Larry came out of the trailer holding a wrinkled map of the Joshua Tree mines in his hand and carrying a smaller canvas bag on his shoulder. “You might need it out there,” he said. He glared at the mannequin. “More than that piece of shit.”

She felt the heft, the weight, the L-shaped coldness through the fabric. Before she took it out, she already knew: Larry had given her a gun.

“Why?”

“Like I said, you might need it.”

“So, you think I’m right?”

“About the trouble he’s likely in? I think every one of us out here is in deep shit,” Larry said. “But, yeah, it can’t hurt.”

She hated guns. But she wasn’t about to give it back. Not yet. Maybe she was going crazy like Leanne, like Alma; maybe Izzy had already gone the way of those desert women. Or like that couple that died in each other’s arms.

But in the morning, she’d begin searching every mine she could.

◆◆◆

The approximately three hundred abandoned mining sites that littered the Joshua Tree landscape had been built during the gold rush, but silver, copper, and other minerals—green-banded malachite, black pyrolusite, azurite, and turquoise—were also prospected. The mines consisted of various adits and shafts going down into the earth and scattered waste piles of tailings, the residue of ore. Larry liked to tell Izzy about the mines, some five-hundred-feet deep, the search for gold in the quartz veinlets. He’d taught her all the terminology including that word—veinlets—pressing his fingers to her wrist where the blue threads ran beneath the skin. He called her eyes malachite. Once, when she was nine, he’d even taken her underground. He did like to scare her.

Going into that mine as a teenager with Cyrus, Seth, and Nephy made it better, made Izzy see that it wasn’t so bad down there—a hangout, a hidden world. Cigarettes and beer and a stick to draw their names in the dirt. Izzy and Cyrus 4Ever. Maybe her presence made it better for Cyrus, too. If she went down there now without him, it would be like going underground as a child again. Worse.

It’s not him, it’s not him, Izzy told herself, running to the bathroom. But he could still be down in one of those mines, and she was going to find him. Maybe he was hiding for some reason? Maybe he’d been injured or…her stomach heaved viscously, then dispensed bile into the toilet. But the darkness stayed inside.

When she thought of the mines, it struck her, for the first time, how many entrances there were to hell.

And she would search every one.

◆◆◆

In the morning, Izzy checked her phone—texts from Nephy and Ted—and the page she’d made and Missing Persons of America. A few people had left messages praying for her.

One private message was from Everado Fontana: