Page 64 of Our Last Resort

Fantastic.

Catalina scuttles away. Deputy Calhoun eyes me up and down.I become aware of my dirt-streaked shorts, my half-undone ponytail.

“I was in the desert,” I say. “Walking.”

She folds her arms across her chest.

“There was a coyote,” I blurt out. “I followed it because…That doesn’t matter. The point is, I found this.”

I wrap my right hand in the folds of my T-shirt and extract Sabrina’s phone from my pocket.

The deputy’s eyes widen.

“It was Sabrina Brenner’s,” I say.

“How do you know that?”

“I recognize it.”

Calhoun considers me.

“It’s the case,” I say. “It’s pretty—I don’t know—eye-catching.”

“Indeed.”

She raises a hand.

“Hold on one second.”

Calhoun disappears behind a side door markedStaff Only. A minute later, she returns with a latex glove on her right hand.

“Here,” I say, and drop the phone onto her palm.

“Where did you say you found it?”

“In the desert. Near the main hiking trail? It was slightly off the path. Well, it was at the entrance of a coyote den.”

She eyes me.

“We’ve searched that area multiple times,” she says flatly.

The rest of her sentence hovers between us unsaid:And we didn’t see a phone.

Well, I don’t know.Maybe you missed it, Deputy Calhoun. Maybe the coyotes moved it. I’m just the messenger.

“I’m going to ask you again,” she says. “Where did you find this?”

Okay. I see we’ve stopped playing nice.

But I force a smile.

“I’d be happy to show you, if that helps. It was partially hidden behind a bush.”

Calhoun raises an eyebrow.

“But if you don’t need me for now, I’m going to go back to my suite,” I say.

A key thing, when dealing with the police: understand when to give up, and remember that you’re free to go.

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