Link’s eyes shut hard against the sudden sunlight. He wore a pair of long, baggy gym shorts, nothing more, and his wrists and ankles were bound with plastic cuffs, which would have made it hard for him to fight—not that the young buck had the strength. Like Paul, Link was obsessive about bodybuilding, but his three months in the dark, subsisting on a glass or two of water and a handful of almonds per day, had wasted away all his gains in the gym. Now he looked shriveled and pathetic, as harmless as a prune.

Sebastian reached inside and hefted the kid out of the compartment. He propped Link up, into a sitting position, on the back bumper. Link couldn’t keep his head up, so he rested it against the side of the hatchback’s frame. His lips were cracked, full of bleeding blisters, and his tongue was swollen—all a result of dehydration. Sebastian had put a stop order on the water a few days ago, and Link hadn’t eaten anything solid in about a week.

Sebastian used his arm to wipe the sweat from his forehead as he went to retrieve the paper bag from Whole Foods. He placed the bag next to Link, then opened a bottle of water, glad that Frank had hosed Link down back in LA before loading him into the car. The kid had smelled ripe beyond belief.

“Drink it slowly,” Sebastian said, placing the bottle in Link’s hands. “If you drink it too fast, you’ll throw it back up.”

Link didn’t gulp the water, but he held the bottle against his mouth like a baby, sucking at it, grateful. When he finished, Sebastian gave him another bottle. By the time he finished that one, almost twenty minutes later, Link looked a bit more alert, his gaze skittering across the landscape of latte-colored mountains, the sunbaked valley floor as white as table salt.

“Beautiful place, isn’t it?” Sebastian said.

Link didn’t answer.

“Ever been to Death Valley?”

Link shook his head. It seemed like a massive effort.

Sebastian reached into the bag, came back with a cellophane-wrapped sandwich. “Chicken salad,” he said. “You want?”

Link eyed it with lust. “No, thank you,” he croaked.

“This isn’t a trap or test or some shit. You need to eat, so eat. There’re a couple of other sandwiches in the bag—a turkey club and some Italian or Mediterranean thing. Didn’t know what you liked, so I grabbed more than one. There’s some more water in there, too. Help yourself.”

“I don’t know anything about Paul.”

Sebastian took a bite of his sandwich. He had invested a significant amount of money into finding Paul, and yet, with all the extra manpower, with all the resources at his disposal, had come up with only two leads—one of them being Link, who hadn’t been working the afternoon Sebastian went for a swim in his pool.

Link, Sebastian was sure, knew something. Paul had worked directly with Link, learning how stickmen worked, the ins and outs of finding and supplying carriers—but through it all, Link had stuck to the same “I don’t know shit” script.