left. His eyes were screwed tight against the sun. Carmen was saying nothing and Ellie was saying a lot. They all walked straight past him and up the steps, three abreast. They paused at the door and Sloop turned his right shoulder to allow Ellie in ahead of him. He followed her across the threshold and then turned his shoulder the other way to pull Carmen in after him. The door closed on them hard enough to raise a puff of hot dust off the porch floorboards.
* * *
Reacher saw nobody except the maid for nearly three hours. He stayed inside the bunkhouse and she brought him lunch and then came back to collect the plate an hour later. Time to time he would watch the house from the high bathroom window, but it was closed up tight and he saw nothing at all. Then late in the afternoon he heard voices behind the horse barn and walked up there and found Sloop and Carmen and Ellie out and about, taking the air. It was still very hot. Maybe hotter than ever. Sloop looked restless. He was sweating. He was scuffing his shoes through the dirt. Carmen looked very nervous. Her face was slightly red. Maybe tension, maybe strain. Maybe the fearsome heat. But it wasn't impossible she'd been slapped a couple of times, either.
"Ellie, come with me to see your pony," she said.
"I saw him this morning, Mommy," Ellie said.
Carmen held out her hand. "But I didn't. So let's go see him again."
Ellie looked mystified for a second, and then she took Carmen's hand. They stepped behind Sloop and set off slowly for the front of the barn. Carmen turned her head and mouthed talk to him as she walked. Sloop turned around and watched them go. Turned back and looked at Reacher, like he was seeing him for the first time.
"Sloop Greer," he said, and held out his hand.
Up close, he was an older, wiser version of Bobby. A little older, maybe a lot wiser. There was intelligence in his eyes. Not necessarily a pleasant sort of intelligence. It wasn't hard to imagine some cruelty there. Reacher shook his hand. It was big-boned, but soft. It was a bully's hand, not a fighter's.
"Jack Reacher," he said. "How was prison?"
There was a split-second flash of surprise in the eyes. Then it was replaced by instant calm. Good self-control, Reacher thought.
"It was pretty awful," Sloop said. "You been in yourself?"
Quick, too.
"On the other side of the bars from you," Reacher said.
Sloop nodded. "Bobby told me you were a cop. Now you're an itinerant worker."
"I have to be. I didn't have a rich daddy."
Sloop paused a beat. "You were military, right? In the army?"
"Right, the army."
"I never cared much for the military, myself."
"So I gathered."
"Yeah, how?"
"Well, I hear you opted out of paying for it."
Another flash in the eyes, quickly gone. Not easy to rile, Reacher thought. But a spell in prison teaches anybody to keep things well below the surface.
"Shame you spoiled it by crying uncle and getting out early."
"You think?"
Reacher nodded. "If you can't do the time, then don't do the crime."
"You got out of the army. So maybe you couldn't do the time either."
Reacher smiled. Thanks for the opening, he thought.
"I had no choice," he said. "Fact is, they threw me out."
"Yeah, why?"
"I broke the law, too."
"Yeah, how?"
"Some scumbag of a colonel was beating up on his wife. Nice young woman. He was a furtive type of a guy, did it all in secret. So I couldn't prove it. But I wasn't about to let him get away with it. That wouldn't have been right. Because I don't like men who hit women. So one night, I caught him on his own. No witnesses. He's in a wheelchair now. Drinks through a straw. Wears a bib, because he drools all the time."
Sloop said nothing. He was so silent, the skin at the inside corners of his eyes turned dark purple. Walk away now, Reacher thought, and you're confessing it to me. But Sloop stayed exactly where he was, very still, staring into space, seeing nothing. Then he recovered. The eyes came back into focus. Not quickly, but not too slowly, either. A smart guy.
"Well, that makes me feel better," he said. "About withholding my taxes. They might have ended up in your pocket."
"You don't approve?"
"No, I don't," Sloop said.
"Of who?"
"Either of you," Sloop said. "You, or the other guy."