“Hey, she’s pretty good. She helped me with my thing. What do you think is going to happen, anyway? Do you think the bridge is going to fall down or something?”

“No,” Lucy said.

“Then what?”

“Brynn, I don’t want to talk about this, okay?”

Her friend held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. Just relax. We’ll get out of here soon. I’ll turn up the music.”

Brynn did. The radio blared an Elton John song. “Bennie and the Jets.” Elton thumped through the speakers, and the music fought with the roar of the wind.

Lucy knew that bridges didn’t bother most people. Here they were, all of them imprisoned on a strip of steel and concrete high above the bay, and nobody else cared. She looked around at the other cars. A man in a Lexus beside them barked into a cell phone; he was simply annoyed by the delay. Several people texted; she saw thumbs flying. A DVD played on the dashboard screen in a minivan. She recognized the movie. Inside Out.

It was just one more California traffic jam.

Then Lucy’s mouth went dry. With her head craned to look behind her, she spotted a black Cutlass with smoked windows three lanes over and one car length behind them. The Cutlass was dented and dirty. She only noticed it because at the moment she looked, the passenger window rolled halfway down. The window was dark, the night was dark, and the car was dark. Even so, for a single moment, she saw a face behind the glass, deep inside the car.

Not a face. A mask.

The mask was bone white, with a grotesquely oversized smile, framed by cherry-red lips. The rounded eyeholes were chambered, like the eyes of a fly. The chin made a sharp V, and the white forehead had deep, exaggerated bones that stretched halfway up the skullcap. Ropes of black hair—a wig—hung down on both sides of the mask. It grinned at her.

“Holy shit!” Lucy exclaimed.

Brynn glanced at her. “What is it?”

“That guy! Look!”

Brynn peered over her shoulder. “I don’t see anything.”

The window of the Cutlass was closed now. They couldn’t see inside. Lucy wondered if it had ever been open. Maybe she was hallucinating. The terror of the bridge was making her imagine things that weren’t there.

“What did you see?” Brynn asked.

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

“You’re still really scared?”

“Yes.”

“Look, all you have to do is sit and wait,” Brynn said. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I know, but I’m afraid I’m going to freak out.”

“Close your eyes. Breathe slowly in and out. My shrink said it was called self-soothing.”