Cade wasn’t planning to punch the guy in the face. It just sort of happened.

He was fishing change out of his pocket and sliding it across the counter to the underpaid cashier, when a man who’d been in the back of the store, near the freezers, came stumbling over. Guy was clearly drunk, even though it wasn’t lunchtime yet—maybe he was still riding high from the night before—and he practically slobbered onto Cade’s collar as he staggered to a stop next to the checkout counter and slammed a six-pack in front of the kid at the register. Cade took a step back, wrinkling his nose in disgust, as the cashier stammered out that he needed to check the man’s ID.

That’s where it all went south.

The drunk got belligerent, claiming, “I don’t need no goddamn ID to buy Coors.”

Cade stepped in to take the heat off the kid by saying, “You always need ID to buy beer, man.”

And the next thing Cade knew, the drunk rounded on him, snarled, and threw an uppercut that Cade deftly dodged. Cade responded to this unprovoked assault reflexively: by ramming his fist into the guy’s nose. Which led to the guy lying sprawled across the scuffed tile floor of the convenience store with blood running down his face and pooling around his head. Which led to the young cashier running off into the back room to call the cops. Which led to Cade whirling around and racing out the door.

The last thing he needed was to be arrested for assault and battery. That would leave records. Traceable records. Records his family could use to hunt him down. Cannot let that happen, he thought.

As he hurried across the parking lot, he checked that his sunglasses were still on his face. They were. He hadn’t bothered to slide them up onto his head because this was a quick pit stop. So his face wouldn’t be fully visible on any security cameras in or around the building. He’d also paid for his crumbly ham sandwich and bag of Lays with cash, so there wouldn’t be a traceable electronic payment record either. If he got away before the cops arrived, he’d be gold.

Cade wasn’t from around here. And he never planned to return to Jean, Nevada.

Place was just a rest stop on the road between Vegas and LA. If Cade hadn’t skipped breakfast, he would’ve skipped Jean. Should’ve gotten that continental breakfast. Lesson learned.

Cade jogged over to where he’d parked his Harley, stuffed his lunch into a saddlebag, hopped on, and started it up. He slipped on his helmet and secured the strap, kicked up the stand, and then glided across the parking lot toward the exit that let out onto the road to the City of Angels. The sun in the cloudless sky beamed down onto his leather jacket, and sweat sprang up instantly on his neck and under his pits, but he ignored it. As soon as he hit cruising speed, even the desert sun would no longer bother him. It would just be Cade, the wild whips of the wind, and the long road to nowhere.

He checked for oncoming traffic, and took off down the road.

By the time Cade spotted red and blue lights in his mirrors, Jean was nothing but a speck nearly lost to the shimmering haze of the Nevada desert.

No one caught up to him. And no one will.

* * *

Los Angeles swept in with the tide of early afternoon, a sprawling city tucked into the hills of western California. It had a little of everything, and a whole lot of nothing.

Driving along the iconic Mulholland, Cade examined the place he’d never call home with mild interest. The Hollywood sign. The stubby mountains. The endless, undulating sea of buildings that stretched in all directions, with only the Pacific as a border. The smog. (Couldn’t forget the smog.)

LA was a city with character. It was a city that held promise.

Cade had played a few rounds of blackjack in Vegas, seen a few shows, run the gamut of the clichés, but he hadn’t felt much of anything while he was there. All the laughter balanced on overpriced drinks, all the whoops of joy at temporary wins, all the angry shouts at emptied wallets—the whole atmosphere of Vegas had felt artificial. As if you could peel the brightly colored façade away from the casinos and grand hotels and find the ugly reality beneath: that there was no reality in Vegas, only lies and broken promises.

He worried LA would be more of the same, what with Hollywood at the core of the city’s culture. But he was hopeful that the more authentic parts of the city would balance out the desperate grasp for glamor, that the seedier neighborhoods would rub the gilt off Bel Air and reveal something real underneath. Something profound. Something hard hitting. Something that would make Cade feel. Truly feel. Feel anything but that horrible emptiness that always sat beneath the surface of his skin.

The pain from the punch at the convenience store had made that hollow sensation ebb—his knuckles throbbed every time he clenched his fist—but aggression never gave him a long-lasting high. It was a weak and temporary way to make himself feel alive. He needed something else. Needed something more.

He’d been traveling across the country for two years already to find this “thing,” and here he was, on the opposite coast from where he’d started, still looking.

Maybe LA would be the place where he finally found it.

Just maybe.