They found an electronics store sandwiched between a Chinese place and a pizzeria, and this was where Nova purchased a charger for his iPhone. Jessica stayed in the car, and when Nova slid back into the passenger seat, she asked, “Now what?”
“Now we go back to Parrot Spur.”
“But your car—aren’t you going to call the insurance company? What about the police?”
“Parrot Spur has a sheriff. I can make a report with him.”
She maneuvered the Rabbit out of the parking lot and got them back on the road headed toward the highway. “I find it hard to believe that town even has a sheriff.”
“Me, too. In fact, I don’t understand why the town exists at all. It’s barely even a town. Plus …”
He let it trail there, realizing he was thinking out loud, and that what he was about to say next was something Jessica didn’t need to hear.
She glanced at him, sunglasses on her face, her dark hair blowing in the wind. “Plus what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me.”
Nova took a breath, deciding whether or not it was even worth discussing. Then he figured what the hell, he could always use a sounding board.
“I can’t say about the entire town, but the men in the bar last night, and the men in the diner this morning? They’re all ex-servicemen.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“You were in the service, too?”
Nova stared out at the giant factory in the distance, smoke chugging from three narrow stacks. “It doesn’t matter what I was.”
“What are you now?”
“Between jobs.”
“So you’re unemployed.”
“You could say that.”
“Where were you headed?”
“California. Maybe Oregon. Maybe Washington. I don’t really know. I was just driving west and figured I’d stop once I couldn’t go any farther.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to drive across the country.”
“But why come through this way? If you’re driving through Nevada, wouldn’t it make more sense to pass through Las Vegas? There’s a hell of a lot more to see in Vegas.”
He turned his face away to watch the passing desert. “I don’t like Vegas.”
“Why not?”
“Bad memories.”
Another mile later, neither one having said a word, Nova dug his iPhone out of his pocket and watched the screen.
Jessica asked, “What are you doing?”
“Checking the signal.”
“Are you expecting a call?”
“No. But last night, when my car broke down, I had no signal. Even when I started walking back to town, there was no service for the first three miles.”
“So, what, it was a dead zone? That’s not too hard to believe out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s what I first thought, too,” Nova said, “but so far my phone hasn’t lost a signal yet.”
They drove for several more minutes in silence.
Nova kept an eye on his phone, while also keeping an eye on the highway in front of them, and at one point he said, “Stop the car.”
“What?”
“Stop the car.”
Jessica slowed and halted the Rabbit just off the side of the highway. There were two cars behind them that zoomed past without their drivers even giving them a second glance.
Nova got out and started back down the highway. Behind him, he heard Jessica shutting her door and hurrying to catch up with him.
“What is it?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
Nova didn’t answer. He crossed over to the other side and started walking along the highway headed west toward Townsend. Cicadas trilled in the sagebrush all around them.
“I should have been looking for it the first time.”
Jessica kept pace beside him. “Looking for what?”
“That,” Nova said, pointing at the flattened Old Milwaukee can on the side of the highway.
A tractor-trailer came up behind them, its driver giving a courteous toot of its horn as it blasted past.
“What about it?” Jessica asked.
“Nothing, really, but I remember seeing it on the walk back last night.” Nova kept walking, past the flattened beer can. “It was about two hundred yards or so from where I left the car.”
Nova spotted a few streaks of rubber on the macadam, right where he knew they would be, but what he was looking for were tire tracks in the dirt. They went one hundred yards, another one hundred yards, but didn’t see anything.
“Maybe you saw a different beer can,” Jessica said.
Nova shook his head, staring down at the ground, at the lack of anything substantial in the dirt. Other cars passed them, another tractor-trailer, but Nova ignored them all. He kept his focus on the dirt, knowing that this was where he had pulled off to last night, where he had stopped and left the Mustang after not one but two tires had gone flat. Even from the beginning, on the long walk back into town when he couldn’t find anything on the highway, Nova had suspected that something wasn’t right, and now he had even more proof. But what any of it meant, he didn’t know.
“All right,” Nova said finally, when he remembered that he wasn’t alone and that Jessica was still there, waiting for him. “Let’s head back.”