She considers getting out and trying to flag a passing trucker. You never know who might be in a car or SUV. You might be calling trouble to your side. However, truckers are known to be largely reliable—aren’t they?—and willing to help a stranded motorist.

But the weather is atrocious. She’ll be soaked in two minutes. And there’s no guarantee that anyone will stop, not in these days of few Samaritans. Anyway, because of the weather, there’s a lot less traffic than usual, less likelihood that some helpful soul will pass and take notice of her. Better to wait for a highway patrol officer to see the dark car and possibly stop to check it out. Yeah. That’s what any CHP trooper will do, and one will pass sooner than later. She has faith in the police. Her mom likes police-procedural novels, and Emily has read at least two hundred of them to Calista over the years. The cops don’t always get their man in real life, the way they do in books, because there’s no writer setting up the chain of clues for them, but most of them try their best. She’s sure that they try their best and that one will be coming along shortly.

Inland, lights glimmer high in the hills, too far to walk to them. Through the screening storm, she can see no lights to the west and assumes there aren’t any homes in the vicinity. If you’ve got to break down, always do it in the equivalent of the Hindu Kush or the Australian outback, where it’s so much more adventurous.

“There’s a horse ranch to the south, along the coast,” David tells her from the back seat of the car. “Go to the horse ranch, go now, quick,” but she does not hear him. A sudden coldness on his forehead steals his voice from him, and he is no longer in the back seat, but once more behind Emily’s eyes.

The lack of a heater isn’t a problem. She’s warm enough. She wouldn’t mind some music, but there’s no way to get any. She has a bottle of water and a PowerBar. She’ll be all right. Tough it out. It’s not like being shipwrecked on a desert island, not going to have to live on coconuts and raw rats for a year, not going to have to drink her own urine or anything like that. Suck it up, Carlino.