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“No.”
    When the concrete walls ended, Las Vegas emerged as a city of drab industrial buildings interspersed with towering hotels. Billboards popped up on the side of the highway, advertising another Hollywood remake of
Batman
. They passed multistory parking structures, all empty. In the distance, casino lights glittered red and gold.
    It wasn’t until they left the city behind, warehouses giving way to brown desert dotted with dark green brush, that the freeway exits opened up. It was after 5:00 PM now, and Reese had been checking their phones regularly, but reception never went higher than a single bar. As they departed Las Vegas, even that single bar disappeared. When the sun began to descend toward a range of mountains in the west, Reese said, “Maybe we should find a place to stop for the night.” The thought of resting suddenly made her aware of how exhausted she was.
    “How much money do you have?” David asked. He sounded as tired as she felt. “I don’t know if I have enough. I don’t have a credit card.”
    “I don’t either.” She reached into the backseat to grab her backpack. She pulled out her wallet and counted her bills. “I have thirty-five dollars. That’s not much.”
    David slipped out his own wallet from his jeans pocket and handed it to her. “Here. See how much I’ve got.”
    She unfolded the soft, brown leather. “You’re rich. You’ve got forty-three bucks.”
    He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Seventy-eight dollars. What can we do with that?”
    She glanced at the gas tank. It was approaching a quarter full. “We’re going to need more gas.”
    “You want to keep going?”
    “What else are we going to do? I don’t think we can afford a motel room.” She stared out at the barren landscape. It was like another world: abandoned and desolate, but with the sun sending long shadows across the ground, it was also eerily beautiful. “Maybe we can find a town somewhere with a pay phone.”
    “There was a sign for gas coming up. Ash Springs. We could ask for directions there.”
    “I don’t know.” Reese frowned out the window at the desert. “What if the people there are freaks with shotguns? This looks like NRA country.”
    David choked with laughter, and the unexpected sound of it cracked the tension that had held them tight since they fled the gas station. “It’s definitely not San Francisco,” he said. “No liberal organic hipsters in sight.”
    An involuntary smile tugged at Reese’s mouth. “And you’re probably the only Asian person in a hundred-mile radius.”
    “Never underestimate the Chinese. We’re everywhere.”
    Reese laughed out loud and looked over at David. He gave her a quick grin, and Reese noticed that his mouth was slightly crooked when he smiled, the right side angling up more than the left.
    One of the phones in her lap beeped, and she scrambled to pick it up as David asked excitedly, “Are you getting a call?”
    Her brief moment of laughter was swallowed by sharp disappointment. “No. My phone battery just died.”
    At least she was too tired to be freaked out about it.

CHAPTER 5
    As they approached Ash Springs, trees sprang up on the side of the road, pushing back the desert. When the town came into view, it was nothing more than a trailer park followed by a Shell station and a flimsy-looking two-story building. A couple of cars were parked in front.
    David pulled up to one of the four gas pumps and turned off the car. Reese opened her door, and the smell of the desert wafted inside: brush and dirt, soured slightly by the smell of gasoline. She and David got out, their doors slamming shut in two sharp cracks. The sun was setting.
    “We have to pay first,” David said, reading the instructions on the pump.
    “Maybe we should both go in,” Reese suggested. She didn’t like the idea of splitting up.
    “I agree.”
    She walked around the car and noticed with a pang that the gas cap was still hanging down from the tank. Mr.