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After Mason parked the car, she had a sudden, pleasing thought. Leftovers . That grilled cheese had been a while ago, and the snacks at the bar had been…just snacks. Plus there’d been all that running and then all that waiting.

The house was dark and quiet, and when the light from the fridge cut across the kitchen floor, Mason was thrilled to see she was right. Plenty of leftovers. Feeling slightly guilty, she quietly started assembling a plate. It would just take a minute or two in the microwave…

A noise. From the main part of the house. Fuck, Julia was going to find out she was a leftover thief. Dammit. A basic tenet of recovery is promptly admitting when you’re wrong, so Mason sighed and headed out into the hallway to face the music.

Nothing. She stood in the hallway with her head cocked.

Another noise, this time clearly coming from the office. Julia had seemed so tired, but maybe she’d decided to keep working. Mason frowned, and started quietly along the hallway. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she realized the noises she’d heard weren’t Julia, but someone being stealthy. She slowed down, paused, listening. She felt herself tensing, getting ready. Help me out, central nervous system , she told herself. Get that adrenaline up and running . She could feel it moving through her body, feel it like cocaine, like a shot of scotch, like high-quality chemistry, which of course it was. Bespoke, calibrated perfectly, which is why it works so well.

She got close to the office and started hugging the wall, moving toward the door. She could feel silence now, feel someone else’s stillness, the rat-brain sense of being watched. She paused again, waited.

Come on, motherfucker.

And they came.

A shadow detached from an angle she didn’t expect, past the door, into the curve of the corridor. Darted faster than you would think possible, coming at her with their arms folded tight against their body. Mason had been watching the door, thinking they were in the room behind it, and as they slammed into her, she realized she hadn’t been ready, not even close to ready for the full weight of an angry person determined to take her out and down. The attacker had a much more developed plan than she did, aiming solely to disable her and escape, and they nailed the execution. Glancing off her, spinning her against the wall, hard. Her body weight did the rest, and her attacker took the kinetic energy generated by the collision and rode it along the hallway like free fall. It was elegant despite its desperation, and they were halfway to the front door and freedom when the lights came on.

Mason was lying on the floor and had an excellent view of Julia’s legs as she came flying down the stairs, yelled stop and was ignored. The front door slammed and a second later Julia was pulling at Mason’s arm.

“Get up! Let’s go! Come on!” Mason flipped over and scrambled to her feet. She heard an engine start as they reached the front door. Julia had it open and was through; Mason was faster than she was and passed her. The criminal’s car had been parked up the hill behind the house, which was why they hadn’t seen it when they’d gotten home. She’d parked the Citro?n in the garage, though, and nothing blocked the car as it came down the hill and nearly hit her before accelerating on the driveway. There was a notable concussion when it hit the flat area by the house, and then it was gone, dust flying, wheels spinning, out and away.

“Shit!” Mason was literally choking on its dust, bent double and trying to get her systems online.

“Get the fuck in, Mason,” Julia yelled, pulling up in front of her. She’d ignored the escaping car and run into the garage, driving out in something low and sleek, its engine overwhelmingly loud as she leaned across and flung the door open. “Get in!”

Mason scrambled in and barely had the door closed before Julia took off like a rabbit, the force of acceleration momentarily pressing Mason against the seat, making it impossible to put on her seat belt. She felt the engine directly behind her, the sensation of being pushed by a giant hand, scooped along as effortlessly as a thistle. Something clattered in the seat well, but she couldn’t even lower her head to look.

“We’ll catch them.” Julia was strangely calm now that they were underway.

“Do I call the cops?” Mason searched herself and realized she’d left her phone on the kitchen counter. Literally had a moment of panic at being separated from it, in the midst of all this, addiction being what it is.

“No,” said Julia. “Catch first, cops later.”

Mason finally looked at her properly. Julia had clearly been getting ready for bed. Her hair was down, half her makeup off, half still on. She was wearing boxer shorts and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. Mason had the random thought that if she’d made a list of the top ten things she thought Julia wore to bed, this particular ensemble would not have been on it. The older woman was sitting well back in the driver’s seat, driving barefoot. Her body was completely relaxed, even as her hands gripped and spun the wheel. Her face was calm, her eyes sharp as they took the dusty curves of the hill road, the high beams cutting through the dark in fat slices, jumping from tree to bush to gaps that led to the precipitous drop Mason knew was right there. The driveway hugged the canyon wall on one side, but nothing separated it from a fall that would kill them if they went over the edge.

Mason looked at the speedometer. Ninety-eight. Fuck.

“Julia,” she said, her adrenaline starting to modulate, fight ebbing away in the face of so much flight. “What’s the plan here? Killing ourselves probably isn’t the smartest…”

“Shut it,” said Julia. “They broke into my house. I have questions.” She took a sharp curve without hitting the brakes till the last minute, timing her hard foot to perfectly fishtail the bend and cut the most geometrically efficient corner ever seen. The lateral force pushed Mason against the door and the corresponding centripetal acceleration flung her back as Julia hit the gas out of the corner, and for the first time they saw taillights ahead of them. Again, the noise of something getting thrown around under the seat. Mason risked a look down, but couldn’t see anything.

“Yesssss,” hissed Julia quietly. “Momma’s gonna catch your ass now, cocksucker.”

Mason suddenly felt herself starting to grin, despite her healthy fear of imminent death.

“Get him, Julia,” she said, “but don’t kill us in the process.”

Julia snorted, flying through the gateposts at the end of the drive and accelerating on the smoothly finished surface of the city street. Up here there were no parked cars, the hill road narrow and prone to catching fire. The curves and bends were sharp, and the gradient of descent severe. Some canyon roads took their time to make it from the crest of the hills that surround Los Angeles to the flats of Sunset Boulevard or some other long horizontal that ran along the foot, but not this one. This street was in a hurry to get to town and fuck things up. Julia had traveled it several times a day for nearly two decades, and she knew it like a lover of old, its curves familiar, her fingertips on the wheel completely certain, anticipating every inch.

Mason realized Julia was singing under her breath. She was happy.

“I thought you said you didn’t drive,” she said.

“No,” replied Julia, evenly, “I said Claudia usually did the driving, but that’s because I like to drive like this, and she prefers to observe the rules of the road. She drives, fewer tickets. Plus, I find it hard to remember if I currently have a license or not.”

She paused as the car ahead of them bottomed out momentarily in a dip and lost a hubcap, the silver disc spinning back toward them. She effortlessly avoided it. “Like right now, no license, obviously.” She rolled her eyes, leaning forward a little as they drew closer and closer to the car ahead. “Get the plate, Mason. Once we hit the city, things are going to get a little trickier.” She was right behind the other car now, still doing ninety, her expression suggesting she was driving Mason to school rather than chasing someone who really didn’t want to be caught.

Mason looked around. Nothing. “Do you have your phone?”

Julia shook her head. “Glove box.”

Owner’s manual. Mason discovered she was riding in a Lamborghini Miura, which might have meant something had she known anything about fancy cars. She wondered briefly if this was the car Julia had chosen when she was trying to get away on the night of Tony’s murder, then she realized there was nothing to write with. She looked ahead and tried to read the license plate. First letter a B, maybe? She blinked, tried to see better, make it out through the clouds of dust both cars were throwing up, the speed and her adrenaline making it difficult to focus.

Julia pulled up to the much taller car in front, then oversteered a little as she started to pass on the right, nudging the nose of the car against the flank of the pursued, the momentary contact literally causing sparks. She handled the car expertly, inches separating the two vehicles as they took another downward curve, the canyon wall high at this point of the hill, dry, scrubby grass atop a striped twelve-foot wall of clay and rubble. The other car hit the wall for a second, knocking rocks and sending up a cloud of dust.

“Stop, you asshole,” muttered Julia, pulling the car halfway alongside, nudging it against the other car again, still totally in control. “I will end you here and now.” The car rocked and fishtailed as the other driver brought their car hard against them, the two cars now completely filling the road, side by side and still going waaaaay over the speed limit.

“Julia…” Mason held on tight to the door handle, bracing herself. “If anything comes up the hill, we’re fucked.”

“Then hope it doesn’t. I want him to stop.”

Mason looked at the other car. It was much, much taller than they were; from the passenger seat in the low sports car she couldn’t even see the driver. The windows were tinted, anyway. She wished she knew more about cars. All she could tell about this one was that it was big, fast and had zero interest in stopping.

“Should have taken the fucking Mercedes,” muttered Julia. “I went for speed when what I needed was speed plus mass…Note to self.”

The other car definitely had mass, and Mason thought maybe the driver suddenly realized their advantage, because as they took the last long curve of the hill, the one that opened up onto Sunset in less than a quarter mile, they pushed back against the Lamborghini, steadily forcing it toward the open edge of the street.

And then, ahead, around the corner, a truck. The driver, tired from navigating the city as it was waking up, the Los Angeles drivers fucking insane—honestly, this city was the worst—saw them and hit his brakes and horn simultaneously, but it was too late. The thief’s car gave them one final shove, and at the moment Mason decided this was where her life was going to end, head-on collision at eighty in a tiny sports car built before airbags, Julia hit her brakes and angled the wheels perfectly to avoid the truck, spinning out onto the dusty side of the road, coming to a rocking rest four inches from the wall.

“God fucking dammit,” she said, smacking the wheel. She breathed hard and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she turned to Mason.

“Did you get the plate?”

Mason shook her head. “Sorry. First letter was a B. I think.” She paused. “Not sure.”

Julia said fuck and stared out of the windshield. A thick layer of dust was still settling on the car. The sun was coming up, the sky purpling. Mason suddenly realized the car was yellow, and wasn’t sure why that surprised her.

Miraculously, the engine was still purring. Julia put the car back into gear and hit the gas.

“You need to work on your situational awareness. And your eyesight. That was fun. Let’s go home and work out what they were looking for.”