Leo lowered himself into the wash, keeping one hand against his injured ribs. He stepped between stones and dried branches as quietly as he could. The morning had already turned bright, and his shadow lay across the sand like an arrow pointing exactly where he was going.
He was less than twenty yards from the scrub when his shoe caught beneath a strand of buried barbed wire. The torn sole folded against his foot. He tried to recover his balance, but the ground tilted beneath him and he fell against a pile of brittle branches.
The snap was loud enough to cut through the wind.
'There!' Hank shouted.
Leo scrambled upright. A figure appeared on the bank above him, blocking the narrow path toward the hills. The man wore a sheriff's uniform and a sun-faded expression that showed no surprise at finding a teenager trying to escape.
'Don't make this hard,' Deputy Carl Higgins said.
Leo backed away. 'Please. I haven't done anything.'
Higgins climbed down into the wash. Behind him, Hank's footsteps pounded over the stones. The deputy reached for Leo, and the boy twisted out of his grasp once before the man caught the back of his jacket.
The cloth tightened across Leo's throat. His feet scraped against the dirt as Higgins dragged him toward the station. Somewhere overhead a raven called, indifferent to the struggle below.
Leo had spent three weeks learning to survive the desert. In less than a minute, the desert had delivered him back to the people he feared most.
Higgins hauled Leo up the bank by the back of his jacket, ignoring the way the teenager caught his breath when the fabric pulled against his sore ribs. The deputy had broad hands and the practiced impatience of a man who had dragged many unwilling people through inconvenient places. He did not ask whether Leo was hurt. He did not tell him why he was being detained. He simply pushed him across the gravel toward the abandoned pumps while Hank followed close behind.
The station looked smaller in the daylight than it had in the dark. The shattered office window reflected a pale patch of sky, and the fallen awning cast a crooked shadow over the concrete. Leo could see the entrance to the garage through which he had stepped to help Sully three nights earlier. He thought, absurdly, of the unfinished bicycle inside and wondered whether anyone would ever know he had nearly made it work.
Hank stood beside the silver Dodge with his hands on his hips. He wore the same broad leather belt Leo remembered from Flagstaff and carried a wooden bat that had no reason to be part of a foster parent's search for a missing teenager. His face had gone red from the heat and the exertion of walking from the truck. When he saw Leo up close, satisfaction spread slowly across his features.
'Well, look what crawled out of the sand,' he said.
Leo tried to pull away from Higgins. The deputy tightened his grip and shoved him toward the concrete apron. Leo stumbled to one knee before catching himself with his hand. Grit dug into his palm.
'You said he was a dangerous runaway,' Higgins remarked, glancing down at him. 'Doesn't look dangerous.'
'He's a liar,' Hank answered. 'That's what makes him dangerous.'