Bobby said nothing. The vastness of the night closed in. Echo County, a hundred and fifty souls, most of them at least sixty or a hundred miles beyond the black horizons. The absolute definition of isolation.
“O.K.,” Bobby said quietly.
He walked slowly toward the barn. Reacher dropped the ball cap in the dirt and strolled up to the house, with the porch lights shining in his eyes and the big papery moths swarming out to greet him.
Two thirds of the killing crew saw him stroll. They were doing it better than the watchers had. The woman had checked the map and rejected the tactic of driving in from the west. For one thing, the Crown Vic wouldn’t make it over the desert terrain. For another, to hide a mile away made no sense at all. Especially during the hours of darkness. Far better to drive straight down the road and stop a hundred yards shy of the house, long enough for two of the team to jump out, then turn the car and head back north while the two on foot ducked behind the nearest line of rocks and worked south toward the red gate and holed up in the small craters ten yards from the blacktop.
It was the two men on foot. They had night-vision devices. Nothing fancy, nothing military, just commercial equipment bought from a sporting goods catalog and carried along with everything else in the black nylon valise. They were binoculars, with some kind of electronic enhancement inside. Some kind of infrared capability. It picked up the night heat rising off the ground, and made Reacher look like he was wobbling and shimmering as he walked.
Chapter 8
Reacher found Carmen in the parlor. The light was dim and the air was hot and thick. She was sitting alone at the red-painted table. Her back was perfectly straight and her forearms were resting lightly on the wooden surface and her gaze was blank and absolutely level, focused on a spot on the wall where there was nothing to see.
“Twice over,” she said. “I feel cheated, twice over. First it was a year, and then it was nothing. Then it was forty-eight hours, but really it was only twenty-four.”
“You can still get out,” he said.
“Now it’s less than twenty-four,” she said. “It’s sixteen hours, maybe. I’ll have breakfast by myself, but he’ll be back for lunch.”
“Sixteen hours is enough,” he said. “Sixteen hours, you could be anywhere.”
“Ellie’s fast asleep,” she said. “I can’t wake her up and bundle her in a car and run away and be chased by the cops forever.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I’m going to try to face it,” she said. “A fresh start. I’m planning to tell him, enough is enough. I’m planning to tell him, he lays a hand on me again, I’ll divorce him. Whatever it takes. However long.”
“Way to go,” he said. “Do you believe I can?” she asked.
“I believe anybody can do anything,” he said. “If they want it enough.” “I want it,” she said. “Believe me, I want it.” She went quiet. Reacher glanced around the silent room. “Why did they paint everything red?” he asked.
“Because it was cheap,” she said. “During the fifties, nobody down here wanted red anything, because of the Communists. So it was the cheapest color at the paint store.”
“I thought they were rich, back then. With the oil.”
“They were rich. They still are rich. Richer than you could ever imagine.
But they’re also mean.”
He looked at the places where the fifty-year-old paint was worn back to the wood.
“Evidently,” he said. She nodded again. Said nothing.
“Last chance, Carmen,” he said. “We could go, right now. There’s nobody here to call the cops. By the time they get back, we could be anywhere you want.” “Bobby’s here.”
“He’s going to stay in the barn.” “He’d hear the car.” “We could rip out the phones.”
“He’d chase us. He could get to the sheriff inside two hours.” “We could fix the other cars so they wouldn’t work.” “He’d hear us doing it.”
“I could tie him up. I could drown him in a horse trough.” She smiled, bitterly. “But you won’t drown Sloop.” He nodded. “Figure of speech, I guess.”