But then, what if a virus infected the network? What if the cars all went nuts? Homicidal, in fact? What you’d have is a few hundred Christines on your hands.

The premise is very different from the type of thrillers you’ve probably come to expect from me, but it was too good an idea to put aside.

Maybe autonomous cars, one day, will be a wonderful thing.

But until they’re perfected, when you’re crossing the street, I’d advise you to look both ways.

Prologue

Wendy was clipping along the Pacific Coast Highway, arguing with her mother over the Bluetooth about when she would have time to come to Detroit and see her father before he died, which was laying it on pretty thick, considering what he had was bursitis, when she noticed that the car in front of her had no driver.

“What the hell?” she said.

“What?” said her mother, her voice echoing inside the car. “What is it?”

She’d been following this car for nearly five miles now, heading back to her home in Santa Cruz after a business meeting in Pismo Beach. She didn’t normally take the Pacific Coast Highway, as she was doing tonight. She’d seen the view a hundred times—ho hum, there’s the ocean, big whoop—and the freeway was faster. And even if she’d wanted to take the extra time with the scenic route, there wasn’t any way to appreciate it when it was coming up on midnight.

But there had been a truck rollover in the northbound lanes of the freeway—Wendy got an advance warning on her Google traffic app—and so she had exited before the flow of cars turned into a standstill, and headed for the coastal road.

She had texted her mother before she left Pismo Beach, figuring she had gone to sleep and wouldn’t see it until the morning. But she must have woken up in the middle of the night, seen the text, and decided to call.

Wendy had been listening to CNN on the satellite radio. She usually ground her teeth while listening to pundits debate—no, more like shout at each other—about the latest shenanigans in DC, but instead of listening to news, Wendy had been rehashing in her mind her day of meetings, all to sort out permissions for a new subdivision. The locals were unconvinced that there was adequate water supply for the ninety proposed homes and Wendy had gone armed with various engineering reports.

And by the time she’d left, the locals were still unconvinced.

So she was deep in thought, thinking about what further documentation—and at what cost—would be required to change their minds, when her mother called. Wendy blamed the conversation on her failure to notice, until now, that this car she’d been following for about five minutes had no one behind the wheel.