There was something different about Danica Ellis. He had felt it right away, even through the adrenaline rush of those first minutes in Thousand Oaks. The feeling had persisted all day, pulling his attention to little details about her: the way her lower eyelids went up when she was focused on some thought; the vertical line that showed up in the middle of her forehead—not quite centered—when her eyebrows knitted together. Lots of things like that. He wondered if she had noticed him noticing. Wondered if she felt any connection at all in return.

Don’t bring it up. Focus on living through this. Ask her about it later, if there’s a later.

He glanced at her again, then let it go and studied the mountains coming up to meet them in the pale light.

She woke twenty minutes later. She yawned and stretched and rubbed her eyes, and stared ahead through the windshield at the change of scenery; she had fallen asleep with empty, dark desert around them, and now the headlights lit up a gravel road hemmed in by dense pines.

“Almost there,” Dryden said.

Before Danica could reply, a pair of headlights rounded a curve in the narrow road, two hundred yards ahead through the trees. There would be just enough room for the two vehicles to get past each other, if they both slowed—but Dryden saw almost at once that the oncoming vehicle didn’t mean to pass. It braked and came to rest in the center of the dirt road, its high beams blazing. Behind it, the red glow of its taillights lit up the encroaching trees, against which the vehicle’s shape stood out in hard contrast—a midsize sedan.

Dryden brought the Explorer to a stop well short of the car. He shoved the selector into reverse instead of park, though he kept pressure on the brake pedal for the moment. If need be, he could gun the Explorer backward, make a J-turn and floor it in the other direction.

“Welcoming committee, I guess,” Dryden said.

Danica nodded. “This happened when I came here with my father, too. I think they get nervous about outsiders.”

Up ahead, both doors of the sedan opened. Against the taillight glow on the pines, Dryden made out the shapes of two men—big guys—getting out. A moment later they were moving through the glare toward the Explorer. Dryden could see their hands; they weren’t holding any weapons at the moment. They wore light jackets, though, which might conceal shoulder holsters or guns stuffed into waistbands.