After turning west onto Hotel Circle North, he accelerated to fifty. Mara fastened her seat belt as he swerved into the oncoming lane to pass an SUV.

“I thought it was over with that guy.”

“Apparently he didn’t understand my warning.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Give him a stronger warning.”

He ran the red light and smoked the tires merging onto I-8. Within ten seconds he was doing eighty miles an hour as he screamed under the Morena Boulevard overpass. He followed a minivan down the I-5 north on-ramp before punching his Mustang up to 110 miles an hour.

Four minutes had passed since Karen’s call. A lot could happen in four minutes. He forced the thought aside and concentrated on driving. His phone rang. Seeing his business partner’s name on the screen, he answered it. A call this late at night raised concern. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” said Harvey. “Yeah.”

“I can’t talk right now.”

“Are you okay?”

“Ten minutes.”

“You got it.”

Nathan felt additional pressure because Karen called him, not the police. She could’ve dialed 911. He suspected the police knew about her escort service, but her women were high-class and low-key. Karen’s women weren’t hookers who trolled for twenty-dollar tricks to feed meth or heroin habits. They were escorts, sophisticated corporate types. Expensive. Besides, her operation was small and no one had blown the whistle. Karen had also called Nathan because of his relationship with Mara. He looked out for her and the other women. Several years ago, he’d personally installed a high-tech security system in Karen’s house.

Nathan looked at his watch as he exited the freeway. Six minutes. Too damned long.

After slowing for a stop sign, he accelerated to sixty miles an hour.

“Nathan!”

He saw it.

An orange cat darted out from the left. It skidded to a stop in the middle of the street and froze. Shimmering in the headlights, its bluish-green eyes looked like tiny flashlights. Nathan executed a smooth adjustment of the wheel to the right and hugged the curb.

“Did we hit it?”

Mara whipped her head around. “No. It’s still there.”

Nathan eased away from the curb and braked hard for the next turn. Half a minute later, he parked fifty yards north of Karen’s place and left the engine idling. It needed a cool down after being worked so hard.

“Stay here. Turn the engine off after a couple of minutes.” He reached across Mara,  popped the glove box, and grabbed his Sig Sauer P-226 9-millimeter. Climbing out, he jacked a hollow-point round into the chamber and lowered the hammer, using the pistol’s de-cocking lever. He tucked the weapon into his blue jeans at the small of his back and sprinted up the sidewalk. Several houses distant, a dog barked three times, then went silent. Beneath orange cones of streetlight, chest-high recycle bins were stationed in the street like sentries.