But Merker wasn’t slowing down. We’d wandered into a residential area, and he was taking a left and then a right and then a left. I don’t think he had any idea where he was—I certainly had no idea where we were—but as long as he wasn’t being followed, that was all that mattered.

There were a number of envelopes Trixie had dumped onto the table. One of them, I remembered, was from a car company. The words “Recall Notice” had been stamped on the front.

German cars, Trixie had said derisively. Great to drive, but they were always having little things going wrong with them. Fuel injection, power seats—

The sirens, having faded briefly, were getting louder again. It almost sounded as though they were ahead of, instead of behind, us.

“Hear that?” Leo said.

“Shit!” Merker said, wheeling the car down another quiet residential street. “I don’t even know where the fuck we are.”

I’ve never been a very good passenger. Not with Sarah, not with friends, certainly not with Angie when she was learning to drive. I spend a lot of time pressing my right foot into the firewall, thinking that maybe, if I press hard enough, a brake pedal will miraculously appear, the car will slow down.

Riding with Merker, the belt around my neck, whizzing past other cars at high speed, pedestrians jumping out of our way, I thought I’d break my ankle, I was pressing so hard. A van backed out of a drive into our path, and I slipped my hands up between my neck and the belt, seeking to mitigate its strangling effect when we collided.

I closed my eyes.

When another two seconds went by without an impact, I opened them.

“Close, eh?” Merker said, twirling the pencil in the air.

Trixie had mentioned something else about her car. Another problem, something she’d been notified about in the mail.

Air bags. That was it. Something about the air bags. That they were extra sensitive, that the slightest bump on the front bumper could set them off.

If Merker hit something, even nudged it, and if that set off the air bags, maybe that would provide enough of a distraction that I could turn the belt around, bring the buckle to the front, loosen it enough to get my head out, and bail out of the car. Merker didn’t have the gun, Leo did, and I wasn’t convinced he’d be as quick to use it. And it would take a few seconds to hand it to Merker in the front seat.

Merker made another turn, slammed on the brakes. He’d taken us into a dead end. He threw the car into reverse, backed up so quickly he couldn’t control the steering, and the front end of the car whipped around so that we were facing the other way immediately. Back into drive, and we were off again.