Andrej grinned a little as he dug his cell phone out of his pants pocket and dialed one-handed while inching past another dust-covered pickup truck. “You’ll like him,” he promised. “And your cowboy’s going to love him.”

Misha frowned. “No, he fucking won’t.”

“Jealous much?” Andrej smirked, then perked right up as a gruff demand for identification sounded from his cell. “Yo, J.C. It’s Andrej.”

Delighted rumbling. J.C. had a voice like sweet liqueur and ground gravel, resonant as a thunderstorm building in the distance. It was pitched too low for Misha to understand what he was saying, but still managed to leave him with a somewhat disturbing impression of power and sex appeal.

In other words, J.C. sounded a bit like Riley, all laid-back southern heat and desert rough, the sort of voice that could make a man shake in his boots or come in his pants depending on the situation. Misha shifted again.

“Nah, man,” Andrej said, his own tone several degrees warmer than it usually was on the phone. If Andrej hadn’t been such a straight boy, Misha would’ve suspected his friend to be head over heels for J.C. “I’m in El Paso, actually.”

Misha tuned out the rest of the conversation, opting to lean his head against the cool glass of the window and look out instead. Beyond the metal tide of cars inching toward the city center, El Paso lay in drab indifference.

This was Riley’s world, and Misha drank it in, hungry for it. He didn’t give a damn that he didn’t fit in here, or that the big sky and seemingly endless expanse of land made him feel a bit like he was visiting another planet. It was this vastness, this hard, sparsely beautiful country that had forged Riley into the man he was. Driving through it, seeing it with his own eyes for the first time, all he could think was that this was it. This was where he was going to find Riley. The trick was going to be to keep him.

TWENTY-TWO

THE good news was that apparently even aliens needed to sleep. Or let their host sleep. The bad news was that the crafty fucker had decided to take its break in a populated area instead of pulling over and napping at the side of the road. Not that Young could blame it. Motel beds were definitely more comfortable than bench seats. The location at the edge of the urban sprawl allowed for several escape routes, both into the surrounding countryside and into the city center. The people around provided cover, potential hostages, and a multitude of host bodies to choose from should things go south.

Whatever else that critter was, it wasn’t stupid.