One tick mark for keeping Sasha.
“Hurry up,” I say over my shoulder as I slide my shades back down. The heat outside is well into triple digits and it blasts my face like I’m standing in front of an inferno. No humidity like the beach. No biting wind like this morning in Colorado. Just breath-stealing desert heat. “We gotta go around back. That’s where they keep them.”
“Keep what?” she asks, as she skips a little to keep up with me.
“Just go along, OK? I got this.” We walk around the building and I search the long line of busses, looking at the name plates above the front windshield. I sigh with relief when I see it. Sandy Valley Community Center.
I chose Sandy Valley for a base house for two reasons. It’s cheap. And it’s got a shitload of old ladies who love to gamble. Almost every day they pile in a bus and come out here in the early morning. They get tired and grab lunch, then head back on the bus so they can get home in time to take the afternoon nap.
I knock on the door and the driver whooshes it open. “Help you?”
I dig in my wallet and pull out a Sandy Valley Community Center Transport card. Then point to Sasha. “My kid sister’s coming too.”
He looks at my card, squinting at it a little. It’s legit. The city recreation manager is a Company employee. Well, was. She’s dead now. And while I might be the only guy on the planet who has a card like this, the dude cannot find any good reason to tell me no.
So he just shrugs and hands it back. “Welcome aboard. Take any seat you want.”
Sasha and I hop up the steps and I have a little moment of pride when she does not automatically take the last seat in the back, but instead takes one that faces the aisle. You sit in the back and everyone sees your face straight on. But if you sit in the aisle, they only see your profile.
Her dad was a good teacher and I’d hate to have to kill her. But I will if I have to and the more she obeys, the higher her chances of survival climb.
A little while later the old ladies come back. They are all pretty spry for their age and don’t need help or anything. But since we’re taking up two seats that weren’t filled on the way out here, I stand and let a grandma have my seat.
It’s a thirty-minute drive back into Sandy Valley, and from there it’s a three-mile hike outside of town to my little patch of desert. We head south, Sasha complaining the whole way. And by this time the afternoon sun is brutal. I stop at the edge of an empty expanse of acreage and shield my eyes. “We can cut off about half a mile if we walk through the desert instead of the streets. Come on, we’ll be there in like twenty minutes.”
I head out into the scrub, my boots kicking up sand and dirt, but when I glance back, she’s still back there on the sidewalk. “What?” I shout at her. She’s been good since breakfast and right now I need her to stay that way. I’m not in the mood for this kid shit. “Let’s f**king go!”
She lifts her foot and waggles it around. “Flip flops, James. You are out of your f**king mind if you think I’m crossing that desert in flip flops.”
I walk back to her and grab her by the shoulder. “Watch your f**king mouth, kid. Now let’s go.”
“No,” she says, wiggling free. “There’s rattlesnakes. If I get bit by a rattlesnake you’ll either have to leave me out here to die or rush me to a hospital for antivenin. And something tells me you’re not in the mood to blow our cover to save my life. Because a teenager who’s been missing for months coming into the emergency room with a rattlesnake bite a thousand miles away from home will definitely make the news. So excuse me for not having more faith in you, but that’s how I’m rolling right now. I am not”—she crosses her arms in front of her chest—“walking across that desert in flip flops.”
I just stare at her. For several seconds. She shifts her stance, puts her hand on her hip, and puckers her lips as she shakes her head. This is her limit today. Not the actual rattlesnake bite, but the possibility that getting bit will blow her cover. And mine.
And that I can respect.
“OK,” I say with a smile. A smile that might have a touch of pride in it. “You win. But we’re still cutting across—”
“No!”
“—the desert. But I’ll piggy-back you. How’s that?”
She looks down and laughs. I turn my back to her and she hops on. Her flip flops fall off immediately, so I bend down and she scoops them up.
And we walk. She talks in my ear for a little while. About how Bugs Bunny always sees a mirage when he’s in the desert and have I ever seen a mirage? She talks about the heat, guesses the temperature, and what time the sun might go down. And I wonder about that as well. Because we’ll be home before sundown and maybe, if I’m lucky, Harper and I will have that moment to ourselves.
God, I miss that girl so bad now that I know she’s so close.
And after about ten minutes of this, Sasha falls silent. Her head’s heavy on my shoulder, her body limp in my hands, her arms loosen around my neck. I’m sweating like crazy and I’m sure she’s soaked too. But she’s asleep. Out here in the hundred-degree heat with a man she met this morning.
I sigh a little. Because I know she’s caught in the web of lies the Company is telling. Just like me and Merc. Just like Harper and Nick. We’re all caught in the web. And the more we struggle the harder it becomes to escape.
As I move forward I can see the crappy little prefabricated green house in the distance. It’s nothing special. But for now, it’s home. There’s no one in this neighborhood. It looks like there were once houses and stuff out there, back in the sixties maybe. There’s some sort of playground across the street from me—the only thing left is a metal slide and a swing set with one crooked swing. But the area also looks like everything was razed. Like someone decided it needed a do-over, cleared it down to the dust, and then forgot all about their grand plans.