. “They shouldn’t be here.”
    “And you should? Why? They were here first.”
    “They lost. To us.”
    “And now you’re losing. To me. What goes around, comes around.”
    He bent down and picked up the silver bell from the table. It was probably an antique. Maybe French. The cup part was engraved with filigree patterns. Maybe two and a half inches in diameter. He held it with his thumb on one side and all four fingers on the other. Squeezed hard and crushed it out of shape. Then he transferred it into his palm and squashed the metal flat. Leaned over and shoved it in Brewer’s shirt pocket.
    “I could do that to your head,” he said.
    Brewer made no reply.
    “Give me the check,” Reacher said, quietly. “Before I lose my damn temper.”
    Brewer paused. Five seconds. Ten. Then he sighed.
    “O.K.,” he said. He led the way into the study and over to the desk. Reacher stood behind him. He didn’t want any revolvers appearing suddenly out of drawers.
    “Make it out to cash,” he said.
    Brewer wrote the check. He got the date right, he got the amount right, and he signed it.
    “It better not bounce,” Reacher said.
    “It won’t,” Brewer said.
    “It does, you do, too. Off the patio.”
    “I hope you rot in hell.”
    Reacher folded the check into his pocket and found the way out to the upstairs foyer. Went down the stairs and walked over to the grandfather clock. Tilted it forward until it overbalanced. It fell like a tree and smashed on the floor and stopped ticking.

    The two men exfiltrated after nearly three hours. The heat was too brutal to stay longer. And they didn’t really need to.Nobody was going anywhere. That was clear. The old woman and her son stayed mostly in the house. The kid was hanging around in the barn, coming out now and then until the sun drove her back inside, once walking slowly back to the house when the maid called her to come and eat. So they gave it up and crawled north in the lee of the rocks and came out to wait on the dusty shoulder as soon as they were out of sight of the house. The woman in the Crown Vic turned up right on time. She had the air blasting and water in bottles. They drank the water and made their report.
    “O.K.,” the woman said. “So I guess we’re ready to make our move.”
    “I guess we are,” the dark man said.
    “Sooner the better,” the fair man agreed. “Let’s get it done.”

    Reacher put the plates back on the old LeBaron as soon as he was out of sight of the Brewer house. Then he drove straight back to Pecos and reclaimed Alice Aaron’s VW from the mechanics. He paid them their forty bucks without complaint, but afterward he wasn’t really sure they’d done anything to the car. The clutch felt just as sharp as it had before. He stalled out twice on the way back to the legal mission.
    He left it in the lot behind the building with the maps and the handgun in the glove compartment where he had found them. Entered the old store from the front and found Alice at her desk in back. She was on the phone and busy with clients. There was a whole family group in front of her. Three generations of quiet, anxious people. She had changed her clothes. Now she was wearing black high-waisted pants made out of some kind of thin cotton or linen, and a black jacket to match. The jacket made the white sports bra look like a shirt. The whole thing looked very formal. Instant attorney.
    She saw him and put her hand over the phone and excused herself from her clients. She twisted away from them and he leaned down next to her.
    “We’ve got big problems,” she said quietly. “Hack Walker wants to see you.”
    “Me?” he said. “Why?”
    “Better you hear it from him.”
    “Hear what? Did you meet with him?”
    She nodded. “I went right over. We talked for a half hour.”
    “And? What did he say?”
    “Better you hear it from him,” she said again. “We can talk about it later, O.K.?”
    There was worry in her voice. He looked at her. She turned back to the phone. The family in front of her desk leaned forward to catch her words. He took the twenty-thousand-dollar check out of his pocket and unfolded it and smoothed it on the desktop. She saw it and stopped talking. Put her hand over the phone again. Took a deep breath.
    “Thanks,” she said.
    Now there was