Izzy entered a study with a large black lacquer desk inlaid in ebony and ivory, and a plate glass window overlooking the grotto outside. The desk, like the other furniture, had the golden feet of a lion. Against one wall of the room stood a large vitrine lined in carnelian velvet and full of small calcite statues, arranged on glass shelves. Books on history, anthropology, archaeology, and earth sciences covered the rest of the walls. What would it be like to have a room like this, a place to read and write, overlooking the palm trees and the pool, the mountains and a sky that turned from pale pink to pale blue with scudding clouds, to white-heat, to deep coral, to darkest bluish black? She sat down at the desk and looked out at the landscape, cold and spinning with stars. Then she began opening the desk drawers with the small gilt knobs. One drawer was locked and the others mostly empty except for a smattering of office supplies.

Izzy thought of the tools she had to help her search for Cyrus. Not just technology, and Cyrus’s truck, and the education Larry had given her about mines. Not just the gun he’d given her, though she still wasn’t sure why. Not just Dog, though he had helped her most of all, and part of her wished she’d brought him along.

Something else had helped her, could help her still: her hands. She looked down at the shredded cuticles, the dry skin on her knuckles. The massage client who didn’t believe in global warming had told Izzy, “Whatever you say.” All she’d had to do was rub his back. Cyrus wasn’t the only one with strong, capable, loving hands. Muscles melted wax-like under Izzy’s fingers.

Another thing Larry had taught her, besides guns and trucks, plants, mines, and minerals: how to use those hands and a paper clip to open a lock. Izzy took two from the top drawer of the desk, pulled one clip apart and slipped the end into the lock, jiggling; then she pushed the end of the other paper clip into the bottom of the lock and turned. It took a few cranks but opened. Inside, Izzy found a folder of papers and searched through it. She chose the photograph first.

Sky stood in the center of a group of four red-haired children, her arms reaching out to embrace them, her smile spreading across them all like the rising sun. Sky in her jewelry and gauze with her flawless, fake-looking skin. Izzy recognized the children in the picture: the kids from Bombay Beach. The ones who had run off giggling on the night of the gathering. The ones who had probably brought that video of Sky.

From the vitrine, the small statues watched.