Echo burning. A Jack Reacher Novel. Lee Child

“And has push come to shove?”

She smiled, awkwardly.

“I can tell you were a cop,” she said. “You ask so many questions. And it’s me who wanted to ask all the questions.”

She fell silent for a spell and just drove, slim dark hands light on the wheel, going fast but not hurrying. He used the cushion-shaped buttons again and laid his seat back another fraction. Watched her in the corner of his eye. She was pretty, but she was troubled. Ten years from now, she was going to have some excellent frown lines.

“What was life like in the army?” she asked.

“Different,” he said. “Different from life outside the army.”

“Different how?”

“Different rules, different situations. It was a world of its own. It was very regulated, but it was kind of lawless. Kind of rough and uncivilized.”

“Like the Wild West,” she said.

“I guess,” he said back. “A million people trained first and foremost to do what needed doing. The rules came afterward.”

“Like the Wild West,” she said again. “I think you liked it.”

He nodded. “Some of it.”

She paused. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Reacher,” he said.

“Is that your first name? Or your last?”

“People just call me Reacher,” he said.

She paused again. “May I ask you another personal question?”

He nodded.

“Have you killed people, Reacher? In the army?”

He nodded again. “Some.”

“That’s what the army is all about, fundamentally, isn’t it?” she said.

“I guess so,” he said. “Fundamentally.”

She went quiet again. Like she was struggling with a decision.

“There’s a museum in Pecos,” she said. “A real Wild West museum. It’s partly in an old saloon, and partly in the old hotel next door. Out back is the site of Clay Allison’s grave. You ever heard of Clay Allison?”

Reacher shook his head.

“They called him the Gentleman Gunfighter,” she said. “He retired, actually, but then he fell under the wheels of a grain cart and he died from his injuries. They buried him there. There’s a nice headstone, with ‘Robert Clay Allison, 1840-1887’ on it. I’ve seen it. And an inscription. The inscription says, ‘He never killed a man that did not need killing.’ What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s a fine inscription,” Reacher said.

“There’s an old newspaper, too,” she said. “In a glass case. From Kansas City, I think, with his obituary in it. It says, ‘Certain it is that many of his stern deeds were for the right as he understood that right to be.'”

The Cadillac sped on south.

“A fine obituary,” Reacher said.

“You think so?”

He nodded. “As good as you can get, probably.”

“Would you like an obituary like that?”

“Well, not just yet,” Reacher said.

She smiled again, apologetically.

“No,” she said. “I guess not. But do you think you would like to qualify for an obituary like that? I mean, eventually?”

“I can think of worse things,” he said.

She said nothing.

“You want to tell me where this is heading?” he asked.

“This road?” she said, nervously.

“No, this conversation.”

She drove on for a spell, and then she lifted her foot off the gas pedal and coasted. The car slowed and she pulled off onto the dusty shoulder. The shoulder fell away into a dry irrigation ditch and it put the car at a crazy angle, tilted way down on his side. She put the transmission in park with a small delicate motion of her wrist, and she left the engine idling and the air roaring.

“My name is Carmen Greer,” she said. “And I need your help.”

Chapter 2

It wasn’t an accident I picked you up, you know,” Carmen Greer said.

Reacher’s back was pressed against his door. The Cadillac was listing like a sinking ship, canted hard over on the shoulder. The slippery leather seat gave him no leverage to struggle upright. The woman had one hand on the wheel and the other on his seat back, propping herself above him. Her face was a foot away. It was unreadable. She was looking past him, out at the dust of the ditch.