“The people who are after you, they came for me, too. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know why they want us, and I don’t know how you and I are connected.” He held up the stack of pages. “But I know what this is. I know some of it. And I know it’s not something the police can deal with. Not even close. If we go into their custody, we’re going to be helpless. We have to get out of here. Right now.”

He crossed to where she sat. He held out a hand. “Can you trust me enough to do that?”

She stared at him. There was something in his expression that wasn’t quite fear. It was concern, she thought—concern for her.

“Yes,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was two minutes later before Dryden spoke again. He had the Explorer doing exactly the speed limit on Stockton Canyon Drive, a mile uphill from the house. In the rearview mirror, he could see the distant cluster of emergency vehicles around the place; they had begun arriving less than thirty seconds after he and the woman left.

Danica Ellis, she had called herself. He glanced at her; she sat in the passenger seat, hugging her arms close to her body. Even in bright sunlight, after the dim space of the basement, he was sure he had never seen her before. He had a good memory for faces, though he was pretty certain he would have remembered Danica’s regardless: her eyes looked like an artist’s exaggeration, meant to convey kindness—at least on any normal day. Right now they conveyed only fear. That still left them beautiful.

“How much do you know?” Dryden asked.

She didn’t quite flinch. She blinked and turned to him. “I told you. I don’t know anything. I don’t understand this at all.”

“You were running from these people,” Dryden said. “Even before you went to that house.”

She stared at him.

“Why don’t I tell you what I know first,” Dryden said. “Then you can tell me your part.”

She considered it for a moment, then nodded. She stared forward at the road, its route climbing now into the high country of the upper canyon. “Okay.”

Dryden spent two minutes covering everything that had happened to him, starting with the gaunt man pointing a gun at him in Malibu, and finishing with his own hell-bent drive up to Thousand Oaks—even after calling the cops. He’d done twenty over the limit the whole way, every instinct telling him seconds might count.

When he finished speaking, Danica told him her side of the story; it took even less time than his. Afterward she sat staring ahead through the windshield. She had the stack of papers from the basement in her lap. She looked down at them, then glanced at Dryden.

“So tell me what these are,” she said.