“Ketchikan,” Verna said. Her curiosity about what the kid had to say outweighed her repulsion. She didn’t want to dawdle though either. Ketchikan was only the most southerly of her options, and therefore the most likely place she’d end up.

“Ketchikan’s good for greenhorns,” the boy said. “Tell them Ben said to set you up. Don’t tell Mike Murphy you met me though! He’s the manager up there. Copper River is good, too. Farther north, but lots of work on the slime line.” He relished the words “slime line,” drawing them out as far as he could.

From there Ben launched into a rambling tale about his time up north and how boring it was, and the many methods he and his buddies found to kill the time. Verna listened for a while, hoping for any useful information, but it became clear he had nothing to offer. He just liked to hear his own voice. When his story turned to joyriding bulldozers on Kodiak Island, Verna had had enough. She shook Lucy’s leash and the dog trotted from the dreadlocked girl’s arms. Verna attached the leash and without a word they exited into the brush, Ben’s bragging voice fading behind them.

“We couldn’t stop the thing,” he said. “It just rolled all the way across the construction site and snapped the retaining wires. Boosh! This huge spray of sparks. It was fucking amazing, man. The Cat went over the cliff head over heels, ass over tit, all the way into the water. It was probably a hundred-thousand-dollar piece of equipment, gone in four fucking seconds. They couldn’t pin it on me though, man. I was gone.”

Verna’s car was a gray 1996 Camry with a dent in the driver’s-side door panel and three missing hubcaps. It was the only car parked in the Walgreens parking lot on Lombard Avenue, which was the best camping option Verna had been able to find after pulling off the freeway. The surrounding streets were quiet, but just the right kind of quiet—quiet enough to feel empty and unattended but not so much as to feel outright dangerous.

Lucy scrambled into the back seat, taking her place among the piles of blankets and sweaters, burrowing a nook beside the cooler and some wadded sweatpants.

Verna pulled the map from the glove box. Lucy was not so interested in their daily progress, but Verna liked sharing the map with her anyway. She guided her finger along the spiny, brown mountains south of Salt Lake City up I-84 through Idaho and into eastern Oregon, to La Grande, east of the green welt of the Cascade mountains. The remaining distance to Bellingham, their next day’s goal, was only about five hundred miles, and from there to Ketchikan, another seven hundred, mostly by ferry. The run started in a week, which meant they would arrive well before hiring was done.