“Yeah.” His hand drifts from her back. Tami waits to feel his fingers again. She closes her eyes, anticipating the touch. Nothing. She opens them: he’s cupping his shoulder in his palm, frowning like it’s bothering him.

“You sore?” she asks.

He keeps rubbing. “Just a little stiff.”

“Maybe you need to loosen it up.” Danny always had to throw on his days off; she caught. She slides off the wall and picks up a stone the size of an apricot. “Try this.”

He throws the rock impossibly far. They finally hear the soft thud of it smacking some cactus.

“Impressive.” She feeds him another. This one he frowns at, winds up, and—crack. The streetlight on the switchback below them goes out with a spark.

“Whoops.”

“Oh, it’s okay. It’ll give the biddies something to worry about tomorrow.” She settles back onto the ledge. But the busted light sends her mind running. “Can you hit that one?” she asks, pointing a finger at the next lamp down the road.

He tosses a third, but it bounces off the top of the lamppost. He shakes his head, disappointed in himself. “I can make that.” It would sound boastful, but she knows the man can throw a strike from the warning track to home plate. She feeds him another stone and this time the light goes dark with a crack. His whole posture changes, his chest rising like he’s the tallest man on earth. And Tami, too: that shaky feeling she had when he asked her about Scottsdale is gone. Now there’s a giddiness under her breastbone. Is this the thrill Jason was talking about?

“Can you hit that?” She points at the red glow of a camera mounted above the entrance to the gift shop. She’s made a point of avoiding its scope on their tour.

It sounds like a gun going off, the way the camera snaps off its mooring.

“Wow, okay,” she says. That’s the only camera monitoring the store. Her heartbeat picks up, remembering the keys she still has, buried deep in her bag. “Hang on a sec. I have to—” But he’s already launching another stone at a nearby overhead light. No matter Frank’s plan, they added flood lighting in the 1980s. Had to—disability compliance, safety regulations or something. This willful destruction probably would’ve tickled the old guy. Back to the land, to nature’s intention. To his.

Jason sidearms a stone and takes out a knee-height walkway light. “Not those,” she says, shaking her head. “Those are originals. Or from the fifties, at least.”

“Oh, okay.” He nods like he understands, like he’s not glassy-eyed and swaying. He’s rooting for another rock when she touches his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”