When he turned again at Bryant, she guessed where he was going. A block later, he took the elevated highway that led toward the Bay Bridge. He was heading across the water.

They soon left the city behind as the bridge climbed over the bay. Darren stayed in the left lane. The eastbound lanes were claustrophobic on the lower level of the double-decker span, but when they passed Yerba Buena Island, they emerged into the open air under the white lights of the new bridge tower. She slowed, her eyes drawn to the westbound lanes, where Brynn Lansing had taken a fatal dive to the water. Then she hit her brakes hard, because Darren had slowed, too, in the same spot.

As if he were remembering.

She followed him to the end of the bridge. A mile later, he headed north on Highway 24. The Lexus climbed into the Berkeley hills and then disappeared into the mouth of the Caldecott Tunnel leading toward the towns of the East Bay. Beyond the tunnel, he exited immediately, and she almost missed the turn. Then he curled up the twisting mountain road with Frankie behind him.

Fog sank down the steep hillside through the trees. His taillights came and went. She was conscious of breathtaking drops falling away into darkness on the right shoulder, where she could see the faraway city lights in the valley. Houses clung precariously to the sharp slope. There had been a fire in this neighborhood years before, burning through the dry grass and reducing dozens of houses to ash, because the roads were too narrow and steep for fire trucks to traverse.

Darren pulled ahead of her, driving confidently, as if he’d navigated this route many times. She didn’t dare go any faster herself. When she inched around a hairpin turn, she saw that his lights had vanished, and they didn’t reappear. She was on the downslope of the mountain now, on a road barely wider than her car. Houses loomed among soaring pine trees on both sides. If he’d come this far, she assumed that he’d turned into one of the steep driveways, but she didn’t know which one.

Frankie drifted to a stop. She spotted a house with no lights and a foreclosure sign posted outside. She pulled off the road in front of the house and turned off her car. Getting out, she waited in the darkness as a large SUV crept down the narrow road past her. When it was gone, she marched uphill in the middle of the street. The air was cold and damp. Most of the expensive houses were hidden behind walls of trees and vines. She stopped to examine each house, looking for Darren’s Lexus. Her presence alerted a dog that barked madly from behind a gate.