He heard the sound of footsteps in the dust ahead of him. Squinted into the sunset glare and saw Ellie walking down toward him. Little short steps, stiff arms, the blue halter dress specked with pieces of straw. Her hair was lit from behind and glowed red and gold like an angel.
“I came to say good night,” she said.
He remembered times in the past, being entertained in family quarters on a base somewhere, the melancholy notes of taps sounding faintly in the distance, polite army kids saying a formal farewell to their fathers’ brother officers. He remembered it well. You shook their little hands, and off they went. He smiled at her.
“O.K., good night, Ellie,” he said.
“I like you,” she said.
“Well, I like you, too,” he said.
“Are you hot?”
“Very.”
“There’ll be a storm soon.”
“Everybody tells me that.”
“I’m glad you’re my mommy’s friend.”
He said nothing. Just put out his hand. She looked at it.
“You’re supposed to give me a good-night kiss,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Of course you are.”
“O.K.,” he said.
Her face was about level with his thigh. He started to bend down.
“No, pick me up,” she said.
She held up her arms, more or less vertical. He paused a beat and then swung her in the air and settled her in the crook of his elbow. Kissed her cheek, gently.
“Good night,” he said again.
“Carry me,” she said. “I’m tired.”
He carried her past the corrals, past the horse barn, across the yard to the house. Carmen was waiting on the porch, leaning on a column, watching them approach.
“There you are,” she said.
“Mommy, I want Mr. Reacher to come in and say good night,” Ellie said.
“Well, I don’t know if he can.”
“I only work here,” Reacher said. “I don’t live here.”
“Nobody will know,” Ellie said. “Come in through the kitchen. There’s only the maid in there. She works here, too. And she’s allowed in the house.”
Carmen stood there, unsure.
“Mommy, please,” Ellie said.
“Maybe if we all go in together,” Carmen said.
“Through the kitchen,” Ellie said. Then she changed her voice to a fierce whisper that was probably louder than talking. “We don’t want the Greers to see us.”
Then she giggled, and rocked in Reacher’s arms, and ducked her face down into his neck. Carmen glanced at him, a question in her face. He shrugged back. What’s the worst thing can happen? He lowered Ellie to the ground and she took her mother’s hand. They walked together to the kitchen door and Carmen pushed it open.
Sunset, the boy wrote, and noted the time. The two men crawled backward from the lip of the gulch and raised themselves up on their knees and stretched. Off duty, the boy wrote, and noted the time. Then they all three scrabbled around on their knees and pulled the rocks off the corners of the tarp hiding their pick-up. Folded it as neatly as they could without standing up and stowed it in the load bed. Repacked the cooler and collapsed the telescopes and climbed three-in-a-row into the cab. Drove out of the far side of the gulch and headed due west across the hardpan toward the red horizon.
Inside the kitchen the maid was loading a huge dishwashing machine. It was made of green enamel and had probably been the very latest thing around the time man first walked on the moon. She looked up and said nothing. Just kept on stacking plates. Reacher saw the three bowls he had brought her. They were rinsed and ready.
“This way,” Ellie whispered.
She led them through a door that led to a back hallway. There was no window, and the air was suffocating. There were plain wooden stairs on one side, painted red, worn back to the wood in crescent shapes on each tread. She led them upward. The stairs creaked under Reacher’s weight.
They finished inside a kind of closet on the second floor. Ellie pushed the door open and crossed a hallway and made a right into a narrow corridor. Everything was wooden, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Everything was painted red. Ellie’s room was at the end of the corridor. It was maybe twelve feet square, and red. And very hot. It faced south and must have been baking in the sun all afternoon. The drapes were closed, and had been all day, Reacher guessed, offering some meager protection from the heat.