The Mustang was airborne for a moment—four wheels off the ground—and came down with an uncomfortable thump. The trunk popped open. A cloud of dirt rose and followed the car as it slid down the embankment, turning slowly before stopping against a tree.

“Jesus . . . Jesus Christ.” Kitty picked herself up and made her way down the slope, using the sagebrush for cover where she could. She saw the wheels of her skateboard flashing in the Mustang’s one working headlight and diverted her course so that she could grab it. A gunshot cracked the dusty night as she did, and she screamed and fell back on her ass. The bullet ripped through the dirt to her left—way too close. Kitty pulled her board to her chest and scurried away. Two more gunshots echoed in quick succession. The first bullet grooved the trunk of an olive tree as she ducked beneath its branches. The second passed through the fist-sized gap between her right ear and shoulder. She turned instinctively and saw Xander leaning out of the Mustang’s passenger-side window, gun in hand. Perhaps if his head were clearer—if she hadn’t clocked him with her skateboard—he would have blown her out of her Nikes.

Kitty scrambled as deftly as she was able. She reached the wooden fence and toppled over in ungainly fashion, landing on the other side with a spine-jarring thud. She hissed in pain but didn’t stop—couldn’t stop. She got her knees beneath her, then her feet, daring a glimpse over the top of the fence as she stood. The Mustang was struggling to get moving, its wheels spinning in the dirt.

She threw down her board and moved, her body aching all over, her left eye full of blood. The parking lot was half empty. Kitty weaved between the vehicles, using them to cloak her escape.

Out onto a quiet industrial street, keeping to the shadows.

Just when Kitty began to believe she might be in the clear, the black SUV came sliding around the corner, tires smoking.

She got close enough to see Ruben behind the wheel—the whites of his wide eyes, his flaring nostrils. Ruben, who had once been Sly Boy’s ride-or-die, but had watched benignly as Johan decapitated him with a replica Viking ax. Clearly, he had all the loyalty of a rat snake. Another fractured player in this City of Fucked-Up Men.

He mounted the sidewalk—ballsy now, behind two tons of American hardware—and steered toward Kitty. There was an alleyway on her left, between a tool rental and industrial clothing store. Kitty just made it, feeling the heat of the Tahoe’s front end as it missed her by an arm’s length. The air rippled. Kitty hit the wall and bounced off. Her skateboard flipped away, lost in the darkness again.

The alleyway was too narrow for the SUV to squeeze through, but Ruben, wide as he was, would have no problem. Kitty got to her feet yet again, woozy and slow. She heard the SUV screech to a halt, then the driver’s door clunk open. Ruben’s voice followed, pumped on adrenaline, gasping into his cell.