City of Dreams

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Contents Daybreak: Anza-Borrego Desert, California April 1991 Part One: In Some Neglected Land, Rhode Island, December 1988 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Part Two: Lifeless Pictures, California, November 1989 Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Part Three: What the Dead Souls Want, San Diego, April 1991 Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Acknowledgments Read on for an Excerpt from City in Ruins … More from Don Winslow About the Author Also by Don Winslow About the Publisher Guide Cover Contents Title page iv vi vii ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 i ii Copyright Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023 First published in the United States by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2023 Copyright © Samburu, Inc 2023 Jacket design by Gregg Kulick © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023 Jacket image © Magdalena Russocka/Trevillion Images Don Winslow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008507831 Ebook Edition © April 2023 ISBN: 9780008507848 Version: 2023-03-06 Dedication To teachers Without you, these books would never be written. Or read Epigraph Of wars and a man I sing, An exile, driven on by fate … Virgil The Aeneid Book I Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Daybreak: Anza-Borrego Desert, California April 1991 Part One: In Some Neglected Land, Rhode Island, December 1988 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Part Two: Lifeless Pictures, California, November 1989 Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Part Three: What the Dead Souls Want, San Diego, April 1991 Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Acknowledgments Read on for an Excerpt from City in Ruins … More from Don Winslow About the Author Also by Don Winslow About the Publisher DAYBREAK Anza-Borrego Desert, California April 1991 At last the day was breaking, the morning star on the rise … Virgil The Aeneid Book II DANNY SHOULD HAVE KILLED THEM all. He knows that now. Should have known it then—you rip forty million in cash from people in an armed robbery, you shouldn’t leave them alive to come after you. You should take their money and their lives. But that ain’t Danny Ryan. It’s always been his problem—he still believes in God. Heaven and hell and all that happy crap. He’s pushed the button on a few guys, but it was always a him-or-them situation. The robbery wasn’t. Danny had them all zip-tied, flat on the floor or the ground, helpless, and his guys wanted to put bullets in the backs of their heads. Execution style, like they say. “They’d do it to us,” Kevin Coombs said to him. Yeah, they would, Danny thought. Popeye Abbarca was notorious for killing not only the people who ripped him off but their entire families, too. Popeye’s head guy had even told Danny that. Looked