Jesse scoffed at the words then, but remembering them now, he’s filled with new courage. He moves from the shade into the sunlight and walks out the door of the cabin. His flesh smokes, and the pain is everything he feared, but he doesn’t fear it anymore. After twenty feet his body is dust, but the rest of him keeps going. The rest of him steps onto the road and heads down it. The rest of him watches a cloud drift, a jackrabbit run. The rest of him sniffs sage and kicks an empty can. The rest of him sees Claudine materialize out of a watery mirage and runs laughing to her.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my team: Henry Dunow, Sylvie Rabineau, Jill Gillett, and Peter Dealbert. And thank you to Asya Muchnick and everyone at Mulholland Books.

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About the Author

Richard Lange is the author of the story collections Dead Boys and Sweet Nothing and the novels This Wicked World, Angel Baby, and The Smack. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Association of Crime Writers’ Hammett Prize, a Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Los Angeles.

Also by Richard Lange

The Smack

Sweet Nothing

Angel Baby

This Wicked World

Dead Boys