“Yep.”

I didn’t like the way my future was being discussed without my involvement. I wasn’t scared of Lonnie, but Mo looked less than human and I didn’t see a way out of this.

“He see anything?” Mo asked, still looking around me.

“Don’t think so. Make sure it stays that way.”

Mo gave a quick nod and moved at me faster than I expected. His right hand grasped my forearm and he pulled me forward. His left fist crashed into my stomach like a battering ram. Every ounce of air exploded from my body. The battering ram reloaded and slammed into my temple, an ugly rainbow of colors exploding in the backs of my eyes. I felt my knees buckle, but his hold on my forearm kept me up.

Lonnie walked around behind Mo, showing me another bloody grin. “Now you wanna tell me what you’re here for?”

A wave of nausea swept through my body as Mo held me up like rag doll. I knew I was in trouble, but there was no way I was giving in to some racist punk.

“Fuck you,” I managed, trying to ready myself for what I knew was coming.

“You a friend of Pete’s?” Lonnie asked.

I didn’t answer.

“How about his little brother, the missing Linc?” he asked, grinning at me.

I looked away from him and tried to catch my breath.

Lonnie’s smile changed to a frown. “You came here for a reason. What was it?”

I turned back to him. “Fuck you some more.”

Lonnie backed up, then kicked me in the stomach and the air rushed out of me again. Mo held me up.

“You don’t wanna talk now?” Lonnie said, moving toward me. “That’s cool. I’m gonna have my man Mo work you over a little bit. Not kill you. Just make you wish he had. But I need to know why you showed up here today, man. So when you wake up…if you wake up…think about me. Because I’ll be around. And the next time you see me?” He leaned closer. “You’ll be too scared to tell me to fuck off. And that’s when you’ll tell me what you were here for. And that’s when I’ll kill you, asshole.” He looked at Mo. “Have at him, dude.”

Mo spun me around and stared at me with the same empty look. His fist crashed into my temple again and my legs gave way completely. He tossed me to the ground, my face smashing into the carpet.

Lonnie leaned down over me, his breath warm and foul. “Don’t fuck with us, dude. Not ever. You can’t win.” I could feel him right next to my ear. “And remember. Next time, you talk and then you die.”

I groaned and rolled over on my back. Lonnie stepped away and Mo took his place, blocking out everything behind him. He knelt down beside me and pulled back his fist, ready to drop the battering ram once again on my face.

I turned away, as if doing so might protect me, and my eyes locked on something at the end of the hallway from where Lonnie had first emerged.

As Mo prepared to put me to sleep, I hoped that I would live to remember seeing what appeared to be Peter Pluto’s body at the end of the hallway.

Warm dirt pressed against my face. Blood pooled in my mouth. My body throbbed. I felt tired, like I hadn’t slept in days. I slowly forced one eye open.

Sunlight glared against the brush.

Everything was sideways.

Where was I?

I coughed, spasms of pain ricocheting through my stomach and back, and spit out a mouthful of blood. I lifted my head, needing to see where I was. My neck shivered as it tried to support the weight.

Tumbleweeds. Dirt. Gravel. The desert?

I laid my head down again, the ground hot and rough against my cheek. The warmth of the ground made me want to close my eyes and go back to sleep.

I lifted my head again and twisted in the other direction.

More dried brush, more tumbleweeds, a body.

I twisted my torso in that direction.

I heard someone scream, the noise echoing in the distance, and realized it was me.

I got my elbows beneath me and pushed up and felt myself start to slide backward.

I was on a slope.

Slopes in the desert didn’t make any sense to me. Nothing made sense.

I stabbed my toes into the ground to stop the sliding.

Focusing on the body, I crawled toward it on my elbows, up the slope. My legs were stiff and heavy and I couldn’t get them to bend.

The body was only about ten feet away, but it felt like a hundred. My elbows ached. And bled. Nausea worked its way through my body like a current.

I laid my head down again, listening to my gasps for air. Everything was spinning slowly.

I forced my head up again.

Peter Pluto looked back at me, his eyes empty and his face devoid of any life.

I dropped my head down on the earth again and wondered if I was about to join him.

I tried to raise my eyelids, but they felt like they were sealed shut with concrete. My head pounded. I was on my back and I could feel my arms and legs, but they felt four times heavier than they should have.

I squeezed my eyes shut, then forced them to open slightly.

The bright lights of the hospital room shocked me and I shut my eyes again.

At least the son of a bitch hadn’t killed me.

I heard movement to my left and I rotated my head in that direction, the muscles in my neck feeling like taut rubber bands. I got my eyes half open.

Liz was sitting in a chair, looking at me.

“You awake?” she asked.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I swallowed hard and wondered who placed the invisible boulder on my chest.

I tried again. “Yeah.” My voice sounded distant and old.

“You don’t sound like it.”

I turned my head back to stare at the ceiling. “Awake. Not alive.”

“You’re in the hospital,” she said. “Mission Bay.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve been here about twelve hours.”

That surprised me, because it felt like just minutes before that Mo had been planting his fists into my body and I’d been lying somewhere with Peter Pluto.

I looked back at Liz. She wore her black running tights, a blue sweatshirt, and Nike running shoes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

“You find me?” I asked, my voice coming back closer to my head now. I fumbled with the glass of water I’d noticed next to my bed and took a long drink.

She shook her head. “No. Couple of kids stumbled across you in a canyon in Clairemont.”

Not the desert. A canyon. That explained the slope.

My head felt puffy. I set the glass back on the table and looked at my arms. No tubes or wires hooked into me.

“They just beat the crap out of you,” she said. “No broken bones, no real bleeding. They knew what they were doing.”

I had learned that the hard way.

She leaned back in the chair. “What happened, Noah?”

I stared at the ceiling again, trying to gain some focus. Lonnie’s words were ringing in my ears. He wanted me to wake up. He wanted me to hurt. And he wanted me to feel afraid.

He won.

I closed my eyes.

“I’ve sat here for six hours,” Liz said. “Call came in to Wellton, he called me. Not because I was on duty, but because he thought I’d want to know. I hate that he was right, but he was.” She paused and folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve sat here, looking at you, worrying about you, trying to figure out why. I haven’t figured it out yet. And I don’t know if I’m going to. Ever. But there’s no way you’re going to lie there and not talk to me.” She bit her bottom lip for a moment. “So tell me what happened, Noah, because if you don’t, I am done wasting another second of my life thinking about you.”

“Christ, Liz,” I said, my tongue feeling lost in my mouth. “I’m trying to clear my head. Give me a second.”

I opened my eyes and kept them on the white ceiling, feeling the pangs in my chest each time I exhaled. I remembered her looking away from me at the apartment building.