Like someone had dropped a nuke and she was the last survivor.

Wouldn’t that be cool, she could drive over to Beverly Hills, run a gazillion red lights, waltz into the Tiffany store on Rodeo and scoop up whatever she wanted.

A planet without people. She laughed.

She crossed Santa Monica and Wilshire and kept going until Sepulveda turned into the Pass. Off to her left was the 405, just a scatter of taillights. On the other side was hillside that bled into moonless sky.

No lights on in gazillion-dollar hill houses full of sleeping rich people. The same kind of idiots she had to deal with at La Femme.

Women like Mother, pretending they weren’t shriveling or fat as pigs.

Thinking about work made Kat tense up and she deep-breathed. That made her burp real loud and she cracked up, drove faster.

At this rate, she’d be over the hill and at her apartment real soon.

Stupid little dump in Van Nuys, but she told everyone it was Sherman Oaks because it was on the border and who cared?

All of a sudden her eyes began to close and she had to shake herself awake. A hard shove down on the gas pedal and the car shot forward.

Saaiiiling…. You go, girl!

Seconds later, the Mustang sputtered, whined, stopped.

She managed to steer to the right, stop just off the road. Let the car sit for a sec and tried again.

Nothing but a whiny noise.

Two more attempts, then five.

Shit!

It took a while to find the switch for the interior lights and when she brightened the car, her head hurt and she saw little yellow things dancing in front of her eyes. When they cleared, she looked at the gas gauge.

E

Shit shit shit! How had that happened, she could swear—

Mother’s voice nagged at her. She put her hands over her ears and tried to think.

Where was the nearest gas station… nowhere, nothing for miles.

She punched the dashboard so hard it hurt her hands. Cried, sat back, drained.

Realizing she was exposed by the interior lights, she switched them off.

Now what?

Call the Triple A! Why hadn’t she thought of that?

It took what seemed like a long time to find her cell phone in her purse. Even longer to locate her Triple A card.

Tapping out the toll-free number was hard because even with the phone light the numbers were teeny and her hands were shaky.

When the operator answered, she read off her membership code. Had to do it twice because her eyes had blurred and it was hard to see what was a 3 and what was an 8.

The operator put her on hold, came back and said her membership had lapsed.

Kat said, “No way.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but you haven’t been active for eighteen months.”

“That’s frickin’ impossible—”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”

“Like hell you are—”