Page 27 of Three-Inch Teeth

“Never met the man.”

“Damn, you sure look like him. Last I heard, he was in Rawlins.”

“Maybe he’s still there,” Cates said, turning his back on the attendant.

He sent Johnson inside to get his change—all of seven dollars’ worth.

*

“I LOVE IT,” Cates said as he looked at the landscape after they’d left the Shell station. “I just fucking love it.”

“It looks like a whole lot of nothing to me,” Johnson said as she drove.

They were on a two-lane highway headed northeast. The interstate hummed with trucks behind them, but there was no traffic on U.S. 30.

It was stark country with rolling sagebrush hills, large herds of pronghorn antelope, snow fences, huge electrical transmission lines, and no trees. Elk Mountain loomed to the south and was half-shrouded with low-hanging clouds illuminated by the setting sun.

Rattlesnake country, Cates thought. There was row after row of granite outcroppings stretching north to south in the terrain. They looked like the exposed spines of massive dinosaurs.

Cates’s burner phone chimed and he drew it from his pocket and read the new text message.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked him.

“I got good news,” he said. “Remember that guy I told you about who I bonded with while in prison? The guy I actually haven’t even met?”

“Yes. What about him?”

“He’s on his way,” Cates said. “He just needs me to text him where to meet.”

“This is all fucking weird and mysterious,” she said. “Why meet up with a guy you don’t even know?”

“I told you already,” Cates said. “We have a common purpose, and now I have a plan that came to me last night. Plus, he’s loaded, and at this rate we’re gonna run out of cash soon.”

“I don’t think I like where this is going,” she said.

Cates ignored her. “You don’t know how good it feels to be in open country again,” he said. “It’s hard to describe.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “It’s kind of creepy.”

He grinned.

“Now tell me where we’re going, Dallas Cates,” she said firmly.

“Have you ever been to Hanna?” he asked, gesturing ahead.

“I ain’t even heard of it,” she responded.

“Then it will be a new adventure,” he said.

“I’m game.”

“I knew you would be.”

*

THEY TOOK THE exit for Highway 72 and passed by a green sign that read:

Hanna

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