Page 142 of Our Last Resort

I reach through the shards, unlock the door, brush the glass off the seat, and get in.

Okay. Okay.

There aren’t that many hiding spots in a car. I check the glove box. Nothing. I crawl into the back. Nothing. I check under the seats, lift the floor mats. Nothing.

Back to the front. I sweep my hands over the dashboard, check for nooks, crannies, hidden levers.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

The trunk.

The fucking trunk.

Quickly, I wiggle my way to the back again.Think:Everything I know about the world, I learned on TV. It comes to me: a funny scene in a sitcom, in which a woman accidentally locked a baby in a car. She had the opposite problem of mine: The trunk was open, and she needed to get back inside. I laughed as I watched her slither in through an opening in the back seat, which connected the trunk to the rest of the car.

I fold down the center section of the back seat. Then I play the sitcom scene in reverse: put my hand in the opening, then—tilting myself at an impossible angle—half of my shoulder.

My hand paws at the air on the other side. This is a modern car; there should be a release handle to open the trunk from inside. (Another thing I learned on TV—thank you,SVU:In every car manufactured to be sold in the U.S. since 2001, there’s a release handle.)

I reach for everything, manage to grab nothing. Keep searching, hit my fingers against the top of the trunk, until finally—

There’s a piece of plastic, shaped kind of like an IUD. I wrap my fingers around it and pull.

The trunk pops open.

It feels like every miracle all at once.

I free myself from the car’s entrails and jog to the trunk.

It’s completely empty.

Fuck.

I hit the car with my closed fists. Tears—of rage, of exhaustion—roll down my cheeks.Gabriel.I run my hands all over the inside of the trunk like I’m demanding more. Like I can’t believe that after all this, all these efforts, all thisscheming,the car’s letting me down.

The rental car.

It has to be the rental car.

Wait.

I’m feeling something.

Under the fabric that lines the trunk is a groove. A rectangular groove, the outline of a…compartment.

My Fiat is old. But modern cars have that, don’t they?Additional storage space below the rear trunk? Somewhere someone could stash a—

I tear the fabric from the sides, throw the liner behind me without looking back.

And there it is. At the center of the earth. Below the hotel, deep in the desert’s belly.

Here, in the storage compartment of William Brenner’s trunk, is one of his white button-down shirts.

Covered in blood.

“PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

I smile. Deputy Calhoun is back. Catalina is trailing her, of course.

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