Page 60 of Our Last Resort

Before I turn around, I lean forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the den, see if I can confirm my theory about the pups.

Something glints in the small dry bush.

I squint.

It’s…black and shiny?

So out of place in the desert. Inorganic, man-made.

It’s a phone.

Herphone.

I’d recognize it anywhere, the sleek black metal, and around it, the plastic shape, grimy and beaten up but still recognizable, the white ears and the whiskers, the little red dress, and the realization when I first spotted it that Sabrina Brenner was the only adult in the world who could pull off a Hello Kitty phone case.

Her fuckingphone.

The cops must have looked for it.

Has William noticed? Did he realize that his wife’s phone was missing?

Maybe he took it and chucked it into the wilderness. Maybe he counted on it disappearing forever, swallowed by a canyon, a needle in the desert’s three-thousand-square-mile haystack.

Sabrina’sphone.

There could be so many things in there. Things her husband doesn’t want the police to see.

I’m dizzy just thinking of the possibilities. Notes about William Brenner’s violence—verbal and physical. Audio recordings. Videos. Calls to a divorce lawyer. Maybe she was going to leave him, and he found out.

I need to know.

First things first. When I get to the phone, I won’t touch it with my bare hand. There might still be fingerprints on it. I won’t mess with those, and I’m certainly not going to put mine in their place.

Slowly, I bend and untie my left shoe. I remove my sock, push my foot back inside my sneaker, curl my toes against the bare insole.

I slide the sock onto my right hand. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do.

I take a couple more steps in the direction of the den. The coyote bares its teeth, raises its hackles. It doesn’t trust me near its babies. No wild animal would.

Am I really going to risk rabies for this phone?

Oh, yes.

I raise my hands in a gesture that I hope communicates appeasement, but all it does is rile up the coyote. It lets out a string of tense, pissed-off barks.

I leap forward. There’s no other way. I’m about five steps from the phone when the coyote pounces, four steps when it reaches me, three steps when its snout brushes against my ankle.

The phone is in my line of vision. I bring my knee to the ground, feel my fingers close around the metal—it’s hot to the touch, almost too hot to hold, after being in the sun forso long, and I think about internal damage, about metal melting, about a woman’s secrets forever trapped in a faulty piece of technology—and spring back up.

I keep running. Or rather, I try, but my left foot won’t work, because—of course—there’s a coyote attached to it.

Its teeth have sunk into my sneaker. I shake my foot. The coyote presses harder around my shoe. I anticipated a bite—a puncture wound, the sharp, burning pain of skin torn open—but not this: the squeeze, the brute force, the coyote’s jaws like a vise.

I squeal. Despite my best efforts, I fall forward.

Shit.

I ignore the sting in my elbows.

---