Angelo, for example: “Why you always so quick to be gone? Don’t you know we could have a good time, me and you? We could take in the city. Do it all.”

She pulled her arm, but he held on.

“I know a man can get that face on the cover of a magazine. You want that, girl?” The lesion on his nose looked wet and sore in streetlight. “Your face on the cover of a magazine?”

“Just get your dirty fucking—”

Angelo suddenly let go, his hands raised like someone had pointed a .45 at him. It had nothing to do with Kitty struggling to free her arm, or anything she said, and everything to do with the sage-green Mustang—vintage Detroit muscle—cruising toward them. It slowed as it approached. The passenger window buzzed down and Kitty saw the Viking for the first time. He was comfortably into his twenties, ugly-handsome, with a crooked nose and narrow forehead. His long beard was fashioned into two points, a darker shade of blond than the hair that fell to his shoulders.

Kitty heard Angelo say, “Shit,” under his breath, then he turned and ran—bumped into an older lady, who called him a son of a bitch in Spanish and swiped at him with her purse. Angelo was out of range, though, scooting along Melrose with his dirty curls bouncing.

The Mustang voiced an oily, predatory snarl and rumbled on. Kitty watched its taillights for a moment, then skated to her next drop. And that should have been that. End of scene. Fade to black. Except she saw the Mustang again not forty minutes later, at a red light on Beverly. Kitty put it down to coincidence, but logged it. She made her delivery (an eight-ball stuffed into a Taco Bell wrapper) at a nearby bus stop, photographed the pickup, and checked her backpack. Three drops remaining, then home.

A third sighting of the Mustang—on Sunset this time, ten minutes from her apartment—put her on alert, which developed into a deeper concern when the vehicle started following, then drew alongside her. It matched her speed for fifty yards, give or take, with Kitty looking dead ahead, playing it cool. Maybe the driver would get bored and floor it if she didn’t react. Instead, the passenger window rolled down and the Viking’s voice rose above the engine’s steady rumble.

“You can really shift on that thing.”

Kitty ignored him. She zigzagged between pedestrians, lithe as a ribbon. Farther along Sunset, a siren whooped three times, like the call of some exotic bird, and acoustic music strummed from a late-night café.

“I’d like to talk to you,” the Viking said. “If you have a moment.”

“I don’t.” Now Kitty looked over. “And stop following me.”