“Son of a bitch.” Johan’s nostrils flared. “Kingsley’s in Pale Bone. He’s definitely after Ramón.”

“Oh shit.”

“Go faster.”

“We’re doing ninety already.”

“I don’t see any cops.”

Xander punched it to triple digits, the Mustang spraying a rooster tail of California dust.

21
Pale Bone

The billboard was twenty feet tall but partially collapsed and hammered by the hard Mojave sun. It read rattlesnake hotel, 14 miles, exit 9, and depicted an Obama-era family springing for joy outside a Clinton-era establishment. The word closed had been painted across the front in tall red letters.

“Damn,” Luke said. “I thought we’d found our digs for the night.”

This addendum could have been added to the next sign they came across: welcome to pale bone, a collection of dusty shacks and trailers with creosote bushes growing in the street, the same size as Nueva Vida but with half its spirit. There was a convenience store, an auto repair shop, and a withered casino called Top Dogs. A bare-chested kid—no older than thirteen—with an eagle tattooed on one shoulder threw a stone at Luke’s car as he drove through. It struck the rear quarter panel with a gong-like chime.

“You little shit!” Luke shouted through the open window.

“Fuck you, man,” the kid called back, and shot him the bird.

Three ranches in Pale Bone, at different points of the compass, but none had a blue Econoline van parked in the driveway.

There was a mid-nineties Ram at the first property they came to. Several gray-snouted dogs slept in the yard, and an old couple sat just inside their garage listening to the radio. She fanned herself with a magazine. He hooked grime from beneath his big toenail with a pair of scissors.

“Looking for a friend of mine,” Luke called out. He’d pulled into their driveway as far as the first sleeping dog.

“No friends of yours here,” the old man returned, blowing muck from the tip of one scissor blade.

“His name’s Ramón,” Luke persisted.

“Like I said, no friends of yours here.”

The second ranch, at the eastern edge of town, had an old Triumph motorcycle in the cluttered yard, along with several junkers that looked like they’d been stripped for parts. A newish steel barn stood twenty yards from the main house. There were two dogs in cages. Not the gray-snouted, sleeping variety, but muscly, vicious breeds that barked furiously at Luke’s car as he stopped at the end of the driveway.

“No blue van,” he said.

“Could be parked in the barn,” Kitty offered.

“Let’s keep looking,” Luke said. He didn’t like the looks of those dogs. “We can always come back.”