Frames looked ahead and pulled the car right to race along the paved shoulder, out of the truck’s lights. The truck roared past, its horn shrieking, and buffeted the Charger in a giant wash of air.

The second dog fought to get around the first and pull free of the seat frame.

Then Frames thought of it: the pepper spray, the OC, left over from the Peña raid. Rivas had given it to him, and he’d put it…where? On the floor of his own car. Driver or passenger side? He lifted one knee to brace the steering wheel and reached with his left hand under the seat. First nothing—then he felt it. He raised the small canister of pepper spray and held it against the steering wheel. His fingers found its trigger.

The effort turned the car. The passenger-side wheels fell over the pavement edge, forcing the car to straddle asphalt and gravel. He braked, but the car shook as half of it raced across the rough ground at sixty miles an hour. Without looking back, he swung his left arm over his right and shot the OC behind him, just as the second dog broke free. The spray hit the animal in the face. It leaped back onto the first dog, throwing both dogs onto the car’s passenger side. Their weight flung the car farther off the shoulder. Frames felt the rear tires now digging through dirt and grass.

He grabbed the wheel again, heard something crack, and saw a signpost, sheared off by the bumper, sail over the roof. He aimed the OC at the dog crushing his arm. The jet squirted into the animal’s eyes. The dog yelped, jerking back its head and releasing Frames’s arm.

The OC seared Frames’s arm wound and burned his eyes. The car dipped, weightless for an instant, and plunged down a grass embankment. Rough ground flew at him through his blurred vision. The car shuddered like it was coming apart. He pumped the brakes as the car hurtled down, then rocketed up the bank’s other side. Too late, he saw the chain-link fence. Jamming the brakes, he hit the fence, and just before he lost consciousness, he watched the windshield spray toward him and felt the airbag explode into his chest.

Chapter Twenty-Three

(i)

(THURSDAY, 2:45 A.M.)

Mahler sat alone in the ER waiting room, his head tipped against the top of a sofa. The hospital corridor was quiet, the ceiling lights dimmed. A TV screen mounted on the opposite wall soundlessly played cable news—a suicide bomber in Pakistan, cars aflame, people running in the street. He closed his eyes.

“When I graduate from college, I’m going to marry Ron Morrow,” Susan Hart said. As usual, the dead girl waited for him, confident he would arrive.

Here we go, Mahler thought. “The kid you were dating? The one we investigated for your murder?”