I scan the paperwork again. “It looks like you fixed the muffler a few years back.”

Dickie peeks at me. His eyes have a dull shine to them, and not a good one. Almost like I can see the cataracts taking his vision away right before my eyes. The look he gives me tells me everything I need to know. You ever just have someone older look at you like you’re a little kid? That’s when I know I’m being naïve, and worse, he feels bad for me because of it.

“Fuck,” I sigh.

“Sorry, kid.”

“What is it then?” I ask tentatively. Dickie’s the best mechanic I know, but you know, maybe someone else could do something. Not that I could afford to pay them either.

“It’s the engine, Dakota.” He shuffles toward another bay in the garage, and I follow after him. He smacks the side of my father’s old truck a few times, and I swear some of the rust falls to the garage floor like confetti. “Seeing as how it’s a classic, it’s gonna cost you more than it’s worth.”

To Dickie, every car older than this millennia is a classic. My father’s truck is a 1979 Ford. Yes, it’s old as shit, but it’s not the kind of car you’re going to see at a classic car show or anything. I have no doubt he’s right though.

I lean against one of the wood beams spaced throughout the garage and sigh. What the fuck am I going to do now? Sure, riding the bike is okay, but I thought it was only temporary.

“Talk to me, Dakota. What’s going on withthe bitch?”

The bitchis none other than my stepmother, Marilyn. The one my father had to have. At times, I thought it was more about getting something a Jacobs had, and I’m probably not too far off. Normally, I’d laugh, but she ended up fucking me over, so I’m not in a laughing mood.

I shrug. “She cleaned out the accounts. Dad has a life insurance policy, but it’s not worth much. The insurance company won’t release the money because he’s still listed as missing and not—” I can’t even say the words. You ever think something is probably true, but you just can’t believe it. Saying it would be believing it, and I’m not ready. “If the life insurance ever decides to pay out, I don’t know if I would get it anyway.She’smarried to him, and if my father had a will, I can’t find it.”

“I oughtta track her down and whip that money out of her until she’s spitting quarters.”

Can’t say I disagree with the sentiment. I can add Stone’s name to his list. If he’s taking hit orders, it would be a shame to leave his name off. Coming to Saint Clary’s feels like a direct attack. I just don’t know what game he’s playing. With the Wilders and the Jacobs, it’s always something though.

Dickie takes his hat off, scratches his balding head, then puts it back on. “About the only thing I can do is junk it and give you the money. It won’t be much, but it’ll be something. I’ll also put air in your bike tires and keep a look out for a cheap car.”

I hold out my hand, and he puts his blistered fingers in mine. “That’s more than enough,” I tell him. I’m not Dickie’s charity case nor would I ever want to be. His wife died many years ago, and as soon as his kids were old enough, they got the fuck out of Clary. I used to blame them, but I don’t anymore. From what I can tell, Clary is a dead end where all the stragglers end up. I want more for me than that. I always have. That’s where the treasure dream came in, but without my father… I have no idea if that’s even a possibility anymore.

“Hear anything from Lionel?”

I kick the cracked concrete at my feet. The last I heard from the Chief of Police was at the press conference, but Dickie asks me every time he sees me in case something’s changed. “Not lately,” I say, almost refusing to believe that I’m truly in this search by myself. Dickie would help if he could, but he can’t, and everyone else seems to have forgotten. Or never really cared in the first place.

“I knew that kid never could figure out his ass from a hole in the ground.” I smile because I’ve heard this conversation more than a few times between my father and Dickie, and it never once changed. Lionel is a good-for-nothing.

I guess I’m just racking up the list of people Dickie’s going to go ape shit on. Good. I could use someone on my side.

When Dad didn’t come back, Dickie swore he was going to go out after him, but everyone told him to stay put, including me. He feels guilty because he thinks he could’ve found him, and he’s probably right. No one knows the Superstitions like my dad and Dickie with me a few steps behind. “Can’t argue with you there.”

Dickie rubs his face. His tell that he’s itching for a cigarette. “You know, if you need anything—”

“I know, Dickie,” I say to cut him off. Asking Dickie for help would be like trying to get blood from a stone. There’s just none of it to be had here.

Apparently, he’s had about enough of the sentimental shit as I have. He moves away from the truck and goes back outside to grab my bike. He pulls it into a bay in front of the air compressor. It starts with a whine, and I watch as he fixes the hose to my tire. Thankfully, it starts to inflate. Dickie checks the tire pressure. “It’s holding air,” he calls out like we’re at a rock concert instead of standing right next to each other in the confines of a garage. Even with the air compressor going, I flinch a little at how loud he is. He really is going deaf.

“That’s great,” I yell. I shout my response as loud as he did because otherwise, he won’t know I’ve said anything.

That’s something, I think as Dickie inflates my back tire. They could have ruined my bike altogether, but at least they just let the air out. I’m not saying those assholes deserve a humanitarian award, but I am saying they could have dropped it off the three-story roof, instead of just leaving it up there with no air.

I clench my jaw as I think about their smug as fuck faces handing over that map. Whatever they’re trying to accomplish by coming to Clary, I can’t let them get to me. Not now. Not ever.

4

At least I have my bike when I make my way back into town after sharing a spaghetti dinner with Dickie. He’s always been good to me, but he’s definitely stepped up since Dad went missing. Even if my father couldn’t find treasure, at least he found good friends. Well, one good friend. Let’s not go crazy. His other relationships were an epic disaster. My mother died when I was young. Clary old-timers whisper that the desert killed her. As a woman from Minnesota, she hated the heat, she hated the barren landscape, and if you ask one of them, she hated my father, too.

I don’t know. I don’t put much stock in what some of these people say.

Now, what they say about Marilynistrue. She’s a gold-thieving bitch. Too proper for Clary. Too stuck-up for my dad. And if she didn’t have a giant backhoe up her ass, I’m not sure why she always walked around straighter than a compass needle pointing north.