She found her phone and bounced it in her hand before dialing Chris. She looked out the window to the sky and scrub around her, a new sun burning the world alive. It was a view like no place else in the world, and she thought she could see forever from here. Chris had once nearly died right outside that window—shot on the orders of Sheriff Ross—and knowing that had admittedly scared her for a long time . . . all that emptiness and all the possibilities so easily lost within it, stretching endlessly into the unknowable future; the remnants of different lives and different choices left behind. But now she couldn’t imagine any other view, any other choice, any other life.

When she’d aimed her own gun that night at Sheriff Ross, ready and willing to kill him for what he’d done to Chris, she’d been protecting all their future choices . . . and the later promise of this view.

Forever was fine, and she wasn’t afraid of it anymore.

Rocky was then leaning against her leg, as if he could see out the same window, enjoying the view with her. She could feel the dog’s heart beating through his fur. It was strong, steady, constant. Mel bent over and kissed Jack between his closed eyes. He stirred once, safe, just knowing she was there.

It was enough for her.

FIVE

There were five bodies.

Four young men, and the last a teenage boy.

It would be a few days before they could determine exactly how long they had been in the river, and maybe they never would, but it had been long enough. Demasiado largo. Too long. America Reynosa had listened closely as Doc Hanson explained to Sheriff Cherry about body temperature and river pH and maceration: where the dead men’s skin had absorbed . . . drank . . . the river itself. That process had turned their skin milky and opaque so it hung on their bodies in rolls, like a second set of loose-fitting clothes. At least one of them had also been gotten at by a predator, but whether that had been before or after ending up in the water was an open question. Most of them were savaged in some way or another, their faces ruined, except for the boy’s. His face was fine, unmarked. His young features were clear and clean; only for that strangely colorless but somehow still pale skin.

It was like he was only sleeping, and someone, maybe his mama, had just brushed wet hair out of his closed eyes.

—