Echo Burning

Reacher was not good company on the ride south. He didn't talk at all for the first hour and a half. Evening dark had fallen fast and he kept the VW's dome light on and studied the maps from the glove compartment. In particular he concentrated on a large-scale topographical sheet that showed the southern part of Echo County. The county boundary was a completely straight line running east to west. At its closest point, it was fifty miles from the Rio Grande. That made no sense to him.

"I don't understand why she lied about the diamond," he said.

Alice shrugged. She was pushing the little car as fast as it was willing to go.

"She lied about everything," she said.

"The ring was different," he said.

"Different how?"

"A different sort of lie. Like apples are different from oranges."

"I don't follow."

"The ring is the only thing I can't explain to myself."

"The only thing?"

"Everything else is coherent, but the ring is a problem."

She drove on, another mile. The power line poles came and went, flashing through the headlight beams for a split second each.

"You know what's going on, don't you?" she said.

"You ever done computer-aided design?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Me neither."

"So?"

"Do you know what it is?"

She shrugged again. "Vaguely, I guess."

"They can build a whole house or car or whatever, right there on the computer screen. They can paint it, decorate it, look at it. If it's a house, they can go in it, walk around. They can rotate it, look at the front, look at the back. If it's a car, they can see how it looks in daylight and in the dark. They can tilt it up and down, spin it around, examine it from every angle. They can crash it and see how it holds up. It's like a real thing, except it isn't. I guess it's a virtual thing."

"So?" she said again.

"I can see this whole situation in my mind, like a computer design. Inside and out, up and down. From every angle. Except for the ring. The ring screws it up."

"You want to explain that?"

"No point," he said. "Until I figure it out."

"Is Ellie going to be O.K.?"

"I hope so. That's why we're making this trip."

"You think the grandmother can help us?"

He shrugged. "I doubt it."

"So how is this trip helping Ellie?"

He said nothing. Just opened the glove compartment and put the maps back. Took out the Heckler & Koch handgun. Clicked out the magazine and checked the load. Never assume. But it still held its full complement of ten shells. He put the magazine back in and jacked the first round into the chamber. Then he cocked the pistol and locked it. Eased up off the passenger seat and slipped it into his pocket.

"You think we're going to need that?" she asked.

"Sooner or later," he said. "You got more ammo in your bag?"

She shook her head. "I never thought I'd actually use it." He said nothing. "You O.K.?" she asked.

"Feeling good," he said. "Maybe like you did during that big trial, before the guy refused to pay."

She nodded at the wheel. "It was a good feeling."

"That's your thing, right?"

"I guess it is."

"This is my thing," he said. "This is what I'm built for. The thrill of the chase. I'm an investigator, Alice, always was, always will be. I'm a hunter. And when Walker gave me that badge my head started working."

"You know what's going on, don't you?" she asked again.

"Aside from the diamond ring."

"Tell me."

He said nothing.

"Tell me," she said again.

"Did you ever ride a horse?"

"No," she said. "I'm a city girl. Openest space I ever saw was the median strip in the middle of Park Avenue."

"I just rode one with Carmen. First time ever."

"So?"

"They're very tall. You're way up there in the air."

"So?" she said again.

"You ever ride a bike?"

"In New York City?"

"Inline skating?"

"A little, back when it was cool."

"You ever fall?"

"Once, pretty badly."

He nodded. "Tell me about that meal you made for me."

"What about it?"

"Homemade, right?"

"Sure."

"You weighed out the ingredients?"

"You have to."

"So you've got a scale in your kitchen?"

"Sure," she said again.

"The scales of justice," he said.

"Reacher, what the hell are you talking about?"

He glanced to his left. The red picket fence was racing backward through the edge of her headlight beams.

"We're here," he said. "I'll tell you later."

She slowed and turned in under the gate and bumped across the yard.

"Face it toward the motor barn," he said. "And leave the headlights on. I want to take a look at that old pick-up truck."

"O.K.," she said.

She coasted a yard or two and hauled on the steering wheel until the headlight beams washed into the right-hand end of the barn. They lit up half of die new pick-up, half of the Jeep Cherokee, and all of the old pick-up between them.

"Stay close to me," he said.

They got out of the car. The night air felt suddenly hot and damp. Different than before. It was cloudy and there were disturbed insects floating everywhere. But the yard was quiet. No sound. They walked over together for a better look at the abandoned truck. It was some kind of a Chevrolet, maybe twenty years old, but still a recognizable ancestor of the newer truck alongside it. It had bulbous fenders and dulled paint and a roll bar built into the load bed. It must have had a million miles on it. Probably hadn't been started in a decade. The springs sagged and the tires were flat and the rubber was perished by the relentless heat.

"So?" Alice said.

"I think it's the truck in the photograph," Reacher said. "The one in Walker's office? Him and Sloop and Eugene leaning on the fender?"

"Trucks all look the same to me," she said.

"Sloop had the same photograph."

"Is that significant?"

He shrugged. "They were good friends."

They turned away. Alice ducked back into the VW and killed the lights. Then he led her to the foot of the porch steps. Up to the main entrance. He knocked. Waited. Bobby Greer opened the door. Stood there, surprised.

"So you came home," Reacher said.

Bobby scowled, like he had already heard it.

"My buddies took me out," he said. "To help with the grieving process."

Reacher opened his palm to show off the chromium star. The badge flip. It felt good. Not quite as good as flashing a United States Army Criminal Investigation Division credential, but it had an effect on Bobby. It stopped him closing the door again.

"Police," Reacher said. "We need to see your mother."

"Police? You?"

"Hack Walker just deputized us. Valid throughout Echo County. Where's your mother?"

Bobby paused a beat. Leaned forward and glanced up at the night sky and literally sniffed the air.

"Storm's rolling in," he said. "It's coming now. From the south."

"Where's your mother, Bobby?"

Bobby paused again.

"Inside," he said.

Reacher led Alice past Bobby into the red foyer with the rifles and the mirror. It was a degree or two cooler inside the house. The old air conditioner was running hard. It thumped and rattled patiently, somewhere upstairs. They walked through the foyer and into the parlor in back. Rusty Greer was sitting at die table in the same chair as the first time he had seen her. She was wearing the same style of clothes. Tight jeans and a fringed blouse. Her hair was lacquered up into a halo as hard as a helmet.

"We're here on official business, Mrs. Greer," Reacher said. He showed her the badge in his palm. "We need some answers."

"Or what, big man?" Rusty said. "You going to arrest me?"

Reacher pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. Just looked at her.

"I've done nothing wrong," she said.

Reacher shook his head. "As a matter of fact, you've done everything wrong."

"Like what?"

"Like, my grandmother would have died before she let her grandchildren get taken away. Literally. Over her dead body, she'd have said, and she'd have damn well meant every word."

Silence for a second. Just the endless tick of the fan.

"It was for the child's own good," Rusty said. "And I had no choice. They had papers."

"You given grandchildren away before?"

"No."

"So how do you know they were the right papers?"

Rusty just shrugged. Said nothing.

"Did you check?"

"How could I?" Rusty said. "And they looked right. All full of big words, aforementioned, hereinafter, the State of Texas."

"They were fakes," Reacher said. "It was a kidnap, Mrs. Greer. It was coercion. They took your granddaughter to threaten your daughter-in-law with."

He watched her face, for dawning realization, for guilt or shame or fear or remorse. There was some expression there. He wasn't exactly sure what it was.

"So we need descriptions," he said. "How many were there?"

She said nothing.

"How many people, Mrs. Greer?"

"Two people. A man and a woman."

"White?"

"Yes."

"What did they look like?"

Rusty shrugged again.

"Ordinary," she said. "Normal. Like you would expect. Like social workers. From a city. They had a big car."

"Hair? Eyes? Clothes?"

"Fair hair, I think. Both of them. Cheap suits. The woman wore a skirt. Blue eyes, I think. The man was tall."

"What about their car?"

"I don't know about cars. It was a big sedan. But kind of ordinary. Not a Cadillac."

"Color?"

"Gray or blue, maybe. Not dark."

"You got any humble pie in the kitchen?"

"Why?"

"Because I should cram it down your throat until it chokes you. Those fair-haired white people with the blue eyes are the ones who killed Al Eugene. And you gave your own granddaughter to them."

She stared at him. "Killed? Al is dead?"

"Two minutes after they took him out of his car."

She went pale and her mouth started working. She said what about, and then stopped. And again, what about. She couldn't add the word Elite.

"Not yet," Reacher said. "That's my guess. And my hope. Ought to be your hope, too, because if they hurt her, you know what I'm going to do?"

She didn't answer. Just clamped her lips and shook her head from side to side.

"I'm going to come back down here and break your spine. I'm going to stand you up and snap it like a rotten twig."

* * *

They made her take a bath, which was awful, because one of the men watched her do it. He was quite short and had black hair on his head and his arms. He stood inside the bathroom door and watched her all the time she was in the tub. Her mommy had told her, never let anybody see you undressed, especially not a man. And he was right there watching her. And she had no pajamas to put on afterward. She hadn't brought any. She hadn't brought anything.

"You don't need pajamas," the man said. "It's too hot for pajamas."

He stood there by the door, watching her. She dried herself with a small white towel. She needed to pee, but she wasn't going to let him watch her do that. She had to squeeze very near him to get out of the room. Then the other two watched her all the way to the bed. The other man, and the woman. They were horrible. They were all horrible. She got into the bed and pulled the covers up over her head and tried hard not to cry.

* * *

"What now?" Alice asked.

"Back to Pecos," Reacher said. "I want to keep on the move. And we've got a lot of stuff to do tonight. But go slow, O.K.? I need time to think."

She drove out to the gate and turned north into the darkness. Switched the fan on high to blow the night heat away.

"Think about what?" Alice asked.

"About where Ellie is."

"Why do you think it was the same people as killed Eugene?"

"It's a deployment issue," he said. "I can't see anybody using a separate hit team and kidnap team. Not down here in the middle of nowhere. So I think it's one team. Either a hit team moonlighting on the kidnap, or a kidnap team moonlighting on the hits. Probably the former, because the way they did Eugene was pretty expert. If that was moonlighting, I'd hate to see them do what they're really good at."

"All they did was shoot him. Anybody could do that."

"No, they couldn't. They got him to stop the car, they talked him into theirs. They kept him quiet throughout. That's really good technique, Alice. Harder than you can imagine. Then they shot him through the eye. That means something, too."

"What?"

He shrugged. "It's a tiny target. And in a situation like that, it's a snap shot. You raise the gun, you fire. One, two. No rational reason to pick such a tiny target. It's a kind of exuberance. Not exactly showing off, as such. More like just celebrating your own skill and precision. Like reveling in it. It's a joy thing."

Silence in the car. Just the hum of the motor and the whine of the tires.

"And now they've got the kid," Alice said.

"And they're uneasy about it, because they're moonlighting. They're used to each other alone. They're accustomed to their normal procedures. Having a live kid around makes them worried about being static and visible."

"They'll look like a family. A man, a woman, a little girl."

"No, I think there's more than two of them."

"Why?"

"Because if it was me, I'd want three. In the service, we used three. Basically a driver, a shooter and a back-watcher."

"You shot people? The military police?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes. You know, things better not brought to trial."

She was quiet for a long moment. He saw her debating whether to hitch an inch farther away from him. Then he saw her decide to stay where she was.

"So why didn't you do it for Carmen?" she asked. "If you've done it before?"

"She asked me the same question. My answer is, I really don't know."

She was quiet again, another mile.

"Why are they holding Ellie?" she said. "I mean, still holding her? They already coerced the confession. So what's still to gain?"

"You're the lawyer," he said. "You have to figure that one out. When does it become set in stone? You know, irrevocable?"

"Never, really. A confession can be retracted anytime. But in practice, I guess if she answered nolo contendere to the grand jury indictment, that would be regarded as a milestone."

"And how soon could that happen?"

"Tomorrow, easily. Grand jury sits more or less permanently. It would take ten minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour."

"I thought justice ground real slow in Texas."

"Only if you plead not guilty."

Silence again, for many miles. They passed through the crossroads hamlet with the school and the gas station and the diner. It whipped backward through the headlight beams, three short seconds end to end. The sky up ahead was still clear. The stars were still visible. But the clouds were building fast behind them, in the south.

"So maybe tomorrow they'll let her go," Alice said.

"And maybe tomorrow they won't. They'll be worried she could make the ID. She's a smart kid. She sits quiet, watching and thinking all the time."

"So what do we do?"

"We try to figure out where she is."

He opened the glove compartment and took out the maps again. Found a large-scale plan of Pecos County and spread it on his knee. Reached up and clicked on the dome light.

"How?" Alice asked. "I mean, where do you start?"

"I've done this before," Reacher said. "Years and years, I hunted deserters and AWOLs. You train yourself to think like them, and you usually find them."

"That easy?"

"Sometimes," he said.

Silence in the speeding car.

"But they could be anywhere," Alice said. "I mean, there must be a million hide-outs. Abandoned farmsteads, ruined buildings."

"No, I think they're using motels," Reacher said.

"Why?"

"Because appearances are very important to them. Part of their technique. They suckered Al Eugene somehow, and they looked plausible to Rusty Greer, not that she cared too much. So they need running water and showers and closets and working electricity for hairdryers and shavers."

"There are hundreds of motels here," she said. "Thousands, probably."

He nodded. "And they're moving around, almost certainly. A different place every day. Basic security."

"So how do we find the right one tonight?"

He held the map where it caught the light.

"We find it in our heads. Think like them, figure out what we'd do. Then that should be the same thing as what they'd do."

"Hell of a gamble."

"Maybe, maybe not."

"So are we going to start now?"

"No, we're going back to your office now."

"Why?"

"Because I don't like frontal assaults. Not against people this good, not with a kid in the crossfire."

"So what do we do?"

"We divide and rule. We lure two of them out. Maybe we capture a tongue."

"A tongue? What's that?"

"An enemy prisoner who'll talk."

"How do we do that?"

"We decoy them. They're already aware we know about them. So they'll come for us, try a little damage control."

"They know we know? But how?"

"Somebody just told them."

"Who?"

Reacher didn't reply. Just stared down at the map. Looked at the faint red lines that represented roads meandering across thousands of empty miles. Closed his eyes and tried hard to imagine what they looked like in reality.

* * *

Alice parked in the lot behind the law offices. She had a key to the rear door. There were a lot of shadows, and Reacher was very vigilant as they walked. But they made it inside O.K. The old store was deserted and dusty and silent and hot. The air conditioner had been turned off at the end of the day. Reacher stood still and listened for the inaudible quiver of people waiting. It's a primeval sensation, received and understood far back in the brain. It wasn't there.

"Call Walker and give him an update," he said. "Tell him we're here."

He made her sit back-to-back with him at somebody else's desk in the center of the room, so he could watch the front entrance while she watched the rear. He rested the pistol in his lap with the safety off. Then he dialed Sergeant Rodriguez's number in Abilene. Rodriguez was still on duty, and he sounded unhappy about it.

"We checked with the bar association," he said. "There are no lawyers licensed in Texas called Chester A. Arthur."

"I'm from Vermont," Reacher said. "I'm volunteering down here, pro bono."

"Like hell you are."

The line went quiet.

"I'll deal," Reacher said. "Names, in exchange for conversation."

"With who?"

"With you, maybe. How long have you been a Ranger?"

"Seventeen years."

"How much do you know about the border patrol?"

"Enough, I guess."

"You prepared to give me a straight yes-no answer? No comebacks?"

"What's the question?"

"You recall the border patrol investigation twelve years ago?"

"Maybe."

"Was it a whitewash?"

Rodriguez paused a long moment, and then he answered, with a single word.

"I'll call you back," Reacher said.

He hung up and turned and spoke over his shoulder to Alice.

"You get Walker?" he asked.

"He's up to speed," she said. "He wants us to wait for him here, for when he's through with the FBI."

Reacher shook his head. "Can't wait here. Too obvious. We need to stay on the move. We'll go to him, and then we'll get back on the road."

She paused a beat. "Are we in serious danger?"

"Nothing we can't handle," he said.

She said nothing.

"You worried?" he asked.

"A little," she said. "A lot, actually."

"You can't be," he said. "I'm going to need your help."

"Why was the lie about the ring different?"

"Because everything else is hearsay. But I found out for myself the ring wasn't a fake. Direct personal discovery, not hearsay. Feels very different."

"I don't see how it's important."

"It's important because I've got a whole big theory going and the lie about the ring screws it up like crazy."

"Why do you want to believe her so much?"

"Because she had no money with her."

"What's the big theory?"

"Remember that Balzac quotation? And Marcuse?"

Alice nodded.

"I've got another one," Reacher said. "Something Ben Franklin once wrote."

"What are you, a walking encyclopedia?"

"I remember stuff I read, is all. And I remember something Bobby Greer said, too, about armadillos."

She just looked at him.

"You're crazy," she said.

He nodded. "It's only a theory. It needs to be tested. But we can do that."

"How?"

"We just wait and see who comes for us."

She said nothing.

"Let's go check in with Walker," he said.

* * *

They walked through the heat to the courthouse building. There was a breeze again, blowing in from the south. It felt damp and urgent. Walker was on his own in his office, looking very tired. His desk was a mess of phone books and paper.

"Well, it's started," he said. "Biggest thing you ever saw. FBI and state police, roadblocks everywhere, helicopters in the air, more than a hundred and fifty people on the ground. But there's a storm coming in, which ain't going to help."

"Reacher thinks they're holed up in a motel," Alice said.

Walker nodded, grimly. "If they are, they'll find them. Manhunt like this, it's going to be pretty relentless."

"You need us anymore?" Reacher asked.

Walker shook his head. "We should leave it to the professionals now. I'm going home, grab a couple hours rest."

Reacher looked around the office. The door, the floor, the windows, the desk, the filing cabinets.

"I guess we'll do the same thing," he said. "We'll go to Alice's place. Call us if you need us. Or if you get any news, O.K.?"

Walker nodded.

"I will," he said. "I promise."

* * *

"We'll go as FBI again," the woman said. "It's a no-brainer."

"All of us?" the driver asked. "What about the kid?"

The woman paused. She had to go, because she was the shooter. And if she had to split the team two and one, she wanted the tall guy with her, not the driver.

"You stay with the kid," she said.

There was a moment's silence.

"Abort horizon?" the driver asked.

It was their standard operating procedure. Whenever the team was split, the woman set an abort horizon. Which meant that you waited until the time had passed, and then, if the team wasn't together again, you got the hell out, every man for himself.

"Four hours, O.K.?" the woman said. "Done and dusted."

She stared at him a second longer, eyebrows raised, to make sure he understood the implication of her point. Then she knelt and unzipped the heavy valise.

"So let's do it," she said.

They did the exact same things they had done for Al Eugene, except they did them a whole lot faster because the Crown Vic was parked in the motel's lot, not hidden in a dusty turnout miles from anywhere. The lot was dimly lit and mostly empty, and there was nobody around, but it still wasn't a secure feeling. They pulled the wheel covers off and threw them in the trunk. They attached the communications antennas to the rear window and the trunk lid. They zipped blue jackets over their shirts. They loaded up with spare ammunition clips. They squared the souvenir ballcaps on their heads. They checked the loads in their nine-millimeter pistols and racked the slides and clicked the safety catches and jammed the guns in their pockets. The tall fair man slipped into the driver's seat. The woman paused outside the motel room door.

"Four hours," she said again. "Done and dusted."

The driver nodded and closed the door behind her. Glanced over at the kid in the bed. Done and dusted meant leave nothing at all behind, especially live witnesses.

* * *

Reacher took the Heckler & Koch and the maps of Texas and the FedEx packet out of the VW and carried them into Alice's house, straight through the living room and into the kitchen area. It was still and cool inside. And dry. The central air was running hard. He wondered for a second what her utility bills must be like.

"Where's the scale?" he asked.

She pushed past him and squatted down and opened a cupboard. Used two hands and lifted a kitchen scale onto the countertop. It was a big piece of equipment. It was new, but it looked old. A retro design. It had a big white upright face the size of a china plate, like the speedometer on an old-fashioned sedan. It was faced with a bulbous plastic window with a chromium bezel. There was a red pointer behind the window and large numbers around the circumference. A manufacturer's name and a printed warning: Not Legal For Trade.

"Is it accurate?" he asked.

Alice shrugged.

"I think so," she said. "The nut roast comes out O.K."

There was a chromium bowl resting in a cradle above the dial. He tapped on it with his finger and the pointer bounced up to a pound and then back down to zero. He took the magazine out of the Heckler & Koch and laid the empty gun in the bowl. It made a light metallic sound. The pointer spun up to two pounds and six ounces. Not an especially light weapon. About right, he figured. His memory told him the catalog weight was in the region of forty-three ounces, with an empty magazine.

He put the gun back together and opened cupboards until he found a store of food. He lifted out an unopened bag of granulated sugar. It was in a gaudy yellow packet that said 5 Ibs. on the side.

"What are you doing?" Alice asked.

"Weighing things," he said.

He stood the sugar upright in the chromium bowl. The pointer spun up to five pounds exactly. He put the sugar back in the cupboard and tried a cellophane-wrapped packet of chopped nuts. The pointer read two pounds. He looked at the label on the packet and saw 2 Ibs.

"Good enough," he said.

He folded the maps and laid them across the top of the bowl. They weighed one pound and three ounces. He took them off and put the nuts back on. Still two pounds. He put the nuts back in the cupboard and tried the FedEx packet. It weighed one pound and one ounce. He added the maps and the pointer inched up to two pounds and four ounces. Added the loaded gun on top and the pointer jerked around to five pounds and three ounces. If he had wanted to, he could have calculated the weight of the bullets.

"O.K., let's go," he said. "But we need gas. Long ride ahead. And maybe you should get out of that dress. You got something more active?"

"I guess," she said, and headed for the stairs.

"You got a screwdriver?" he called after her.

"Under the sink," she called back.

He bent down and found a brightly colored toolbox in the cupboard. It was made out of plastic and looked like a lunch pail. He clicked it open and selected a medium-sized screwdriver with a clear yellow handle. A minute later Alice came back down the stairs wearing baggy khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulder seams.

"O.K.?" she asked.

"Me and Judith," he said. "Got a lot in common."

She smiled and said nothing.

"I'm assuming your car is insured," he said. "It could get damaged tonight."

She said nothing. Just locked up her door and followed him out to the VW. She drove out of her complex, with Reacher craning his neck, watching the shadows. She got gas at a neon-bright all-night station out on the El Paso road. Reacher paid for it.

"O.K., back to the courthouse," he said. "Something I want from there."

She said nothing. Just turned the car and headed east. Parked in the lot behind the building. They walked around and tried the street door. It was locked up tight.

"So what now?" she asked.

It was hot on the sidewalk. Still up there around ninety degrees, and damp. The breeze had died again. There were clouds filling the sky.

"I'm going to kick it in," he said.

"There's probably an alarm."

"There's definitely an alarm. I checked."

"So?"

"So I'm going to set it off."

"Then the cops will come."

"I'm counting on it."

"You want to get us arrested?"

"They won't come right away. We've got three or four minutes, maybe."

He took two paces back and launched forward and smashed the flat of his sole above the handle. The wood splintered and sagged open a half inch, but held. He kicked again and the door crashed back and bounced off the corridor wall. A blue strobe high up outside started flashing and an urgent electric bell started ringing. It was about as loud as he had expected.

"Go get the car," he said. "Get it started and wait for me in the alley."

He ran up the stairs two at a time and kicked in the outer office door without breaking stride. Jinked through the secretarial pen like a running back and steadied himself and kicked in Walker's door. It smashed back and the Venetian blind jerked sideways and the glass pane behind it shattered and the shards rained down like ice in winter. He went straight for the bank of filing cabinets. The lights were off and the office was hot and dark and he had to peer close to read the labels. It was an odd filing system. It was arranged partly in date order and partly by the alphabet. That was going to be a minor problem. He found a cabinet marked B and jammed the tip of the screwdriver into the keyhole and hammered it in with the heel of his hand. Turned it sharp and hard and broke the lock. Pulled the drawer and raked through the files with his fingers.

The files all had tiny labels encased in plastic tabs arranged so they made a neat diagonal from left to right. The labels were all typed with words starting with B. But the contents of the files were way too recent. Nothing more than four years old. He stepped two paces sideways and skipped the next B drawer and went to the next-but-one. The air was hot and still and the bell was ringing loud and the glare of the flashing blue strobe pulsed in through the windows. It was just about keeping time with his heartbeat.

He broke the lock and slid the drawer. Checked the labels. No good. Everything was either six or seven years old. He had been inside the building two minutes and thirty seconds. He could hear a distant siren under the noise of the bell. He stepped sideways again and attacked the next B drawer. He checked the dates on the tabs and walked his ringers backward. Two minutes and fifty seconds. The bell seemed louder and the strobe seemed brighter. The siren was closer. He found what he was looking for three quarters of the way back through the drawer. It was a two-inch-thick collection of paperwork in a heavy paper sling. He lifted the whole thing out and tucked it under his arm. Left the drawer all the way open and kicked all the others shut. Ran through the secretarial pen and down the stairs. Checked the street from the lobby and when he was certain it was clear he ducked around into the alley and straight into the VW.

"Go," he said.

He was a little breathless, and that surprised him.

"Where?" Alice asked.

"South," he said. "To the Red House."

"Why? What's there?"

"Everything," he said.

She took off fast and fifty yards later Reacher saw red lights pulsing in the distance behind them. The Pecos Police Department, arriving at the courthouse just a minute too late. He smiled in the dark and turned his head in time to catch a split-second glimpse of a big sedan nosing left two hundred yards ahead of them into the road that led down to Alice's place. It flashed through the yellow wash of a streetlight and disappeared. It looked like a police-spec Crown Victoria, plain steel wheels and four VHP antennas on the back. He stared into the darkness that had swallowed it and turned his head as they passed.

"Fast as you can," he said to Alice.

Then he laid the captured paperwork on his knees and reached up and clicked on the dome light so he could read it.

The B was for "border patrol," and the file summarized the crimes committed by it twelve years ago and the measures taken in response. It made for unpleasant reading.

The border between Mexico and Texas was very long, and for an accumulated total of about half its length there were roads and towns near enough on the American side to make it worth guarding pretty closely. Theory was if illegals penetrated there, they could slip away into the interior fast and easily. Other sectors had nothing to offer except fifty or a hundred miles of empty parched desert.

Those sectors weren't really guarded at all. Standard practice was to ignore the border itself and conduct random vehicle sweeps behind the line by day or night to pick the migrants up at some point during their hopeless three -  or four-day trudge north across the wastelands. It was a practice that worked well. After the first thirty or so miles on foot through the heat the migrants became pretty passive. Often they surrendered willingly. Often the vehicle sweeps turned into first-aid mercy missions, because the walkers were sick and dehydrated and exhausted because they had no food or water.

They had no food or water because they had been cheated. Usually they would pay their life savings to some operator on the Mexican side who was offering them a fully accompanied one-way trip to paradise. Vans and minibuses would take them from their villages to the border, and then the guide would crouch and point across a deserted footbridge to a distant sandhill and swear that more vans and minibuses were waiting behind it, full of supplies and ready to go. The migrants would take a deep breath and sprint across, only to find nothing behind the distant sandhill. Too hopeful and too afraid to turn back, they would just blindly walk ahead into exhaustion.

Sometimes there would be a vehicle waiting, but its driver would demand a separate substantial payment. The migrants had nothing left to offer, except maybe some small items of personal value. The new driver would laugh and call them worthless. Then he would take them anyway and offer to see what cash he could raise on them up ahead. He would drive off in a cloud of hot dust and never be seen again. The migrants would eventually realize they had been duped, and they would start stumbling north on foot. Then it became a simple question of endurance. The weather was key. In a hot summer, the mortality rate was very high. That was why the border patrol's random sweeps were often seen as mercy missions.

Then that suddenly changed.

For a whole year, the roving vehicles were as likely to bring sudden death as arrest or aid. At unpredictable intervals, always at night, rifles would fire and a truck would roar in and swoop and maneuver until one lone runner was winnowed out from the pack. Then the lone runner would be hunted for a mile or so and shot down. Then the truck would disappear into the dark again, engine roaring, headlights bouncing, dust trailing, and stunned silence would descend.

Sometimes it wasn't so clean.

Some victims were wounded and dragged away and tortured. The corpse of one teen-age boy was found tied to a cactus stump with barbed wire. He had been partially flayed. Some were burned alive or beheaded or mutilated. Three teen-age girls were captured over a period of four months. Their autopsy details were gruesome.

None of the survivor families made official complaints. They all shared the illegal's basic fear of involvement with bureaucracy. But stories began to circulate around the community of legal relatives and their support groups. Lawyers and rights advocates started compiling files. Eventually the subject was broached at the appropriate level. A low-level inquiry was started. Evidence was gathered, anonymously. A provable total of seventeen homicides was established. Added to that was an extrapolated figure of eight more, to represent cases where bodies had never been found or where they had been buried by the survivors themselves. Young Raoul Garcia's name was included in the second total.

There was a map in the file. Most of the ambushes had taken place inside a pear-shaped pocket of territory enclosing maybe a hundred square miles. It was marked on the map like a stain. It was centered on a long north-south axis with the southerly bulge sitting mostly inside the Echo County line. That meant the victims had already made it fifty miles or more. By then they would be weak and tired and in no shape to resist.

Border patrol brass launched a full-scale investigation one August, eleven months after the first vague rumors surfaced. There was one more attack at the end of that month, and then nothing ever again. Denied an ongoing forensic basis for examination, the investigation got nowhere at all. There were preventive measures enforced, like strict accounting of ammunition and increased frequency of radio checks. But no conclusions were reached. It was'a thorough job, and to their credit the brass kept hard at it, but a retrospective investigation into a closed paramilitary world where the only witnesses denied ever having been near the border in the first place was hopeless. The matter wound down. Time passed. The homicides had stopped, the survivors were building new lives, the immigration amnesties had insulated the outrage. The tempo of investigation slowed to a halt. The files were sealed four years later.

"So?" Alice said.

Reacher butted the papers together with the heel of his hand. Closed the file. Pitched it behind him into the rear seat.

"Now I know why she lied about the ring," he said.

"Why?"

"She didn't lie. She was telling the truth."

"She said it was a fake worth thirty bucks."

"And she thought that was the truth. Because some jeweler in Pecos laughed at her and told her it was a fake worth thirty bucks. And she believed him. But he was trying to rip her off, was all, trying to buy it for thirty bucks and sell it again for sixty thousand. Oldest scam in the world. Exact same thing happened to some of these immigrants in the file. Their first experience of America."

"The jeweler lied?"

He nodded. "I should have figured it before, because it's obvious. Probably the exact same guy we went to. I figured he didn't look like the Better Business Bureau's poster boy."

"He didn't try to rip us off."

"No, Alice, he didn't. Because you're a sharp-looking white lawyer and I'm a big tough-looking white guy. She was a small Mexican woman, all alone and desperate and scared. He saw an opportunity with her that he didn't see with us."

Alice was quiet for a second.

"So what does it mean?" she asked.

Reacher clicked off the dome light. Smiled in the dark and stretched. Put his palms on the dash in front of him and flexed his massive shoulders against the pressure.

"It means we're good to go," he said. "It means all our ducks are in a neat little row. And it means you should drive faster, because right now we're maybe twenty minutes ahead of the bad guys, and I want to keep it that way as long as I can."

She blew Straight through the sleeping crossroads hamlet once again and made the remaining sixty miles in forty-three minutes, which Reacher figured was pretty good for a yellow four-cylinder import with a bud vase next to the steering wheel. She made the turn in under the gate and braked hard and stopped at the foot of the porch steps. The porch lights were on and the VW's dust fogged up around them in a khaki cloud. It was close to two o'clock in the morning.

"Leave it running," Reacher said.

He led her up to the door. Hammered hard on it and got no reply. Tried the handle. It was unlocked. Why would it be locked? We're sixty miles from the nearest crossroads. He swung it open and they stepped straight into the red-painted foyer.

"Hold your arms out," he said.

He unloaded all six .22 hunting rifles out of the rack on the wall and laid them in her arms, alternately muzzle to stock so they would balance. She staggered slightly under the weight.

"Go put them in the car," he said.

There was the sound of footsteps overhead, then creaking from the stairs, and Bobby Greer came out of the parlor door, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He was barefoot and wearing boxers and a T-shirt and staring at the empty gun rack.

"Hell you think you're doing?" he said.

"I want the others," Reacher said. "I'm commandeering your weapons. On behalf of the Echo County sheriff. I'm a deputy, remember?"

"There aren't any others."

"Yes, there are, Bobby. No self-respecting redneck like you is going to be satisfied with a bunch of .22 popguns. Where's the heavy metal?"

Bobby said nothing.

"Don't mess with me, Bobby," Reacher said. "It's way too late for that."

Bobby paused. Then he shrugged.

"O.K.," he said.

He padded barefoot across the foyer and pushed open a door that led into a small dark space that could have been a study. He flicked on a light and Reacher saw black-and-white pictures of oil wells on the walls. There was a desk and a chair and another gun rack filled with four 30-30 Winchesters. Seven-shot lever-action repeaters, big handsome weapons, oiled wood, twenty-inch barrels, beautifully kept. Wyatt Earp, eat your heart out.

"Ammunition?" Reacher asked.

Bobby opened a drawer in the gun rack's pedestal. Took out a cardboard box of Winchester cartridges.

"I've got some special loads, too," he said. Took out another box.

"What are they?"

"I made them myself. Extra power."

Reacher nodded. "Take them all out to the car, O.K.?"

He took the four rifles out of the rack and followed Bobby out of the house. Alice was sitting in the car. The six .22s were piled on the seat behind her. Bobby leaned in and placed the ammunition next to them. Reacher stacked the Winchesters upright behind the passenger seat. Then he turned back to Bobby.

"I'm going to borrow your Jeep," he said.

Bobby shrugged, barefoot on the hot dirt.

"Keys are in it," he said.

"You and your mother stay in the house now," Reacher said. "Anybody seen out and about will be considered hostile, O.K.?"

Bobby nodded. Turned and walked to the foot of the steps. Glanced back once and went inside the house. Reacher leaned into the VW to talk to Alice.

"What are we doing?" she said.

"Getting ready."

"For what?"

"For whatever comes our way."

"Why do we need ten rifles?"

"We don't. We need one. I don't want to give the bad guys the other nine, is all."

"They're coming here?"

"They're about ten minutes behind us."

"So what do we do?"

"We're all going out in the desert."

"Is there going to be shooting?"

"Probably."

"Is that smart? You said yourself, they're good shots."

"With handguns. Best way to defend against handguns is hide a long way off and shoot back with the biggest rifle you can find."

She shook her head. "I can't be a part of this, Reacher. It's not right. And I've never even held a rifle."

"You don't have to shoot," he said. "But you have to be a witness. You have to identify exactly who comes for us. I'm relying on you. It's vital."

"How will I see? It's dark out there."

"We'll fix that."

"It's going to rain."

"That'll help us."

"This is not right," she said again. "The police should handle this. Or the FBI. You can't just shoot at people."

The air was heavy with storm. The breeze was blowing again and he could smell pressure and voltage building in the sky.

"Rules of engagement, Alice," he said. "I'll wait for an overtly hostile act before I do anything. Just like the U.S. Army. O.K.?"

"We'll be killed."

"You'll be hiding far away."

"Then you'll be killed. You said it yourself, they're good at this."

"They're good at walking up to somebody and shooting them in the head. What they're like out in the open in the dark against incoming rifle fire is anybody's guess."

"You're crazy."

"Seven minutes," he said.

She glanced backward at the road from the north. Then she shook her head and shoved the gearstick into first and held her foot on the clutch. He leaned in and squeezed her shoulder.

"Follow me close, O.K.?" he said.

He ran down to the motor barn and got into the Greer family's Cherokee. Racked the seat back and started the engine and switched on the headlights. Reversed into the yard and straightened up and looped around the motor barn and headed straight down the dirt track into open country. Checked the mirror and saw the VW right there behind him. Looked ahead again and saw the first raindrop hit his windshield. It was as big as a silver dollar.