He gave her a little shake. “You’re all right now.”

“Yeah, but I was scared.”

It was odd, she thought. She’d been frightened when her house had been broken into, and when Steve’s house had been firebombed, and when the Cadillac had tried to smash them into the guardrail. She’d been rattled on those occasions, but she hadn’t been terrified—not like this. When the passenger in the Cadillac had turned around and pointed a gun at her, she’d felt her heart go cold.

She rested her head on Steve’s shoulder and let his warmth and strength seep into her. Sometimes people needed to come close to losing something before they understood its value, Daisy thought. Her life might not be perfect right now, but the imperfections seemed much less significant. There were parts of her life that were very special; there were people in her life that were very wonderful. And there was always the opportunity to make things better. Changing direction no longer seemed so depressing.

Koselle and the uniformed officers had the two men out of the Cadillac and on the ground. An ambulance and more police cars whined in the distance.

“I would’ve gone and helped them make the collar,” Elsie said, “but I can’t move so fast, what with my steel hip.”

Kevin grinned at her. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You were awesome. Man, you smashed right into them. You really gave them a shot.”

“Yeah, I guess I was pretty good,” Elsie agreed.

The two men were carted off, and everyone crowded around the cars to assess the damage. The SUV was smashed front and rear. Doors were buckled, steam hissed from the radiator, and the hood looked like an accordion. Koselle’s car had caught the front of the Cadillac, and the entire right front quarter panel of the cop car had been ripped off. The two blue-and-whites were totaled. Miraculously, no one had been seriously hurt. The Cadillac didn’t have a dent.

“They just don’t make cars like they used to,” Elsie said.

Twenty-four hours later, Daisy, Steve, and Bob sat on the front stoop of Daisy’s town house and watched the sun set into the trees behind Lula Kaplan’s brick duplex. The parking lot seemed oddly empty to Daisy. There were no undercover squad cars, no policemen on surveillance.