On my iPhone screen, the man is still talking, his voice loud in the car: “...didn’t mean to hit you that hard, but may I remind you that you started it by coming at me with a screwdriver. I was just defending myself. You don’t know me, Jade, but I don’t put up with that kind of aggression. I fight back.”

“Yeah, well, ditto,” Jade says, and I feel equal parts fear and pride.

The light changes to red, and the driver in front of me hits his brakes. I jerk the wheel to the left and swerve around the slowing car into the oncoming lane, right as another car, a red Mini, turns right into my lane.

Our eyes meet. His are big and round, a terrified teenager going up against a jacked-up truck in a doomed game of chicken. He lays on the horn, then ducks out first. He yanks the wheel and barrels into a ditch.

The lane clears. Nick curses. I blow through the light and take a hard left, a ninety-degree turn that lifts two tires from the pavement.

“Holy shit,” Nick mumbles as I work to straighten out the wheel. “You really do have a death wish, don’t you?”

What I have is exactly twenty-four minutes to get home.

I fumble for my phone, but it’s gone, flung from my lap into that dead space between the seat and the center console, the black hole where crumbs and crumpled receipts go to die. I keep my eyes on the road and dig my hand in, but I don’t get very far. My hand is too big, the slot too tight.

Nick bats my hand away. “You drive. I’ll dig out the phone.”

Meanwhile, Jade and the guy are still talking.

“If Cam were here, he’d tell you this day was coming. I swore I would take back what he took from me, plus attorney fees and interest. I told him I’m not some wimpy asshole he can push around. That money is rightfully mine.”

I freeze, my fists clenching the wheel because a memory is taking shape in my head. Last year, January, in the courthouse parking deck. I was headed to my truck when he stepped out from behind a stairwell, thirty minutes after the gavel had come down on my side. I won. He lost. A Fulton County Superior Court judge agreed I didn’t owe him a penny.

Is that what this is about? The Oakhurst shop that fell through?

“Motherfucker.” I bounce on the leather bucket seat, my muscles jolting with pent-up energy. “That motherfucking fucker.”

Nick drags the phone onto the middle console, and I grab it and hang a sharp right onto a side street, skidding to a stop. I squint at the image of this asshole’s covered face, zooming in until it fills my screen.