Taking the kid’s advice, I set off across the desert. Six hours of sand, rock, and sun, of ruler-straight stretches of shimmering asphalt and mountains as sharp and menacing as wolves’ teeth. I stopped in Death Valley to top off the radiator and buy a cold drink. A thermometer at the service station read 116°. I had to squint in the glare, and the soles of my shoes stuck to the blacktop.

I took a bag of ice and a bottle of water out to Sally. Czarnecki would’ve said, “Fuck him,” but I wanted the kid in decent shape, ready to hunt. The air inside the camper was so hot, it was hard to breathe. Sally was gasping when I opened the crate. He guzzled the water and laid the ice on his chest.

“You’re a good man,” he said.

“I’d do the same for a dog,” I replied and locked him up again.

It was too hot to sleep in the truck once we got to Vegas, so I splurged on a motel just off the Strip. I closed the drapes, turned up the air conditioner, and took a cold shower. Lying on the bed afterward, I was snoring before my body dried.

I woke at dusk. Next to the phone was a menu for a Chinese restaurant that delivered. I called and ordered the works, the Emperor’s Feast, for two. The food arrived, and when I’d had my fill, I decided to bring Sally in to eat his share rather than carrying everything out to him.

The sun was down, but it was still stifling in the camper. I unlocked the crate and said, “You can come inside for a while, but if you so much as twitch in a way that spooks me, I’ll kill you.”

“You got my word, boss,” Sally said.

I covered him with the .45 as he climbed out of the box. I’d backed the truck into the space in front of the room, so all he had to do was cross the walkway. He sat at the table in his chains and ate out of the cartons. I sat on the bed, keeping the gun on him. He used chopsticks at first but changed to a fork, said his fingers weren’t working right.