Perfect Little Town by Blake Crouch

mother.  I’m not really supposed to think of it that way, sweetheart.” 
    “What’d he do?”  His little girl’s face had turned ruddy in the sunset and the fading light brought out threads of platinum in her otherwise midnight hair.
    “He allegedly—”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Allegedly?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Means it’s not been proven.  He’s suspected of selling drugs.”
    “Like what I take?”
    “No, your drugs are good.  They help you.  He was selling, allegedly selling, bad drugs to people.”
    “Why are they bad?”
    “Because they make you lose control.”
    “Why do people take them?”
    “They like how it makes them feel.”
    “How does it make them feel?”
    He kissed her forehead and looked at his watch.  “It’s after eight, Devi.  Let’s go bang on those lungs.”
    She sighed but she didn’t argue.  She never tried to get out of it. 
    He stood up cradling his daughter and walked over to the redwood railing. 
    They stared into the wilderness that bordered Oasis Hills, their subdivision.  The houses on No-Water Lane had the Sonoran Desert for a backyard. 
    “Look,” he said.  “See them?”  A half mile away, specks filed out of an arroyo and trotted across the desert toward a shadeless forest of giant saguaro cacti that looked vaguely sinister profiled against the horizon. 
    “What are they?” she asked.
    “Coyotes.  What do you bet they start yapping when the sun goes down?”

    After supper, he read to Devlin from A Wrinkle in Time.  They’d been working their way through the penultimate chapter, “Aunt Beast,” but Devlin was exhausted and drifted off before Will had finished the second page.
    He closed the book and set it on the carpet and turned out the light.  Cool desert air flowed in through an open window.  A sprinkler whispered in the next door neighbor’s yard.  Devlin yawned, made a cooing sound that reminded him of rocking her to sleep as a newborn.  Her eyes fluttered and she said very softly, “Mom?”
    “She’s working late at the clinic, sweetheart.”
    “When’s she coming back?”
    “Few hours.”
    “Tell her to come in and kiss me?”
    “I will.” 
    He was nowhere near ready for court in the morning but he stayed, running his fingers through Devlin’s hair until she’d fallen back to sleep.  Finally, he slid carefully off the bed and walked out onto the deck to gather up his books and legal pads.  He had a late night ahead of him.  A pot of strong coffee would help.
    Next door, the sprinklers had gone quiet. 
    A lone cricket chirped in the desert. 
    Thunderless lightning sparked somewhere over Mexico, and the coyotes began to scream.

    2
    The thunderstorm caught up with Rachael Innis thirty miles north of the Mexican border.  It was 9:30 p.m., and it had been a long day at the free clinic in Sonoyta, where she volunteered her time and services once a week as a bilingual psychologist.  The windshield wipers whipped back and forth.  High beams lit the steam rising off the pavement, and in the rearview mirror, Rachael saw the pair of headlights a quarter of a mile back that had been with her for the last ten minutes.
    Glowing beads suddenly appeared on the shoulder just ahead.  She jammed her foot into the brake pedal, the Grand Cherokee fishtailing into the oncoming lane before skidding to a stop.  A doe and her fawn ventured into the middle of the road, mesmerized by the headlights.  Rachael let her forehead fall onto the steering wheel, closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath.
    The deer moved on.  She accelerated the Cherokee, another dark mile passing as pellets of hail hammered the hood. 
    The Cherokee veered sharply toward the shoulder and she nearly lost control again, trying to correct her bearing, but the steering wheel wouldn’t straighten out.  Rachael lifted her foot off the gas pedal and eased over onto the side of the road. 
    When she killed the ignition all she could hear was the rain and hail