Free Echo Burning by Lee Child Page B

he stop?”
    She adjusted her grip on the wheel. Opened her palms, stretched her fingers, closed them tight again on the rim.
    â€œHe went to prison,” she said.
    â€œFor beating up on you?”
    â€œIn Texas?” she said. She laughed, just a yelp, like a short cry of pain. “Now I know you’re new here.”
    He said nothing. Just watched Texas reel in through the windshield ahead of him, hot and brassy and yellow.
    â€œIt just doesn’t happen,” she said. “In Texas a gentleman would never raise his hand to a woman. Everybody knows that. Especially not a white gentleman whose family has been here over a hundred years. So if a greaseball whore wife dared to claim a thing like that, they’d lock her up, probably in a rubber room.”
    The day her life changed forever.
    â€œSo what did he do?”
    â€œHe evaded federal taxes,” she said. “He made a lot of money trading oil leases and selling drilling equipment down in Mexico. He neglected to tell the IRS about it. In fact, he neglected to tell the IRS about anything. One day they caught him.”
    â€œThey put you in jail for that?”
    She made a face. “Actually, they try hard not to. A first-time thing like that, they were willing to let him pay, you know, make proposals and so forth. A clean breast and a pay-back plan is what they’re looking for. But Sloop was way too stubborn for that. He made them dig everything out for themselves. He was hiding things right up to the trial. He refused to pay anything. He even disputed that he owed them anything, which was ridiculous. And all the money was hidden behind family trusts, so they couldn’t just take it. It made them mad, I think.”
    â€œSo they prosecuted?”
    She nodded at the wheel.
    â€œWith a vengeance,” she said. “A federal case. You know that expression? Making a federal case out of something? Now I see why people say that. Biggest fuss you ever saw. A real contest, the local good old boys against the Treasury Department. Sloop’s lawyer is his best friend from high school, and his other best friend from high school is the DA in Pecos County, and he was advising them on strategy and stuff like that, but the IRS just rolled right over all of them. It was a massacre. He got three-to-five years. The judge set the minimum at thirty months in jail. And cut me a break.”
    Reacher said nothing. She accelerated past a truck, the first vehicle they had seen in more than twenty miles.
    â€œI was so happy,” she said. “I’ll never forget it. A white-collar thing like that, after the verdict came in they just told him to present himself at the federal prison the next morning. They didn’t drag him away in handcuffs or anything. He came home and packed a little suitcase. We had a big family meal, stayed up kind of late. Went upstairs, and that was the last time he hit me. Next morning, his friends drove him up to the jail, someplace near Abilene. A Club Fed is what they call it. Minimum security. It’s supposed to be comfortable. I heard you can play tennis there.”
    â€œDo you visit him?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œI pretend he’s dead,” she said.
    She went quiet, and the car sped on toward the haze on thehorizon. There were mountains visible to the southwest, unimaginably distant.
    â€œThe Trans-Pecos,” she said. “Watch for the light to change color. It’s very beautiful.”
    He looked ahead, but the light was so bright it had no color at all.
    â€œMinimum thirty months is two and a half years,” she said. “I thought it safest to bet on the minimum. He’s probably behaving himself in there.”
    Reacher nodded. “Probably.”
    â€œSo, two and a half years,” she said. “I wasted the first one and a half.”
    â€œYou’ve still got twelve months. That’s plenty of time for anything.”
    She was quiet