Silver sky again. Hot night air blowing through the window of my car, which I’d unrolled halfway to Lou’s house. While I’d been inside the station, the sun had gone down. The moon lounged like an actress getting ready for her close-up, and the stars bit little holes into the blanket around her.

Lou had left me a message, but I hadn’t gotten it until I’d left the interrogation room. There had been no reception there, as though they’d encased the place in concrete. Nowhere for the signal to land.

When I called, she said she needed to see me. She said it was urgent. She said please.

I needed to see her, too.

I zoomed through the streets away from the police station, being very careful not to think my thoughts. Above me, the gray-green palm trees zipped by like silver streamers guiding my way. I was going too fast or the cars in front of me were too slow, and I had to pull into the other lane to pass, nearly kissing the bumper of the car in front, the pop of the headlights like small explosions that blinded me even as I pulled back into the blue twilight of my own lane.

I kept checking the rearview. I couldn’t see any headlights that kept after me. But I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t shake the feeling that MacLeish or Escobar would be keeping tabs on me for the full twenty-four hours until I brought them the cash.

There was no way they were getting that money.

I parked the car in Lou’s driveway, in front of a bed of fat, white hydrangea globes. Lou’s small bungalow was immaculately manicured, with miles of quality turf rolling up to the front door. The grass looked like it had been cut with the precision of nail clippers. In the middle of the lawn, a small cherub puked water into the bowl at his feet.

Lou pulled the door open, hip leaning against the jamb. Her fingertips were painted a bright vermilion nearly identical to my now-flaky power lipstick. Her dark red hair was damp and curled around her shoulders. Sometime not too long before, she’d taken a shower and slung on a slinky black kimono, which hugged her in all the interesting places. Lou’s face cracked into a smile, as though she hadn’t spit my tongue out of her mouth and stormed off the last time I’d seen her, and she reached in for a hug.

“Hi,” Lou said, her voice breathy and shy. “Come in. Have a drink.”

I stared at her. Her voice on my machine had sounded desperate, wounded. And then there had been that kiss. And even though she didn’t know it, I was a marked woman living on borrowed time. “I guess,” I said. It was as good a place to start as any.