He had seventy minutes to get there, which gave him forty minutes to do what he needed to do in town. He walked into the lot of a used car dealership and found the cheapest thing that looked capable of surviving the short trip: a 1991 Ford Ranger, its bed full of rust holes big enough that he could see its rear axle through them. It turned over on the first try, though, and ran steadily enough. The dealer wanted three hundred dollars for it. Dryden offered two hundred and didn’t budge, and drove it off the lot at a quarter past eight, forty-five minutes from the deadline. He filled the tank halfway up at a station in town and headed out into the desert, where the shadows of Joshua trees stretched out in the long evening light. He had a Beretta tucked into his waistband, but didn’t expect to use it. If it came to that, he would probably be in very big trouble. * * * Ten minutes before nine, northbound on 395, he passed the blank ground-level billboard he’d last seen in the predawn darkness, when he’d followed Claire along this road.
