The air was unnaturally cold and thick with beer fumes and smoke and noise. The jukebox was near the pool table, and beyond it was an area with small round lounge tables surrounded by stools padded with red vinyl. Billy held up three fingers to the barman and got three cold bottles in exchange. He carried them laced between his fingers and led the way toward the tables. Reacher stepped ahead of him and got there first. He wanted his choice of seats. Back to the wall was his rule. All three exits in view, if possible. He threaded his way in and sat down. Josh sat to his half-right, and Billy sat half-left. Pushed a bottle across the scarred surface of the table. People had stubbed cigarettes on the wood. The sheriff came into the room from the rear, from the direction of the rest rooms, checking that his pants were zipped. He paused a second when he saw Reacher, nothing in his face, and then he moved on and sat down at the bar, on the unoccupied stool, his shoulders hunched, his back to the crowd.
Billy raised his bottle like a toast.
“Good luck,” he said.
You’re going to need it, pal, Reacher thought. He took a long pull from his own bottle. The beer was cold and gassy. It tasted strongly of hops.
“I need to make a phone call,” Billy said.
He pushed back from the table and stood up again. Josh leaned to his right, trying to fill the new vacant space in front of Reacher. Billy made it through the crowd and went outside to the lobby. Reacher took another sip of his beer and estimated the passage of time. And counted the people in the room. There were twenty-three of them, excluding himself, including the barman, who he guessed was Harley. Billy came back inside two minutes and forty seconds. He bent and spoke into the sheriff’s ear. The sheriff nodded. Billy spoke some more. The sheriff nodded again. Drained his bottle and pushed back from the bar and stood up. Turned to face the room. Glanced once in Reacher’s direction and then stepped away and pushed out through the door. Billy stood and watched him go and then threaded his way back to the table.
“Sheriff’s leaving,” he said. “He remembered he had urgent business elsewhere.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Did you make your call?” Josh asked, like it was rehearsed.
“Yes, I made my call,” Billy said.
Then he sat down on his stool and picked up his bottle.
“Don’t you want to know who I called?” he said, looking across at Reacher.
“Why would I give a rat’s ass who you called?” Reacher said.
“I called for the ambulance,” Billy said. “Best to do it ahead of time, because it comes all the way from Presidio. It can take hours to get here.”
“See, we got a confession to make,” Josh said. “We lied to you before. There was a guy we ran off. He was knocking boots with the Mexican woman. Bobby didn’t think that was appropriate behavior, in the circumstances, what with Sloop being in prison and all. So we got asked to take care of it. We brought him down here.”
“Want to know what we did?” Billy asked.
“I thought we were going to the feed store,” Reacher said.
“Feed store’s up in San Angelo.”
“So what are we doing all the way down here?”
“We’re telling you, is what. This is where we brought the other guy.”
“What’s this other guy got to do with me?”
“Bobby figures you’re in the same category, is what.”
“He thinks I’m knocking boots with her too?”
Josh nodded. “He sure does.”
“What do you think?”
“We agree with him. Why else would you come around? You’re no horseman, that’s for damn sure.”
“Suppose I told you we’re just good friends?”
“Bobby says you’re more than that.”
“And you believe him?”
Billy nodded. “Sure we do. She comes on to him. He told us that himself. So why should you be any different? And hey, we don’t blame you. She’s a good-looking piece of ass. I’d go there myself, except she’s Sloop’s. You got to respect family, even with beaners. That’s the rule around here.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Her other guy was a schoolteacher,” Billy said. “Got way out of line. So we brought him down here, and we took him out back, in the yard, and we got us a hog butchering knife, and we got us a couple of guys to hold him, and we pulled his pants down, and we told him we were going to cut it off. He was all crying and whimpering and messing himself. Begging and whining. Promising he’d get himself lost. Pleading with us not to cut. But we cut just a little anyway. For the fun of it. There was blood everywhere. Then we let him go. But we told him if we ever saw his face again, we’d take it all the way off for real. And you know what? We never saw his face again.”
“So it worked,” Josh said. “It worked real good. Only problem was he nearly bled out, from the wound. We should have called ahead for the ambulance. We figured we should remember that, for the next time. Live and learn, that’s what we always say. So this time, we did call ahead. Especially for you. So you should be grateful.”
“You cut the guy?” Reacher asked.
“We sure did.”
“Sounds like you’re real proud of yourselves.”
“We do what it takes. We look after the family.”
“And you’re admitting it to me?”
Josh nodded. “Why shouldn’t we? Like, who the hell are you?”
Reacher shrugged. “Well, I’m not a schoolteacher.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you aim to cut me, it’ll be you goes in the ambulance.”
“You think?”
Reacher nodded. “That horse I was on shit more trouble than you guys are going to give me.”
He looked at each of them in turn, openly and evenly. Serene self-confidence works wonders, in a situation like that. And he felt confident. It was confidence born of experience. It was a long, long time since he’d lost a two-on-one bar fight.
“Your choice,” he said. “Quit now, or go to the hospital.”
“Well, you know what?” Josh said, smiling. “I think we’ll stay with the program. Because whatever the hell kind of a guy you think you are, we’re the ones got a lot of friends in here. And you don’t.”
“I didn’t inquire about your social situation,” Reacher said.
But it was clearly true. They had friends in there. Some kind of a subliminal vibe was quieting the room, making people restless and watchful. They were glancing over, then glancing at each other. The atmosphere was building. The pool game was slowing down. Reacher could feel tension in the air. The silences were starting. The challenges. Maybe it was going to be worse than two-on-one. Maybe a lot worse.
Billy smiled.
“We don’t scare easy,” he said. “Call it a professional thing.”
They get in the ring with bulls that weigh a ton and a half, Bobby had said. They ain’t going to be too worried about you. Reacher had never been to a rodeo. He knew nothing about them, except for occasional passing impressions from television or the movies. He guessed the riders sat on some kind of a fence, near the pen, and they jumped on just as the bull was released out into the ring. Then they had to stay on. What was it, eight seconds? And if they didn’t, they could get kicked around pretty badly. They could get stomped. Or gored, with the horns. So these guys had some kind of dumb courage. And strength. And resilience. And they were accustomed to pain and injury. But they were also accustomed to some kind of a pattern. Some kind of a structured buildup. Some kind of a measured countdown, before the action suddenly started. He didn’t know for sure how it went. Maybe three, two, one, go. Maybe ten, nine, eight. Whatever, they were accustomed to waiting, counting off the seconds, tensing up, breathing deeply, getting ready for it.
“So let’s do it,” he said. “Right now, in the yard.”
He came out from behind the table and stepped past Josh before he could react. Walked ahead, away from the jukebox, to the right of the pool tab
le, heading for the rest room exit. Knots of people blocked him and then parted to let him through. He heard Josh and Billy following right behind him. He felt them counting down, tensing up, getting ready. Maybe twenty paces to the exit, maybe thirty seconds to the yard. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight. He kept his steps even, building on the rhythm. Twenty-seven, twenty-six. Arms loose by his side. Twenty-five, twenty-four.
He snatched the last pool cue from the rack and reversed it in his hands and scythed a complete hundred-eighty-degree turn and hit Billy as hard as he could in the side of the head, one. There was a loud crunch of bone clearly audible over the jukebox noise and a spray of blood and Billy went down like he had been machine-gunned. He swung again, chopping full-force at Josh like a slugger swinging for the fences, two. Josh’s hand came up to block the blow and his forearm broke clean in half. He screamed and Reacher swung again for the head, three, connecting hard, knocking him sideways. He jabbed for the face and punched out a couple of teeth, four. Backhanded the cue with all his strength against the upper arm and shattered the bone, five. Josh went down head-to-toe with Billy and Reacher stood over them both and swung again four more times, fast and hard, six, seven, eight, nine, against ribs and collarbones and knees and skulls. A total of nine swings, maybe six or seven seconds of furious explosive force. Hit hard, hit early, get your retaliation in first. While they’re still waiting for the bell.
The other men in the bar had spun away from the action and now they were crowding back in again, slowly and warily. Reacher turned a menacing circle with the cue held ready. He bent and took the truck keys from Josh’s pocket. Then he dropped the cue and let it clatter to the floor and barged his way through the crowd to the door, breathing hard, shoving people out of his way. Nobody seriously tried to stop him. Clearly friendship had its limits, down there in Echo County. He made it into the lot, still breathing fast. The heat broke him out in a sweat, instantly. He made it back to the truck. Slid inside and fired it up and backed away from the building and peeled away north. The bar door stayed firmly closed. Nobody came after him.
The sun set far away in the west an hour into his drive back and it was full dark when he turned in under the ranch gate. But every light in the Red House was burning. And there were two cars parked in the yard. One was the sheriff’s secondhand cruiser. The other was a lime green Lincoln. The sheriff’s car was flashing red and blue. The Lincoln was lit by the spill from the porch and the hot yellow light made it look the color of a dead man’s skin. There were clouds of moths everywhere, big papery insects crowding the bulbs above the porch like tiny individual snowstorms, forming and re-forming as they fluttered from one to the next. Behind them the chant of the night insects was already rhythmic and insistent.
The front door of the house was standing open and there was noise in the foyer. Loud excited conversation, from a small crowd of people. Reacher stepped up and looked into the room and saw the sheriff, and Rusty Greer, and Bobby, and then Carmen standing alone near the rack of rifles. She had changed out of her jeans and shirt. She was wearing a dress. It was red and black and had no sleeves. It finished at the knee. She looked numb. Conflicting emotions in her face made it blank and expressionless. There was a man in a suit at the opposite end of the room, standing near the red-framed mirror so Reacher could see the front and back of him at the same time. The Lincoln driver, obviously. He was sleek and slightly overweight, not short, not tall, dressed in pressed seersucker. Maybe thirty years old, with light-colored hair carefully combed and receding from a domed brow. He had a pale indoor face, red with sunburn on the upward-facing planes like he played golf in the early afternoon. The face was split into a huge politician’s smile. He looked like he had been receiving fulsome accolades and pretending they were completely unnecessary.
Reacher paused on the porch and decided not to enter. But his weight put a loud creak into the boards and Bobby heard it. He glanced out into the night and did a perfect double-take. Stood completely still for a second and then came hurrying through the door. Took Reacher’s elbow and pulled him into the lee of the wall, alongside the entrance, out of sight of the foyer.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I work here,” Reacher said. “Remember?”
“Where are Josh and Billy?”
“They quit.”
Bobby stared at him. “They what?”
“They quit,” Reacher said again.
“What does that mean?”
“It means they decided they didn’t want to work here anymore.”
“Why would they do that?”
Reacher shrugged. “How would I know? Maybe they were just exercising their prerogative inside a free labor market.”
“What?”
Reacher said nothing. Bobby’s absence and the voices on the porch had pulled people to the door. Rusty Greer was first out, followed by the sheriff and the guy in the seersucker suit. Carmen stayed inside, near the rifles, still looking numb. They all fell silent, looking at Reacher, Rusty like she had a social difficulty to deal with, the sheriff puzzled, the new guy in the suit wondering who the hell this stranger was.
“What’s going on?” Rusty asked.
“This guy says Josh and Billy quit on us,” Bobby said.
“They wouldn’t do that,” Rusty said. “Why would they do that?”
The guy in the suit was looming forward, like he expected to be introduced.
“Did they give a reason?” Rusty asked.
The sheriff was looking straight at Reacher, nothing in his face. Reacher made no reply. Just stood there, waiting.
“Well, I’m Hack Walker,” the guy in the suit said, in a big honest voice, holding out his hand. “I’m the DA up in Pecos, and I’m a friend of the family.”
“Sloop’s oldest friend,” Rusty said, absently.
Reacher nodded and took the guy’s hand.
“Jack Reacher,” he said. “I work here.”
The guy held on to his hand in both of his own and beamed a subtle little smile that was partly genuine, partly you-know-how-it-is ironic. A perfect politician’s smile.
“You registered to vote here yet?” he asked. “Because if so, I just want to point out I’m running for judge in November, and I’d surely like to count on your support.”
Then he started up with a self-deprecating chuckle, a man secure among friends, amused about how the demands of democracy can intrude on good manners. You know how it is. Reacher took his hand back and nodded without speaking.
“Hack’s worked so hard for us,” Rusty said. “And now he’s brought us the most delightful news.”
“Al Eugene showed up?” Reacher asked.
“No, not yet,” Rusty said. “Something else entirely.”
“And nothing to do with the election,” Hack said. “You folks all understand that, don’t you? I agree, November time makes us want to do something for everybody, but you know I’d have done this for you anyhow.”
“And you know we’d all vote for you anyhow, Hack,” Rusty said.
Then everybody started beaming at everybody else. Reacher glanced beyond them at Carmen standing alone in the foyer. She wasn’t beaming.
“You’re getting Sloop out early,” he said. “Tomorrow, I guess.”
Hack Walker ducked his head, like Reacher had offered him a compliment.
“That’s for sure,” he said. “All along they claimed they couldn’t do administration on the weekend, but I managed to change their minds. They said it would be the first Sunday release in the history of the system, but I just said hey, there’s a first time for everything.”
“Hack’s going to drive us up there,” Rusty said. “We’re leaving soon. We’re going to drive all night.”
“We’re going to be waiting on the sidewalk,” Hack said. “Right outside the prison gate, seven o’clock in the morning. Old Sloop’s going to get a big welcome.”
“You all going?” Reacher asked.
“I’m not,” Carmen said.
> She had come out onto the porch, quietly, like a wraith. She was standing with her feet together, both hands on the railing, leaning forward from the waist, elbows locked, staring north at the black horizon.
“I have to stay and see to Ellie,” she said.
“Plenty of room in the car,” Hack said. “Ellie can come too.”
Carmen shook her head. “I don’t want her to see her father walking out of a prison door.”
“Well, please yourself,” Rusty said. “He’s only your husband, after all.”
Carmen made no reply. Just shivered slightly, like the night air was thirty degrees instead of ninety.
“Then I guess I’ll stay too,” Bobby said. “Keep an eye on things. Sloop will understand.”
Reacher glanced at him. Carmen turned abruptly and walked back into the house. Rusty and Hack Walker drifted after her. The sheriff and Bobby stayed on the porch, each taking a half-step toward the other, to put a subliminal human barrier between Reacher and the door.
“So why did they quit?” Bobby asked.
Reacher glanced at them both and shrugged.
“Well, they didn’t exactly quit,” he said. “I was trying to sugar the pill, for the family, was all. Truth is we were in a bar, and they picked a fight with some guy. You saw us in the bar, right, Sheriff?”
The sheriff nodded, cautiously.
“It was after you left,” Reacher said. “They picked a fight and lost.”
“Who with?” Bobby asked. “What guy?”
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