Bror was sliding himself into the driver’s seat, pulling his door shut behind him. He wound down the window. “You, Cal Curtis, are a dead man.” Then he drove across the stones at the side of the path, past my car, and onto the single-track road.

My pulse beat heavy in my ears, and in my throat. Soon, perhaps, the fear would come. But for now my blood was up.

I got into my own car. I drove forward, turned in the courtyard, set off along the single-track road. A swirl of dust hung like a spirit in the morning air. Bror was gone.

I pushed the car as hard as I could along the dried mud and gravel, felt stones kicking up into the wheel wells as I turned.

At the main road I made a guess, joined the four-lane highway heading north. Trucks lined the inside lane, but the outside lane was empty of cars and I cruised easily past the trucks.

As I passed Sharif’s tire warehouse I wondered if I had miscalculated. I slowed to the speed limit, began to consider my options.

I dialed Elsa, held the phone jammed between my neck and my shoulder as I drove.

The line rang twice.

“Hey. Where are you?”

“Elsa, tell your dad to get Franklin to a police station. Tell him not to stop en route.”

“Cal, what’s going on?”

“I have to go.”

Because there was a silver Land Cruiser, standing alone in front of a gas station.

“Fuck,” I said, and again, “fuck.”

“Cal, what’s going on?”

“Tell him that, Elsa.”

I dropped the phone onto the seat beside me, began looking for a break in the inside lane. I accelerated till I saw a gap in the wall of trucks, pulled across the lane and on to the shoulder, braking hard. Angry horns sounded. I came to a stop. To my left, an endless flow of trucks; to my right, fields and sky. I looked behind me. From here I could see only the gas station roof, red against the dark trees beyond.

Was I sure I had seen Bror’s Land Cruiser? I sat watching the flow of traffic to my left: the endless parade of trucks driving north, and in the outside lane the occasional car.

There, in a gap between the trucks, a silver flash. So brief that I barely saw it. I kicked the car forward on the narrow hard shoulder, pushed it up to 110. To my left, a truck driver sounded his horn, warning me off. There was a gap in front of his cab, barely large enough for my car. I swerved in. The driver sounded his horn again, flashed his lights as he braked to avoid me. “Thanks, friend,” I said under my breath, and pulled into the outside lane. Empty space, then Bror, disappearing over the brow of a hill. I pushed the car forward.