The Kirk brothers—Cal, Jace, and Arlo—were three proper assholes if ever there were any. They'd been raised (if one could call it "raising") by a mean old woman, tough and salty as a strip of beef jerky. Old Nan never had a kind word for anyone or anything, no matter the time of day or season of the year. Common knowledge was she beat the shit out of those boys with a switch "the good old fashioned way, like her daddy done her," and based on how she'd turned out, it was no wonder those three were dirtbags.

Cal and Jace were as ginger as the day is long, the older bulky as a likely Scots warrior ancestor and the middle boy mean and wiry like his Grandma. Arlo, the youngest, looked a mighty bit different with his dark features, his angles sharp and hungry whereas the others' were dull and round, and rumors had gone around since his birth that their mother, who'd not been known for an ability to keep her legs shut, had found some wander-through tourist to keep her occupied when that bulldog-of-a-boyfriend she kept around disappeared for a while. It was no secret she was unable to raise those boys and in fact most people wondered why she kept having them. Word was that there'd been enough miscarriages and abortions flanking the ones she did actually birth that had all of her fertilized eggs come to fruition, Old Nan would've been a Grandma ten times over.

As it was, Cal, Jace, and Arlo were more than enough Kirk offspring for anyone, and the other residents of the trailer park and nearby Lone Rock were plenty grateful the woman had OD'd for the last time a few years after Arlo's birth, forever putting a stop to future Kirks. Or at least, Kirks from her stock. The boys themselves were fucking local girls as soon as they knew what fucking was, and while none of them claimed any children, they'd surely impregnated a few foolish young women along the way to adulthood. Wasn't surprising no girl came to beg for child support; the brothers wouldn't have had anything to offer except abuse.

Ruby and Whit had known to stay away from the Kirk boys since they were little. Once, when Ruby was about eight, she caught Arlo (somewhere around thirteen at the time) trying to convince Whit to follow him into his trailer, and had she not grabbed her brother and shouted a thing or two, God knows where the little boy would've ended up. Whit had a scar on his hand from another time when he was just a toddler and Jace Kirk made him hold a lit match too long, just to see what would happen, and Ruby herself had more than once suffered rocks and other bits of trash thrown her way, not to mention the cat calls and suggestive remarks she'd endured the moment she'd begun to look something more than a child. But she'd always been self-assured, a by-product of her mother's negligence, and she held her own to the Kirks, tending to ignore and avoid them at all costs unless circumstances deemed interaction necessary, and the few times it had come to that, she'd known what to do: scream at the top of her lungs and threaten to burn down their house while they slept. Somehow, that'd always seemed to sober them enough to try playing off their harassment as jokes; there was a sincerity in Ruby's words, always. Veracity. Ruby Rouge didn't mess around.

Still, when the boys were drunk or high, they were unpredictable and uninhibited, so it was best to just stay away as much as possible.

Damien wasn't even aware enough of the Kirk boys to trouble himself with their shenanigans, but they knew about him. Everybody knew about Damien, whether they actually knew him or not; he was a wanderer, shifting between Lone Rock and the trailer park and the reservation. Ruby wasn't entirely sure where he lived and never thought following him would be wise, thought maybe he sort of lived a little bit of everywhere. It would suit him. But when she stumbled upon a conversation she certainly wasn't supposed to hear, she realized she'd need to find him as soon as possible.

She was after a kitten; the adorable, caramel-colored thing had been skulking about the homes and trailers for nearly a week, and though Ruby had been sneaking it little bowls of water and kitchen scraps, she'd been unable to get close enough to grab it. What she'd do with it when she caught it she didn't know (there was no way Mama would let her keep it in the house), but she was determined to make the thing her own, had already decided to call it DJ. When she got down on her belly and scooted beneath Donny Asher's truck, though, cursing the gravel that grated her elbows and knees, she paused at the sound of voices, a door creaking open, and footsteps descending wooden stairs. The kitten had snuggled itself up against the front driver's side wheel and sat there, staring at her with its sleepy eyes, while Ruby held her breath and tried to stay still as a statue.

Feet approached, the feet of three men in tennis shoes and combat boots. The boots were surely Donny's, Ruby guessed, and his distinctive drawling voice confirmed her assumption.

"The man's itching to get it done. When you all think you gon' do it?"

The feet paused about three yards away. Ruby could see Donny's uncle's house past them, scrub brush and dust beyond that, and reddish hills in the distance. It was a hot late September dusk; the girl had been at school all day and come home to find the kitten on her porch, approached it only to have it bolt. She'd tossed her backpack on the porch, told Whit to head inside, and taken off without a thought. She'd tracked it for a good hour, and now here she was stuck up under Donny Asher's truck. That idiot himself wasn't too bad, but the ones he was with? Ruby's stomach turned when she realized it was two of the Kirk brothers.

"Tonight, probably." That one sounded like Cal, but Ruby couldn't quite tell—they all sounded the same.

"How you figure out where he stays?"

The shoes crunched against the gravel as a couple of them shifted. "Arlo's been tailing him for days, finally found a place he stays pretty steady, up in the hills."

"You think Arlo's gon' remember where?"

"Course, Don. Fuck you think we are?"

"Now come on, Jace," soothed the elder brother's voice, its threatening undercurrent evident. "Let's not mistreat Donny. He's the one paying us."

"It's his uncle payin' us."

"Yeah, well whoever's payin' you, " came Donny's response, uncertain despite presumably being in charge of this deal, "I'm the one you're talkin' to. Sal don't want no connectin' it to him. You make sure that gun never gets found."

"Oh, it won't," Cal assured.

"You gonna carry it, Cal? Why don't you let me?"

"Fuck off."

Gun? What were those neanderthals talking about, now? It was an ill-kept secret that everybody had guns; nobody trusted anybody else in the neighborhood. But the only people who never talked about or flashed their weapons were the Kirk brothers, who'd gotten into too much trouble with the law to get caught with guns, legal or otherwise.

"What'd Jensen do to your uncle, anyhow?" Jace pushed.

"Stole shit, prolly," Donny answered bluntly. "How he gets by, ain't it? Sal's tired of it, figures it's a favor to everyone. But keep it quiet, hear? We never had this conversation."

"Ain't no Mission Impossible, you dumb fuck."

"Jace, lay off. It's okay. Don's all right; Don's all right."

Ruby hardly heard the rest of the men's diminishing conversation, roiling as she was in the storm brewing within. It'd clicked: found where he stayed, the gun, Jensen . . . a favor?

They were going to kill Damien.

She'd have scrambled backward from under that car so fast had she not remembered they'd be pissed to hell if they found her there. Shit, maybe they'd even kill her for having heard what they'd said! So she stayed put for a while, her heart thumping like a wild animal against the gravel so loud she was sure she'd be heard, but after what seemed a reasonable time, what felt like ages since the feet had moved on, she scooted back out from under the truck. Only when she was climbing the steps to her front door did Ruby realize she'd entirely no idea what had happened to that kitten.

Her mind was set on one thing: finding Damien. The Kirks had said they were going to do whatever they were doing tonight, so she had very little time to find him. It wasn't Sunday, wasn't even close, so she had no clue whether he'd be out in their rock crevice, but that was the only place she knew to go look for him. The sun was a molten red-orange ball resting amidst a wavering mirage of pale blue, the very edges of the eastern horizon a darker navy ribbon over Lone Rock. The sun would be set in an hour; if Damien wasn't there, should she try to find him elsewhere out in the scrub brush and dust? Should she wait for him and just hope the Kirks never showed? Cal said Arlo had tailed Damien out to somewhere in the hills . . . he had to have found their meeting place. If there were anywhere else Damien stayed, Ruby knew she'd never find him. The area was vast. It'd be treacherous in the dark, and to yell for him would defeat any hope of finding him without the Kirks knowing.

The odds were against her, she knew, and yet she had to try. She'd have to start with their meeting place, Sunday or no.

Biking out into the hills at sunset was far different than it was at midday. Shadows fell fast, blanketing the concomitantly barren and elaborate landscape, transforming all of it into a surreal panorama of smoldering bits of dying light interspersed with deep pockets of black and indigo. Rock formations began to resemble slumbering giants and beasts, and though stars peeped out from the deepening cosmos above, they offered little guidance through the suddenly ominous labyrinth.

She'd never been on the hills at night. It was a good way to get lost, and temperatures dropped considerably. Had Ruby been less concerned for Damien, she'd never have ventured out at this time. A normal girl would've told someone, called the police maybe, but Ruby knew no adult around her was capable of or willing to take on the Kirk boys, and the police and Damien held a mutual disdain for one another; Ruby didn't trust them a minute to do anything in time. She was his only hope (or that's what she told herself), and yet if she really were, then there was no hope at all for Damien, because within twenty minutes of entering the hills, Ruby was inextricably confused.

In her tee and shorts, the girl shivered against the dry night air. Her bike was somewhere far behind; it'd been easier to move through the rocks on foot. She'd thought that finding their meeting place would be simple—she'd been there a hundred times!—and her misadventure angered her. Her toes stubbed more than once against protruding ledges. She stumbled and scraped body parts twice, and between her rising panic and her body's inability to properly function, Ruby thought her head might burst with rage. Little bits of skull and brain all over, she imagined with a short laugh, pausing against one of the monoliths and resting her hand on the cool wall. Tomorrow morning, someone would find her headless body lying on the ground, maybe one of the Kirks, and it'd take them a moment to know it was her because her face would've blown out from all the pressure inside. They'd laugh, once they knew. And then they'd probably leave her there. Hopefully it'd be Whit that'd find her, then; at least he'd cry.

Ruby turned her face up to the myriad twinkles above. The desert was good for this—viewing the universe without all the light pollution. A crimson vein shot through the deep violets and blues, last tendrils of the sinking sun beyond the mountains. Damien was going to die.

Waiting for her breath to calm, listening to the silent immensity of the world around her, attempting to come to terms with the fact that she'd failed, Ruby thought, for a moment, that she'd heard something. Something that sat apart from what was expected. It was a soft susurration, as if a heavy piece of fabric, perhaps, or a bag were being dragged over the gravely earth not far away, and the girl's lips parted in a gasp. Damien!

She hastened from the rock she'd been climbing, found her way to the ground, and rounded an escarpment to see a tall silhouette within several yards but moving slowly away. The darkness obscured far too much, but Ruby thought she could make out the figure's long, dark hair, and while its lower half was vastly disfigured—nothing at all like arms and legs but rather some lumpish mass dwindling to an obscene narrowness at its base—the girl was sure the night played tricks on her sight.

"Hey!" she called. "Damien!"

The black form paused, but before Ruby could run to it, something tapped her shoulder, and she shrieked and spun.

"I'm here, dummy! It's me."

"Damien?" Yes, it was him. Ruby looked right up into his shrouded features, relieved beyond words. It was definitely him. She turned to glance back into the desert, but whatever she'd thought she'd seen there was gone, now, and she quickly forgot it in her relief. "Oh my God! The Kirks! Damien, they said they're gonna shoot you tonight! They know where you live, and they were talking to Donny, and—"

"Stop," the young man said, and the girl immediately obeyed. She swallowed, peered questioningly up into his beautiful, smooth face, thought he seemed far too nonchalant but didn't want to upset him by going on. "It's done," he told her. "I've taken care of it."

Ruby blinked several times, moved her lips. "B-but, how? I—did they find you? Did they try—"

He put a long finger against her mouth, and somehow she felt his touch in a line all the way down her belly to the place her legs met. "Shhhhhh," he commanded. Then he walked past her, plodded down a nearby footpath. "Go home, girl."

"But I—"

His gesture cut her off, one arm raised, finger pointing right, toward the paved road in the distance, the one that would lead her back to her neighborhood. How she'd not noticed it before was a mystery.

Frustrated beyond words, Ruby did as she was told, knowing it was always best to listen to Damien.