He guided her away from the vehicle along the face of the slope, straight out from the driver’s door. A few seconds later, the forest around them bloomed with bright orange light. Danica felt the radiant heat of the fire—like sunlight on a hot day. She and Dryden were nearly running now; it was easy to see the ground and the trees, all of it alive and jittering in the light of the flames. Danica glanced back and got her first good look at the wreck: the Explorer was pointed downhill on the slope, its front end compressed around the trunk of a pine. The entire vehicle was ablaze.

In the same moment she heard a man’s voice, high above in the dark woods, calling out to someone. Another distant voice answered, though the words were indiscernible.

Danica faced forward and kept running, keeping up with Dryden over the steep ground and exposed roots.

As they ran, she found herself holding on to a single hope: that they could outrun the light. That if they could cover even fifty yards before the attackers made it down the slope, she and Dryden would simply be invisible in the dark. After that, they could just keep moving—all night long if need be.

The idea had hardly formed when the faint light around them suddenly flared brighter—almost absurdly so.

She looked back again and saw why: the pine boughs directly above the Explorer were now burning, too. Brilliant flames curled upward into the higher branches, which themselves were beginning to catch. Even at this distance, Danica could hear the pine tar cracking and popping. That was the sound she was focused on when the first bullet went by.

A high, buzzing whine, like a bug going past her ear at a thousand miles an hour. The crack of the gunshot followed right on top of it, in the same tiny part of a second.

Dryden was already ducking, turning in place, pulling her down. As they slid to a stop, he shoved one foot against the slope, propelling both of their bodies behind a giant trunk. A second and third gunshot sounded, coming from the same place as the first—the direction of the burning vehicle a hundred feet behind them. At least one of the bullets tore into the trunk behind Danica’s head.

In the dimness behind the trunk, Dryden reached for his waistband. Danica saw both pistols tucked into it: the gun he had taken from his attacker in Malibu, and the one that had belonged to Carl.

Dryden took hold of the latter; it held the full magazine Carl had loaded into it before he died.

Dryden put his mouth to her ear and spoke urgently: “See the shadow of this tree? Out ahead of us?”

He pointed, and she followed the shadow with her eyes: a broad swath of darkness projected across the wooded slope, like a pathway.