Kyla
There was no one here. No one left. Just a labyrinth of looping silver streets, streets that spiraled in and in and in, inward to the city’s waiting heart.
The air thrummed with energy. A tingle of heat singed her nostrils. She smelled hot ozone. It was like she’d stepped near a fallen power line, like the whole city was dangerously unstable. Too much more of that power and even the grooved stone walls might ignite in flames.
But still she went deeper. She must go deeper.
She was awaited.
Except when she arrived at her destination, Kyla realized she wasn’t alone.
The last of the silver streets ended at a tall stone archway, past which there rose a column of silver light that Kyla knew, in the way of dreams, was the source of all this unstable power.
This was the heart of the city. The light was coming up, up, from deep in the earth, and so Kyla must go deeper still.
But a man stood between her and the light. A tall man in a faded gray suit, the kind no one ever wore anymore. The man was staring at the light, a hand outstretched like he wanted to hold it.
The man’s index finger ended at the second knuckle. Something had seared the rest of it away.
In his other hand, the man held a long, long knife.
Its blade dripped with blood. With a shivery rush of fear, Kyla knew that this man was dangerous.
That he had done things more horrible than Kyla could ever imagine.
She eased herself back the way she’d come, as silent as she knew how, but it was no good.
The man in the gray suit knew she was there.
He had always known, because she was always here.
The man turned to give Kyla a wide, wide smile. His teeth ground together like stones.
His face was coated with blood.
“Oh no, Miss Hewitt,” the man said. How did he know her name?
How did he know her name?
“It is I who shall have audience once more.”
Kyla jerked awake in the passenger seat of a Chevy Malibu at four o’clock sharp, just in time to see the glare of silver light pass over the desert sky.
She wondered if she was still dreaming. That silver light: it looked almost identical to the column of energy she’d seen rising from the dead city’s heart.
Her mind was still cloudy. A word came to her lips. A word, or maybe a name.
Te’lo’hi.
And then reality returned. Kyla remembered why she was in this Malibu, where she was going, who she was with.
She remembered who the car belonged to. She remembered what had happened this afternoon at Fort Stockton.
She reached for the gun resting in the pocket of her door.
She wished she could go back to sleep. Even if it meant seeing that horrible man with the grinding smile—
How did he know her name?
—Kyla wanted to be dreaming again. Kyla wanted to be anywhere but here.
“You are awake,” Fernanda said.
Fernanda was driving the car. She was tall, sharp-boned, in her early twenties, a little younger than Kyla.
And yet unlike Kyla, Fernanda possessed the dignity of a much older lady, a classy hauteur that made other women jealous and turned most men into simpering fools.
Kyla had never done either, which was probably why Fernanda liked her. The feeling was mutual. Usually.
In spite of the circumstances, in spite of the afternoon the girls had endured, Fernanda still looked poised and restrained at the Malibu’s wheel: chin up, eyes wide, long hair falling to either side of her face in two perfect black sheets.
Fernanda was from Mexico—she’d arrived in Fort Stockton last year in very unpleasant circumstances—and somewhere in Monterey she’d picked up a cool, precise English.
No contractions, no split infinitives, no swearing.
Fernanda’s English, like her poise, always made Kyla feel vaguely ashamed of the way Dallas had raised her.
Fernanda said, “Are you feeling any better?”
Kyla said, “Are you fucking kidding?”
They were still in the desert. Still driving this same endless road.
Still exposed from every angle. There was too much sky overhead, too much horizon.
Kyla turned to peer out her window at the empty nothing behind them, her eyes searching the sky for drones, planes, even a fucking hot-air balloon (yes, really).
Franklin O’Shea had all the toys a bad man could ever desire.
Kyla had no doubt he’d deployed them all by now.
“I think we are safe,” Fernanda said. “Frank never sends his men down this road. He told me so himself.”
“We won’t be safe until we’re in Mexico. Not with this.”
Kyla toed a bright green backpack that rested at her feet. Their future was in that backpack. Their death sentence, too, at least while they were stateside.
“I do not think you need to be so scared,” Fernanda said. “We would have seen trouble by now.”
Kyla gave her naive friend a long look. She shook her head. “You don’t know what trouble is.”
Fernanda glanced her way. She tried to smile. “Have you heard the story of the rabbit who met the pirate king?”
“No stories. I feel like I’m already living in one of the awful ones.”
Fernanda winced. That had stung, but Kyla was in a stinging mood. Fernanda was part of the reason they were in this mess in the first place.
(If Kyla was honest, of course, she’d had her own part to play, but thank God she was seldom honest. At least not with herself.)
Fernanda, however, was honest to a fault. “In that case, I should tell you that our fuel is falling very low. We will run dry in thirty miles. Maybe less.”
Kyla sat straight up. “You’re shitting me.”
“No. You have been asleep for some time. I thought we would be closer to Mexico by now.” Fernanda shrugged, chewed her cheek. “I had hoped to fuel up in Turner, but of course that was out of the question.”
Fernanda was right. They’d passed through the town of Turner shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, though it was a miracle they’d made it through at all.
When the girls had reached town, the parking lot of the diner that served as the little town’s main juncture had been ablaze with flashing lights, cops everywhere.
The girls had thought it was a roadblock set up just for them, but then they’d seen the color of the SUVs, the department names printed on their side panels, and realized that something must have happened at the diner itself. Something the girls wanted no part of.
Kyla had told Fernanda exactly what to do. Don’t avoid looking at the cops, but don’t look at them for too long. Stay well to the edge of the big parking lot. Slow down, but not too much. Keep breathing.
They’d reached the southern road without drawing so much as a second glance.
They’d been driving ever since.
Now, a little after four fifteen, something finally changed. A mountain appeared to the south: sharp peak, dark sides, an air of menace Kyla told herself she was imagining.
A much more welcome sight appeared by the side of the road. Above an abandoned old Ford truck, a hand-painted sign read:
brAKE INN MOTEL
GAS—FOOD—WARM BEDS
HIKE SCENIC MT APACHE
5 MI THIS WAY
There was a ping from the dashboard: the Malibu’s little fuel icon springing to life. Kyla said, “Perfect timing.”
She expected Fernanda to be relieved, but the woman studied the sign with a frown as it passed by. Something was poised on the tip of her tongue.
It passed, like the sign. Fernanda shook back her hair. She said simply, “Yes. Very fortunate.”
Not a mile past the sign, two figures appeared up ahead on the side of the road. Two men. One carried a brown duffel bag. The other a red gas can. One was tall and lithe, the other short and muscular. They turned at the sound of the approaching Malibu. The shorter one stuck out his thumb.
Kyla said, “They’re armed.”
Fernanda said, “How can you tell?”
Kyla said again, “They’re armed.”
She sat very still, her fingers wrapped around the gun in her door’s pocket. Kyla was hardly a marksman, but her boyfriend had taken her to the range a few times, taught her enough to be dangerous.
Dangerous for him, as it turned out.
Fernanda reached one hand into her own door’s pocket, touched her own pistol there. She said, “You are sure?”
Kyla looked at the two men again. They both looked like trouble, but for different reasons.
The taller one seemed shifty, angry at something, but it was all a little much, a little strong.
He was forcing himself to be angry so he couldn’t feel something else.
He was probably dangerous, but not in the way that he wanted to think.
Men like that could be unpredictable in the worst ways.
But it was the shorter of the men that frightened Kyla, the muscled one with the darker hair. He had a flat, impassive look, hard hazel eyes, an unreadable face. He looked strong, lethally capable.
He looked exactly like the sort of man Frank O’Shea hired to do his dirtiest work.
Kyla would know the type. Until this afternoon, she’d been a waitress at the best steakhouse in Fort Stockton.
She’d spent much of the last six months serving rib eyes to men just like this short bruiser with the hard, inscrutable face.
“Is it an ambush?” Fernanda’s voice was low, barely a whisper, like she thought the men could hear her.
“Maybe.”
“But if they were chasing us from Stockton, how did they get up the road without passing us?”
Kyla almost rolled her eyes. Her friend lacked imagination sometimes, which was ironic when you knew how she’d survived this long. “They could have come from the border. They could have come cross-country over the desert.”
“Or they could just be travelers running low on gas. Like ourselves.”
The men were getting closer. Fernanda had a point: these two men might explain the rusted Ford pickup they’d seen abandoned near the sign for the motel.
“They are not dressed for this weather,” Fernanda said.
“That ain’t our problem.”
“I did not say it was.”
The men were thirty yards away. Twenty. The taller of them stuck out the gas can. Kyla saw it trembling.
“Do you recognize them?” Fernanda said.
Kyla looked from one face to the other, her mind rolling back through all the faces she’d served at Stockton Steaks. “I don’t think so.”
“So they might not work for Frank.”
“The man hires contractors. If they came from the border, there’s no telling who they are.”
“You know they will die in the cold.”
“I don’t know that.”
“We have already killed one man today,” Fernanda said.
Kyla said, “What’s two more?”
The men were ten yards away. If they were going to try something, they would try it now. Kyla’s fingers tightened around the gun in her hand.
Fernanda said, “You do not mean that.”
The Malibu pulled level with the boys. The shorter one was already turning away: he knew the score.
The taller boy, the one trying so hard to look hard, met Kyla’s eye. She saw a flash of something on his face. Saw an honest emotion break free from all that fake anger.
Kyla saw a deep, roiling fear inside the boy. She knew that fear.
She felt it herself.
And then the boys were gone, behind them, the Malibu racing onward. Already, Kyla regretted their decision. Fernanda must have caught something in the air. She said, “We can still go back.”
Kyla eased back into her seat. She released the gun, shook her head, patted down her hair. She forced herself to stare straight ahead.
If she started feeling regret now—regret, shame, horror at all that had happened this afternoon—she’d never stop. She’d never make it to Mexico. She’d never survive.
“Keep driving,” she said. “We need to get to that motel before the gas runs out.”