Free Desert Lost (9781615952229) by Betty Webb

insurance, so you won’t get stuck with the bill.”
    â€œI’m an ER nurse, not an admitting clerk,” she snapped. Then she relented. “Look, you need to take it easy with that arm. You’re lucky the wound didn’t involve major tissue damage, but the doctor still wants you to stay overnight for observation. He doesn’t like that bump on your friend’s head, either. You said she lost consciousness for a while?”
    â€œMy head’s as fine as it’s gonna get,” Rosella said. “We need to drive back to Phoenix.”
    â€œ Not advisable!” The nurse’s jaw jutted forward in an expression that probably cowed most of her patients. But not us.
    â€œAdvisable or not, we’re leaving.” With that, I wrapped my blood-spattered vest around me in a tardy display of modesty, and headed out of the cubicle.
    As we neared the exit, Rosella nudged me. “Is the Santa Fe still drivable?”
    â€œAs long as you don’t mind a little breeze.”
    â€œShit, Lena, you’re as crazy as I am. But we’d better take care of some business first.” Over the ER nurse’s loud complaints, she veered toward the admitting desk, me behind her, waving an insurance card in my good hand.
    ***
    It would have been foolish to take the same highway back, where Prophet Shupe’s God Squad probably lay in wait, so Rosella plotted a different route. After brushing away most of the safety-glass-turned-powder, she slid into the driver’s seat, and soon we were taking the long way back to Phoenix, detouring southwest on I-15 through Las Vegas, where, as everyone knows, nothing bad ever happens to anyone.
    Just before noon, after making several stops to guzzle coffee and orange juice, and once, to buy me a new black tee shirt, we rolled into Phoenix. It was a good thing Rosella’s bump hadn’t turned out to be serious, because my arm had stiffened to the point it could hardly bend. Given the number of street lights in the city, I’d have a rough time driving the Jeep, with its standard transmission, back to Scottsdale.
    As if reading my thoughts, Rosella asked, “You sure you’re okay to drive?”
    â€œJust creaky, that’s all. A couple of hours with an ice pack and I’ll be fine. Hey, didn’t you just pass the house where KariAnn’s staying?”
    â€œI want to clean up the Santa Fe first.”
    Given our situation, such finicky behavior seemed odd, but then I remembered that as KariAnn’s loss of vision increased, her sense of touch became more acute. Rosella didn’t want to alarm her daughter. “You’ll never get all that powdered glass in the back seat. And the new air-conditioning system from the blown rear window? Better borrow my Jeep. I can take a cab home.”
    She shook her head. “After you prove to me you’re okay to drive, I’ll pick her up in the Camaro. I finally got it runnin’.”
    Like her house, Rosella’s beloved ’76 Camaro was in the process of restoration. She’d rescued it from a wrecking yard somewhere back in the Stone Age and with the help of a couple of mechanically-minded neighbors, was giving it new life.
    But as we turned onto Rosella’s street, we discovered that the Camero was now beyond saving. So was her house.
    Both had burned to the ground.

Chapter Seven
    Rosella stared at the smoking ruins of her house, her Camaro. “They found me.”
    Why bother trying to convince her she was wrong? Beside the stench of burnt wood and scorched metal wafting to me on the cool morning air, I could smell gasoline.
    Arson.
    Incongruously, birds still sang and, in the playground at the end of the street, children still laughed. My Jeep, parked at the curb, although now several yards away from where I thought I’d left it, was untouched.
    Rosella’s neighbors stood in front of the one remaining fire truck. Upon seeing her step out of