as I pull away, then drop all but one finger as she turns back to her work.
Nice. Sticking it to the old lady.
I’m not stupid. I saved enough money to survive until I got through the first score, provided that first score came within a month or two. The thing I didn’t exactly think through was how I was going to start looking. Hutch gave me his worn FUGITIVE PSI RECOVERY AGENT manual to use, but he sold all the tech that came with it for beer money when he got back to Flagstaff. That’s the shittiest part of trying to get started: you have to find a kid and turn it in before you’re officially registered in the skip tracer system. Then they give you that tablet that’s hooked into their profile network. Then you can start earning points and moving up in the rankings. I read in the book that the more points you earn by adding sightings and good tips to the skip tracer network, the more access the government gives you to things like the Internet.
The Internet would make this about two thousand times easier, I think, turning onto the highway. My gas light is blinking, has been for days. I’ve worked out a system, though. I think I can stretch the tank at least another two outings.
I call it a system to make myself feel better about the fact that I’m hunting for clues in the most ass-backwards way imaginable. I drive to one of the nearby small towns, like Wickenburg or Sedona or Payson, and get out, leaving the truck somewhere I think people won’t be tempted to try to steal it or jack the gas from my tank. I walk through the neighborhoods, making sure to swing by the local schools. People always seem to leave the MISSING posters there, tacked up along the rattling metal fences. Maybe they think the kids are hanging around the places they used to haunt and they’ll see the flyers and think, Man, I really should go home—Mom must really miss me. I take them down one by one, collecting them so I can check them against the skip tracer system later. Once I have access to the network. Once I actually find a kid and bring it in.
One more day, I think, finish out the week. Then I’ll suck it up and use whatever money I have left to buy gas and drive down to Phoenix. More neighborhoods, more abandoned buildings, millions of families—I should have better luck there. It just stings a little, you know? I don’t like that I’m already having to compromise on my plan.
The only thing that ever seems to come easy these days is my shit luck.
I decide to take the I-17 south to Camp Verde today, for no other reason than I haven’t hit it in a week. One of the gas stations there is still in business, though the place’s real value is the steady stream of truck drivers flowing in and out of there, bringing gossip with them.
I switch off the AC to try to preserve gas, rolling down the window to let in some fresh air and sunshine. Dad used to say that it took effort to think good, positive thoughts, but it was easy to let your mind spiral to all the terrible outcomes, to worry about things that hadn’t even come to pass yet. I see it now more than ever, because all I need to do is think about him, and I feel myself slipping. I start heading down that road of understanding why he did it. He was humiliated by losing the restaurant, I know he was, but it was more than that—it was that he knew that restaurant was the only life for him. And when the world took it from him, suddenly Dad was out of choices. He had us, and he couldn’t afford to move himself somewhere else, let alone the three of us. We trapped him there, and he took the only out he thought was left for him.
I’ve taught myself the trick that when it starts to feel that way for me, too, I need to go outside and walk it off. I need to roll down a window and let the green, earthy scent come wash out the warm stink of blood that seems to be seared into my nose forever.
A red SUV flashes in my rearview mirror, pulling me off that black, ugly road and back