“But I got amazing pics!”

“I need more. I need quotes. I need a trend. I need a story. I need an example…”

Lucy was looking across the CAP canal toward the subdivision as she spoke. Timo could almost see the gears turning in her head…

“Oh no. Don’t do it, girl.”

“Do what?” But she was smiling, already.

“Don’t go over there and start asking who did the deed.”

“It would be a great story.”

“You think some motherfucker’s just gonna say they out and wasted Old Tex?”

“People love to talk, if you ask them the right questions.”

“Seriously, Lucy. Let the cops take care of it. Let them go over there and ask the questions.”

Lucy gave him a pissed-off look.

“What?” Timo asked.

“You really think I’m that wet?”

“Well…”

“Seriously? How long have we known each other? Do you really think you can fool me into thinking the cops are gonna give a shit about another dead Merry Perry? How wet do you think I am?”

Lucy spun and headed for her truck.

“This ain’t some amusement park!” Timo called after her. “You can’t just go poke the Indians and think they’re gonna native dance for you. People here are for

real!

” He had to shout the last because the truck’s door was already screeching open.

“Don’t worry about me!” Lucy called as she climbed into the beast. “Just get me good art! I’ll get our story!”

• • • •

“So let me get this straight,” Timo asked, for the fourth or fifth time. “They just let you into their house?”

They were kicked back on the roof at Sid’s Cafe with the rest of the regulars, taking potshots at the prairie dogs who had invaded the half-finished subdivision ruins around the bar, trading an old .22 down a long line as patrons took bets.

The subdivision was called Sonora Bloom Estates, one of those crap-ass investments that had gone belly up when Phoenix finally stopped bailing out over-pumped subdivisions. Desert Bloom Estates had died because some bald-ass pencil-pusher in City Planning had got a stick up his ass and said the water district wasn’t going to support them. Now, unless some company like IBIS or Halliburton could frack their way to some magical new water supply, Desert Bloom was only ever going to be a town for prairie dogs.

“They just let you in?” Timo asked. “Seriously?”

Lucy nodded smugly. “They let me into their house, and then into their neighbor’s houses. And then they took me down into their basements and showed me their machine guns.” Lucy took a swig of Negro Modelo. “I make friends, Timo.” She grinned. “I make a

lot

of friends. It’s what I do.”

“Bullshit.”

“Believe it, or don’t.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve got our story. ‘Phoenix’s Last Stand.’ You wouldn’t believe how they’ve got themselves set up. They’ve got war rooms. They’ve got ammo dumps. This isn’t some cult militia, it’s more like the army of the apocalypse. Way beyond preppers. These people are getting ready for the end of the world, and they want to talk about it.”

“They want to talk.”

“They’re

desperate

to talk. They

like

talking. All they talk about is how to shove Texas back where it came from. I mean, you see the inside of their houses, and it’s all Arizona for the People, and God and Santa Muerte to back them up.”

“They willing to let me take pictures?”

Lucy gave him another smug look. “No faces. That’s the only condition.”

Timo grinned. “I can work with that.”

Lucy set her beer down. “So what’ve you shot so far?”

“Good stuff.” Timo pulled out his camera and flicked through images. “How about this one?” He held up the camera for her to see. “Poetry, right?”

Lucy eyed the image with distaste. “We need something PG, Timo.”

“PG? Come on. PG don’t get the hits. People love the bodies and the blood.

Sangre

this,

sangre

that. They want the blood, and they want the sex. Those are the only two things that get hits.”

“This isn’t for the local blood rags,” Lucy said. “We need something PG from the dead guy.”

She accepted the rifle from a hairy biker dude sitting next to her and sighted out at the dimming landscape beyond. The sun was sinking over the sprawl of the Phoenix basin, a brown blanket of pollution and smoke from California wild fires turning orange and gaudy.

Timo lifted his camera and snapped a couple quick shots of Lucy as she sighted down the rifle barrel. Wet girl trying to act dry. Not knowing that everyone who rolled down to Phoenix tried to show how tough they were by picking up a nice rifle and blasting away at the furry critters out in the subdivisions.

The thought reminded Timo that he needed to get some shots of Sumo Hernandez and his hunting operation. Sucker had a sweet gig bringing Chinese tourists in to blast at coyotes and then feed them rattlesnake dinners.

He snapped a couple more pictures and checked the results. Lucy looked damn good on the camera’s LCD. He’d got her backlit, the line of her rifle barrel across the blaze of the red ball sun. Money shot for sure.

He flicked back into the dead Texan pictures.

“PG, PG… ,” Timo muttered. “What the fuck is PG? It’s not like the dude’s dick is out. Just his eaten-off face.”

Lucy squeezed off another shot and handed the rifle on.

“This is going to go big, Timo. We don’t want it to look like it’s just another murder story. That’s been done. This has to look smart and scary and real. We’re going to do a series.”

“We are?”

“Hell yes, we are. I mean, this could be Pulitzer type stuff. ‘Phoenix’s Last Stand.’”

“I don’t give a shit about Pulitzers. I just want good hits. I need money.”

“It will get us hits. Trust me. We’re onto something good.”

Timo flicked through more of his pictures. “How about just the beads in the guy’s neck?” He showed her a picture. “This one’s sweet.”

“No.” Lucy shook her head. “I want the CAP in it.”

Timo gave up on stifling his exasperation. “PG, CAP. Anything else, ma’am?”

Lucy shot him a look. “Will you trust me on this? I know what I’m doing.”

“Wet-ass newcomer says she knows what she’s doing.”

“Look, you’re the expert when it comes to Phoenix. But you’ve got to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I know how people think back East. I know what people want on the big traffic sites. You know Phoenix, and I trust you. Now you’ve got to trust

me

. We’re onto something. If we do it right, we’re going to blow up. We’re going to be a phenomenon.”

The hairy biker guy handed the rifle back to Lucy for another shot.

“So you want PG, and you want the CAP,” Timo said.

“Yeah. The CAP is why he died,” she said absently as she sighted again with the rifle. “It’s what he wanted. And it’s what the Defending Angels need to protect. It’s what Phoenix has that Texas doesn’t. Phoenix is alive in the middle of a desert because you’ve got one of the most expensive water transport systems in the world. If Texas had a straw like the CAP running to some place like the Mississippi River, they’d still be fine.”

Timo scoffed. “That would be like a thousand miles.”

“Rivers go farther than that.” Lucy squeezed off a shot and dust puffed beside a prairie dog. The critter dove back into its hole, and Lucy passed the rifle on. “I mean, your CAP water is coming from the Rockies. You’ve got the Colorado River running all the way down from Wyoming and Colorado, through Utah, all the way across the top of Arizona, and then you and California and Las Vegas all share it out.”