"Yes," she says. Dumb. But it's all she has.

"Were you in that accident?"

"Yes," she lies. Though maybe it's not a lie. She was certainly present for it.

"Do you need help?"

She fires back with a question of her own: "Do you have a car?"

"Yeah. I was here just putting a few more things into a storage unit before our move to the new house, and – sorry. You don't really need to know this. My Forester is parked around the corner."

"Will you take me somewhere?"

He hesitates. He's not sure, and he's right to be uncertain. Miriam knows that elements don't add up. No glass in her hair. The cuts on her legs aren't from a car accident. He hasn't asked the right questions in his head yet, but he will. She only hopes by the time he comes up short, they're already in the car, driving far, far away from this place. You're going to get out of this – a rat through a bolthole, almost there, just a little farther…

"Yeah," he says, finally. "Absolutely. Here, this way. My name's Jeff–"

She moves to step out.

The man, Jeff, flicks his gaze left.

Then his body jerks sideways, accompanied by a spray of blood and a pistol shot.

Miriam kicks over the trash can and turns to run the other way, to duck between the storage unit and come out the other side.

That doesn't happen.

Instead, she comes face to face with Hairless Fucker. He nods.

"How easily we are sidelined by distractions," he says.

And then he takes a step back and fires the Taser into her stomach. Every cell in her body lights up like a Christmas tree. Hot and cold. Stinging fire ants. A string of firecrackers. Her bones feel like they might break. Everything is white, bright, and terrible.

INTERLUDE

The Interview

Paul's body sits crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. His head is turned at a bad angle, the chin up over the shoulder and pointed at ninety degrees. The eyes, open and glassy. The mouth, closed, as if posed forever in thought. His bag lies a few feet away. A cell phone, a few feet past that.

Miriam descends the steps.

A minute ago, she watched him leave the warehouse.

Philly's chemical stink – a dull, acid perfume that rises with steaming manholes and drifts down with spitting rain, calling to mind a mixture of sewer gas and pesticide – burns her nose and burns her eyes, and she feels herself tearing up, and she convinces herself that's all it is, the stink of the city.

When he left, Paul crossed the road.

He checked that calculator watch from a bygone era as he did.

No cars struck him. No heart attack claimed him.

He stepped up on the curb. His cell phone rang.

A set of concrete steps waited for him, and he took his call, and said, "Hi, Mom," and maybe the phone was enough of a distraction, but his foot took the step at a bad angle, more heel and less toe, and he started to fall.