So Jax did the only thing his tequila-saturated brain could think of. He laid on the horn. One by one, lights popped on all around him, the dark shapes coming to life. Somewhere to his right, a baby started crying. He leaned on the horn again, a long series of beeps that echoed through the hills.

Somewhere around the fifth or sixth time, a door swung open and a woman tumbled out, shooting across the dirt in a tank top and red bikini underwear. Her bare legs were scary skinny and her hair wild, like she’d been sleeping in a wind tunnel. She marched right up to him and smacked him on the chest.

“Goddamn it all to hell, you woke up the baby. Do you know how hard that kid is to get to sleep, and now your caterwaulin’ woke him up. Are you going to come in there and put him back down? Because I sure as hell ain’t. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Where to start? With his dead mom? With his missing friends? With this woman’s shouting that was only making her kid cry harder?

“I’m so wasted.” He meant it as something like an apology, but this woman just rolled her eyes.

“I got a nose. I could smell you from ten miles away.”

Behind her, a girl appeared in the doorway. She was six, maybe seven, and cradling the wailing baby to her chest. She had that same crazy hair as the lady in front of him, those same skinny legs sticking out from a tattered nightgown. “Mama, I think he’s hungry.”

The woman ignored her daughter, sizing him up instead. “Tequila?”

“Jose Cuervo.” His tongue stumbled around the words, mushing them up and sticking the syllables together: “Hosaycuervo.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where’s the tequila? It’s the least you can do for waking the baby.”

It was then Jax felt a pang. Something wasn’t right with this woman. Her pupils were the size of dimes, the skin on her arms all scabbed up. Track marks or scratches or both. He looked beyond her to the girl, standing on the pile of cinder blocks that served as steps. The baby cried and cried.

“Mama, he needs a bottle but there ain’t one.”

“Shut up, Charlie. Get your butt back inside.”

What killed Jax the most was that the little girl didn’t look surprised. She didn’t look sad or disappointed. She just looked...accustomed. This jittery-ass woman angling for Jax’s booze was her mother. This was their life. The girl just stood there, clutching her wailing baby brother against her chest, blinking at him with those Bambi eyes, willing her crack-whore mother to come inside and feed her baby brother. Jesus, somebody call child services or something.