I remembered the look on her face when he ordered her upstairs.
I remembered thinking that girl knew what it felt like to be caged.
Then I had dropped my eyes because she was fifteen and I was old enough to know where the line was.
I had never forgotten that.
“Who?” I asked the boy, my voice sharper now.
He swallowed.
“Destiny,” he whispered. “Destiny Rourke.”
Nate’s head snapped toward me.
I released the boy.
He ran.
For one second, the whole desert seemed to go quiet under the roar of fire.
Then a siren wailed in the distance.
“Dylan,” Nate said carefully.
I was already moving.
We cut away from the fleeing kids and deeper toward the burn line, but not straight into the clearing. Cops were coming from that side. Fire trucks too. You could see the first red-blue flickers bouncing off smoke beyond the rise.
I didn’t care about rich kids crying over melted graduation presents.
I cared about the tracks.
A bike had gone off the main trail.
Fresh.
Bad line.
Too fast.
The dirt was torn up where the tire lost purchase, then gouged deep where metal had hit earth and dragged. Brush was snapped low. Cactus broken. One long scar cut through the sand toward darker scrub beyond the spill of firelight.
My stomach tightened.
“Nate.”
“I see it.”
We killed the headlights.
Darkness dropped hard.
I pulled a penlight from my pocket and moved on foot, following the wreck path. Nate stayed behind me, one hand near his gun, eyes on the smoke and the kids and the chaos behind us.
The desert didn’t give her up all at once.
First, I found the bike.
