As brother Quincy barrels the Hummer across the dunes, I search the white horizon for a sign of our missing brother.
If Free Willow is out there, I pray we will find him and bring him home safe.
But my faith is not strong. "Still nothing!" The Salt Basin is desolate, and the sun is going down. "How much further?"
Kitty checks the GPS tracker in the dashboard. "Just over a mile."
"What if he's already dead?" says Quincy.
"I'm not even going to answer that question," says Kitty.
For a moment, I am convinced she is my sister...not a Poison Oak. She wants to find Free as badly as I do; she has been completely committed from the beginning.
She is the one who started the search, in fact. While we rode through the edges of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Kitty got a call on her cell phone from the Poison Oaks. They gave her coordinates for the middle of the Salt Basin and told her they'd left our brother to die.
Suspicious, I'd hesitated to start searching—but not for long. I couldn't afford not to look for Free if there was a chance he was really in mortal danger. Leaving him to die in the Salt Basin was something a Poison Oak might do...but not me.
So now we rocket off-road in the Hummer, charging toward the coordinates...and the answers I've been seeking all along. For if we find Free or some proof he was here, I'll finally be totally sure that Kitty, Quincy, and Dunne have been telling the truth. Totally sure I've been killing the wrong people under a dark influence.
Or totally sure they're lying imposters, in which case they'll get what they deserve.
"Far enough." Kitty watches the GPS. "Stop here."
As the four of us get out of the Hummer, my nerves crackle with anticipation. We are miles from the road, miles from any human habitation. Something big is about to happen, and the end is uncertain.
I draw two of my guns and walk carefully through the fine, white sand. "Watch for booby traps. This whole thing could be a trap to get rid of us."
"Says the human booby trap with the strap-on bomb." Quincy fans out to one side, kicking at low dunes.
"Look for trap doors, too," says Kitty. "The Oaks might have buried him."
"Or just left him in the sun to fry." As I continue my slow plod forward, I am very aware of everyone and everything around me. The shadowy ranks of dunes in the deepening twilight. The towering hulk of the mountain, El Capitan, in the distance. The salty tang in the whisper of a breeze. The voices of my fellow searchers, calling out Free's name.
Kitty has a flashlight and combs its beam through the shadows. Quincy reels in circles, loping back toward me.
"Nothing," he says. "I'm seeing fabsolutely nothing."
"Keep looking." Kitty continues to sweep the flashlight methodically before her. "We have a lot of ground to cover."
Dunne, meek as ever, keeps his distance from me. I watch as he stoops to pick something up from the sand.
He notices me watching him and shrugs. "It's nothing." He juggles a small object in his cupped hand. "I thought it was a clue."
Just then, I hear the sound of liquid hitting the sand. Turning, I quickly see where the sound is coming from.
It's Quincy. He's pissing in the sand ahead of me.
"Ahhh." He throws his head back. "What a relief."
"Way to respect the emergency, bro," I tell him.
"I held it as long as I could." Quincy gets out a few last squirts, then zips up. "It's not as if anyone's gonna care. If anything, I did a good deed, watering the desert."
"My Amish mentor had a saying." I wave a gun at him for emphasis. "'He who plants his field by night will go hungry by night and day.'"
"What the fell does that mean?" says Quincy.
"Pay attention to what you're doing." I resume my forward search, gazing into the waves of shadows that roll out before me.
Quincy and Kitty spread out on either side of me. We widen the radius of our search, racing the deepening darkness.
We call Free's name, but he does not answer. I wonder if it's because he can't answer.
Or because he isn't here.
Kitty says something, but I can't quite hear her. "What was that?"
She's thirty yards away, and she's stopped walking. "I see two sets of tracks," she says. "One heading this way..." She points directly ahead of her. "And one heading your way." She waves her hand at a forty-five degree angle from the path she's been following. The line of the tracks, if extended along that angle, would intersect my route a few yards up ahead.
Without another word, I hurry forward, looking for the tracks. Praying they will lead me to Free.
Of all the Willows, he has always been closest to me...probably because opposites attract. That artsy fartsy peacenik hippie freak could not be more different from me.
But that never stopped us from looking out for each other. From putting our lives on the line to save each other from the brink of death.
And it never stopped us from learning from each other, either. He taught me violence isn't always the answer. I taught him it's the answer more often than he thinks.
So the thought of finding him dead is making me crazy. Making me reckless. I don't see the tracks, but I keep rushing forward, looking for my brother's body or a piece of it.
I continue to propel myself across the basin, fearing what I'll find...and finding nothing. Breathless, I finally stop and look around, wondering if I got off track.
That's when I hear the engine start.
I turn just as the Hummer's headlights flash to life, pointing right at me. It's then that I realize what has happened.
Squinting, I see Kitty and Quincy running toward the Hummer, almost there. Thanks to Kitty's misdirection, I've been following nonexistent tracks in the sand while she and Quincy doubled back.
As for Dunne, he must be behind the wheel. Mr. Scaredy-Cat slipped off my radar right around the time Quincy took a piss in front of me. Right after I saw Dunne crouching to pick something up.
The sight of him juggling a small object in his hand rushes back to me. Now I know what it was.
The key to the Hummer. Quincy must have dropped it there for him.
Not bad. Even as I raise my guns and start running, I'm impressed. The three of them worked out a plan and pulled it off real well. I'm especially impressed that Dunne made any kind of move.
As Quincy and Kitty leap into the Hummer and I fire my first shot, I realize something that should have occurred to me sooner. Dunne's cowardice was an act from the beginning. Instead of letting it lull me into complacency, I should have been on extra guard against him.
The Hummer backs up fast, kicking up clouds of sand. I run straight toward it, bouncing shots off the grill and hood, getting a bead on the windshield.
Before I can pump rounds through the glass, Dunne spins the wheel, whipping the Hummer around to face away from me. Dust billows, obscuring my shot, and Dunne floors the accelerator.
I keep running, eyes locked on the shrinking tail-lights. I zing a few more shots off the backend, but I might as well be chucking rocks.
The Hummer isn't stopping.
It bolts away into the night, heading toward El Capitan and the road. Then on to New Justice, New Mexico. Leaving me behind.
They think.
I stop shooting, but I don't stop running. They're not the only ones who know where the road is. I'll just get there a little behind them.
I smile as I run. Everything the three of them did was an act, and everything they said was a lie. They've gotten the jump on me...but that actually makes me feel better. At least now I know I'm perfectly sane.
At least now, I'm totally sure they deserve to die when I catch up to them.