One Day in a Small-Town Desert, chapter 5, page 4

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Fírí Parızada stood in the fenced-in yard, animals milling all around her. In front of her, in a metal cage almost two meters long, she could just barely make out three motionless, frilly bumps. Iguanas. What kind of a farm has iguanas? Is this a zoo, not a farm?

Fírí pursed her lips and took a deep breath through her nose, exhaling sharply. Never mind that. Hide.

The iguana cages sat on storage cupboards, none of which were large enough for Fírí to fit inside.

She spun this way and that, peering into the inky night. Zhíno would be running around the side of the house any second now, guns blazing. She couldn’t just be standing out in the open when he showed up.

Nearby in the darkness, a duck quacked.

Fírí crouched down beside the cabinets, jamming herself in the blackness where they met the wall of the house. She pulled her shoe duffel underneath her and sat on it, hugging her knees. She had to hope that Zhíno wouldn’t find her, or the old-and-young pair from the truck. Hopefully they wouldn’t expect her here with the animals, inside the fence. And if they did look in the yard, hopefully they didn’t have flashlights.

So this is what my life has come to? Huddling next to an iguana cage in the middle of the night, hoping that nobody comes along and shoots me dead? I used to have a good life. Not great, but good. With Zhíno. True, we had drug dealers and other criminals stopping by our house all the time, but we still had a house. And Zhíno was always there to take care of me. Except when he was in prison. But there was always some other man to fill his place then. Not that I’d ever tell Zhíno about those guys, though. That would hurt him too much.

Fírí stared up at the night sky, ablaze with stars. Somewhere up there--she couldn’t spot it--floated her home, the planet Kara. It should have been a bright blue dot, more brilliant than any other star or planet in the sky, since it was so close to the planet Rívorí, where she was now.

Why had she ever left? Had it really been that bad? Surely she could have survived on Kara without Zhíno. Just let him leave and get on with her life.

No, she would’ve been stuck in a dead-end job forever, toiling endlessly for rich bosses and never amounting to anything. None of her bosses had ever respected her, just because she didn’t have a college degree.

Fírí grinned.

Her last boss must’ve noticed the error in his financial books by now. It had been a couple days. But would he ever trace it to her? Would that Sorosotuzho ever realize that it was stupid little Fírí who had outsmarted him?

She bit her knuckle to keep from laughing.

Maybe he’d figure it out, but probably not.

There was no going back, either way. Not anymore. Too great a chance that the police were looking for her.

Her grin dissipated. None of it hardly mattered anymore. She probably wouldn’t even get out of this animal yard alive.

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