Carly knocked it back to her. “Okay, but I could come in and just stay for a few minutes, then come back out to the car.”

Marcelline hesitated, and Carly brought the rest of her argument in a high-colored rush of persuasion. “It will be good. I can help. If I’m there, he’ll have to calm down. What’s he going to do? Kill you when he knows I’m here? You’ll be safer. I’ll be safer.”

Marcelline had to go. They had to go if it was going to be a they.

“I don’t think he’s going to kill anybody in a sandwich shop, but okay. You can come in. Say your piece. Or just be there. I’m not going to tell you how to handle this.” She smiled at Carly. “You’ve shown you know what to do.”

Carly smiled back. A real one, a worried one, but brave. It bruised Marcelline’s clanging heart.

Marcelline cleared tears from her throat. “All right. Let’s at least put the painting in the trunk.”

Carly snapped straight in her seat, ready to bolt. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Their eyes met. The air felt charged with two sets of nerves pumping electricity into the closed space.

“Go ahead,” Carly said. “Pop the trunk. And check in the mirror. Your mascara, it’s kinda . . .” Carly waved her finger vaguely eyeward on Marcelline.

She pushed the button to open the trunk for Carly, already out and unbuckling the garment bag, and then dug into her purse for her compact. She’d been sweating though she’d pointed the air conditioner straight at her face. A sooty snowfall of mascara flakes sprinkled her cheek ridge. Swiping helped some and smudged some. She wet the tip of her middle finger on her tongue to fix it.

The trunk lid slammed closed. The dark shape of Carly coming back around to the passenger side sent her shadow through the window.

A red car streaked in from the left across the windshield.

Carly screamed, “No!”

Jonathan’s car bucked on its front tires and squealed to a stop to keep from running her over. Carly had dashed out into the lane, just beyond the nose of Marcelline’s car.

“Carly, no!”

Marcelline was blocked in. Her thoughts slowed down. Parked cars on either side. Jonathan dead ahead. He opened his door and stepped out onto the asphalt.

The only open vista was behind Marcelline—beyond the sidewalk, the strip of grass that separated the people from the parking lot, and then the road beyond.

It was conditioned into every driver that it was off-limits. A bright green suggestion. But it wasn’t impossible. And the curb, too, again more of a guideline, a cement caution, not insurmountable. Literally. The only way out was behind her, past the back windshield, out past the back seat now empty of the Flinck. It was in the trunk. Loose. Unprotected.