The three of them headed for the exit. In the parking lot, Stride turned left on the sidewalk toward his Expedition, which was parked next to Maggie’s yellow Avalanche, but he stopped when Serena took hold of his shoulder.

“Wait a minute, Jonny,” she said, pointing. “That’s Tish’s car.”

Stride recognized the Civic on the far side of the parking lot and immediately spotted the odd angle of the chassis caused by the car’s flat tire. He frowned as he studied the rest of the lot. “Where’s Tish?” he asked.

Maggie jogged over to the Civic and got down on her knees to examine the tire with a penlight on her key chain. “This was cut,” she called to them. “Somebody slashed it.”

Stride looked at Serena. “Rikke.”

The Blatnik Bridge loomed ahead of them beyond the sweeping curve of the highway, its arch illuminated against the night with blurred rows of white lights. Tish grew nervous as they neared the span, anticipating the rope of fear that would twist around her insides as they made the crossing. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t; instead, she stared at the hump of steel as if it were a sea monster arching its giant back over the water. Her tension broadcast itself through the car.

“Is something wrong?” Rikke asked. Her voice was cool.

“It’s just bridges,” Tish said. “They scare me.”

The windows on both sides were wide open, ushering in a fierce breeze that rattled the frame of the car. They climbed the sharp angle toward the summit of the bridge, and the crisscross steel of the span rose ahead of them like the tracks of a roller coaster. Rikke drove slowly. Traffic soared up behind them, filling the car with headlights and then passing impatiently on their left at almost twice their speed. On either side of them, far below, industrial lights marked the edge of the land, and the blackness signaled the channel of Superior Bay. Tish wrapped her arms tightly across her chest. Her breathing was fast.

Rikke reached out and rested a warm hand on Tish’s thigh, and Tish flinched.

“The view is amazing,” Rikke said. “You should look.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

Rikke slowed even further as they crept skyward. Tish felt sweat on her hands, and her left arm twitched involuntarily.

“Can’t we go faster?” she asked.

“No, I love it up here,” Rikke told her. “Sometimes I think that’s the best way to die. Just let yourself drive off the edge of a bridge.”

“Don’t talk like that, it scares me.”

The car drifted toward the right shoulder, grinding on loose gravel. Tish was conscious of the three-foot ribbon of concrete stretching along the bridge deck, which was the only barrier between the car and one hundred feet of air dropping toward the water. It was inches from her window.

“It’s hard not to think about death when you know you’re dying,” Rikke said.

“Dying?”

Rikke nodded calmly. “The doctors tell me the cancer has come back. Metastasized, they call it. That’s an ugly word. I only have a few months.”