Luke’s shoulders hitched. His eyes blinked emptily. How cruel, how obscenely fucking cruel. He looked left and right again. The stars. The sunset. His brittle mind was pulled in both directions, then he heard a sound from behind him: a high-pitched whine, full of pain. Luke looked in the rearview, and in the red glow of the taillights he saw Xander kneeling with his right arm looped around the rottweiler’s throat. The dog scrabbled and cried, then fell silent when Xander squeezed and twisted at the same time, breaking its neck. The sound was crisp and upsetting. Xander dropped the rottweiler. It slumped to the dirt. He got to his feet—bleeding from bite wounds across his face and arms—then ran at the Caliber.

Luke hit the gas, kicking up a screen of dust as he ripped down the driveway, still looking left toward Lisa, and right toward Kitty.

By the time he reached Sierra Vista, he’d made his decision.

Part III
Showdown at the Rattlesnake Hotel

25
Chase

The Caliber had a trembling four-cylinder engine, built for economy, not power. Luke pushed it nonetheless. His foot hit the metal and stayed there. Nothing on these desert roads, and little more to either side. It was an empty, ghostly landscape, even during the high heat of day, but within the headlights it was interstellar. Luke could imagine hitting the brakes, getting out, then floating away among other stars.

He touched eighty-seven and the needle stayed there. It was all this old car had, and it had to be enough. The engine struggled. Everything else rattled and knocked. He remained focused, his hands locked on the wheel, making incremental adjustments every time he hit a bump and shimmied.

Nothing but nothing, for mile after mile, then finally, in the distance, taillights.

Was it them? Was he catching up?

He considered his decision, second-guessed it, hated himself. Lisa’s and Kitty’s faces swirled through his mind. It felt not so much like he was trying to save one, but outwardly condemning the other. He wondered—assuming he had a future—how long his soul would be at war with itself.

A pack of coyotes skulked at the edge of the road. They scattered as he rushed by, eyes flashing green in the headlights. There was a billboard just beyond, hanging in the darkness in faded colors. Like the one on the outskirts of Pale Bone, it was for the Rattlesnake Hotel. Only seven miles away now, but still closed, according to the aggressive red lettering stenciled across the front.

Luke glanced at it, then concentrated on the taillights up ahead. They had grown larger. He was closing in, within half a mile.

Moments later, he saw the low shape and scarred green body of the Mustang.