"O.K., good night, kid," he said. "Sleep well."
"Kiss me," she said.
He paused a second, and then he bent down and kissed her forehead. It was warm and damp and smelled of soap. She curled up more and snuggled down into the pillow.
"Thank you for being our friend," she said.
He stood up and stepped toward the door. Glanced at Carmen. Did you tell her to say that? Or is it for real?
"Can you find your way back down?" Carmen asked him.
He nodded.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said.
She stayed in Ellie's bedroom and he found the closet with the back stairs in it. He went down to the inside hallway and through the kitchen. The maid was gone. The old dishwasher was humming away to itself. He stepped out into the night and paused in the darkness and silence of the yard. It was hotter than ever. He stepped toward the gate. Ahead of him the sunset had gone. The horizon was black. There was pressure in the air. A hundred miles away to the southwest he could see heat lightning flickering. Faint sheets and bolts of dry electricity discharging randomly, like a gigantic celestial camera taking pictures. He looked straight up. No rain. No clouds. He turned around and caught gleams of white in the darkness off to his right. A T-shirt. A face. A semicircle of forehead showing through the back of a ball cap. Bobby Greer, again.
"Bobby," he said. "Enjoy your ride?"
Bobby ignored the inquiry. "I was waiting for you."
"Why?"
"Just making sure you came back out again."
"Why wouldn't I?"
"You tell me. Why would you go in there at all? In the first place? All three of you, like a little family."
"You saw us?"
Bobby nodded. "I see everything."
"Everything?" Reacher repeated.
"Everything I need to."
Reacher shrugged.
"I kissed the kid good night," he said. "You got a problem with that?"
Bobby was quiet for a beat.
"Let me walk you back to the bunkhouse," he said. "I need to talk to you."
He didn't talk any on the way down through the yard. He just walked. Reacher kept pace and looked ahead at the night sky in the east. It was vast and black and filled with stars. Apart from dim windows in some of the Greer buildings there was absolute pitch darkness everywhere. It threw the stars into vivid relief, impossibly tiny and numerous points of light dusting backward through billions of cubic miles of space. Reacher liked peering out into the universe. He liked thinking about it. He used it for perspective. He was just a tiny insignificant speck briefly sparked to life in the middle of nowhere. So what really mattered? Maybe nothing at all. So maybe he should just go ahead and bust Sloop Greer's head and have done with it. Why not? In the context of the whole universe, how was that so very different from not busting it at all?
"My brother had a problem," Bobby said, awkwardly. "I guess you know that."
"I heard he cheated on his taxes," Reacher said.
Bobby nodded in the dark. "IRS snoops are everywhere."
"Is that how they found him? Snooping?"
"Well, how else would they?" Bobby asked.
He went quiet. Walked ahead a couple of paces.
"Anyway, Sloop went to jail," he said.
Reacher nodded. "Getting out Monday, I heard."
"That's right. So he's not going to be too happy finding you here, kissing his kid, getting friendly with his wife."
Reacher shrugged as he walked. "I'm just here to work."
"Right, as a wrangler. Not as a nursemaid."
"I get time off, right?"
"But you need to be careful how you spend it."
Reacher smiled. "You mean I need to know my place?"
"Right," Bobby said. "And your place ain't alongside my brother's wife, or getting cozy with his kid."
"A man can't choose his friends?"
"Sloop ain't going to be happy, he gets home and finds some outsider has chosen his wife and kid for his friends."
Reacher stopped walking. Stood still in the dark. "Thing is, Bobby, why would I give a rat's ass what makes your brother happy?"
Bobby stopped, too. "Because we're a family. Things get talked about. You need to get that through your head. Or you won't work here too long. You could get run right out of here."
"You think?"
"Yeah, I think."
Reacher smiled again. "Who you going to call? The sheriff with the secondhand car? Guy like that could get a heart attack, just thinking about it."
Bobby shook his head. "West Texas, we look after things personally. It's a tradition. Never had too big of a law enforcement thing around here, so we kind of accustomed ourselves."
Reacher took a step closer.
"So you going to do it?" he said. "You want to do it now?"
Bobby said nothing. Reacher nodded.
"Maybe you'd prefer to set the maid on me," he said. "Maybe she'll come after me with a skillet."
"Josh and Billy will do what they're told."
"The little guys? The maid might be better. Or you, even."
"Josh and Billy get in the ring with bulls that weigh a ton and a half. They ain't going to be too worried about you."
Reacher started walking again. "Whatever, Bobby. I only said good night to the kid. No reason to start World War Three over it. She's starved for company. So is her mother. What can I do about it?"
"You can get smart about it, is what," Bobby said. "I told you before, she lies about everything. So whatever big story she's been telling you, chances are it's bullshit. So don't go making a fool out of yourself, falling for it. You wouldn't be the first."
They turned the corner beyond the corrals and headed for the bunkhouse door.
"What does that mean?" Reacher asked.
"How dumb do you think I am? She's gone all day every day for the best part of a month, gone all night as often as she can get away with it, leaving the kid here for us to tend to. And she's gone where? Some motel up in Pecos, is where, screwing the brains out of whatever new guy she can get to believe her bullshit stories about how her husband doesn't understand her. Which is entirely her business, but it's my business if she thinks she can go ahead and bring the guy back here. Two days before her husband gets home? Passing you off as some stranger looking for ranch work? What kind of crap is that?"
"What did you mean, I wouldn't be the first?"
"Exactly what I said. Talk to Josh and Billy about it. They ran him off."
Reacher said nothing. Bobby smiled at him.
"Don't believe her," he said. "There are things she doesn't tell you, and what she does tell you is mostly lies."
"Why doesn't she have a key to the door?"
"She had a key to the damn door. She lost it, is all. It's never locked, anyway. Why the hell would it be locked? We're sixty miles from the nearest crossroads."
"So why does she have to knock?"
"She doesn't have to knock. She could walk right in. But she puts on a big thing about how we exclude her. But it's all bullshit. Like, how do we exclude her? Sloop married her, didn't he?"
Reacher said nothing.
"So you work if you want to," Bobby said. "But stay away from her and the kid. And I'm saying that for your sake, O.K.?"
"Can I ask you something?" Reacher said.
"What?"
"Did you know your hat is on backward?"
"My what?"
"Your cap," Reacher said. "It's on backward. I wondered if you knew that. Or if maybe it just kind of slipped around, accidentally."
Bobby stared at him.
"I like it this way," he said.
Reacher nodded again.
"Well, I guess it keeps the sun off of your neck," he said. "Keeps it from getting any redder."
"You watch your mouth," Bobby said. "You stay away from my brother's family, and watch your damn mouth."
Then he turned in the dark and headed back up to the house. Reacher stood and watched him walk away. Beyond him the lightning still danced on the far southwest horizon. Then he disappeared behind the barn and Reacher listened to the sound his boots made in the dust, until it faded away to nothing.
Chapter 6
Reacher went right to bed, even though it was still early. Sleep when you can, so you won't need to when you can't. That was his rule. He had never worked regular hours. To him, there was no real difference between a Tuesday and a Sunday, or a Monday and a Friday, or night and day. He was happy to sleep twelve hours, and then work the next thirty-six. And if he didn't have to work the next thirty-six, then he'd sleep twelve hours again, and again, as often as he could, until something else cropped up.
The bed was short and the mattress was lumpy. The air in the room had settled like a thick hot soup on the thin sheet covering him. He could hear insects outside, clicking and whining loudly. There might have been a billion of them, separately audible if he concentrated hard enough, merging together into a single scream if he didn't. The sound of the night, far from anywhere. There were lonely guttural cries from cougars and coyotes way off in the distance. The horses heard them too, and he sensed restless movement over in the barn, quieting after a moment, starting up again after the next ghostly, plaintive yelp. He heard rustling air and imagined he felt changes in pressure as colonies of bats took flight. He imagined he could feel the beat of their leathery wings. He fell asleep watching the stars through a small window high above him.