straight street with the Taurus closing on him.

“Who is it?” Jean said.

“They’ve been following us.”

“What do they want?”

He was very cool. “We’ll lose them up here,” he said, as if it was an answer.

The speedometer popped up to seventy. Jimmy went through a red light at a cross street called Ambrose and the Taurus stayed with him.

But didn’t make it.

A Jeep coming fast through the intersection tagged the left rear panel of Lon and Vince’s Taurus and sent it spinning, a pair of quick 360s in the middle of the X.

Jimmy watched it in the mirror, the hit and the spinout. He was already at the next corner. This time the light was green.

But then the black BMW came at him from the intersecting street, Los Feliz Boulevard, trying to T-bone him, or at least be there when somebody else did.

Jimmy stood on it and cranked the wheel, sliding sideways to avoid him, then sped up the hill as the BMW skidded to a stop inches away from the nose of a fat beige Lexus.

The two Sailors in the Taurus recovered and went after Jimmy, front wheels smoking.

The BMW had stalled out. The driver lit it up again, backed it into a hard J and went after them, fishtailing for a second before the big powerful car got into the groove.

The three cars—Challenger, Taurus, BMW—blew into Griffith Park on a straightaway on a boulevard through a canopy of trees, blew one, two, three past a sign nobody had time to read:OBSERVATORY GOLFCOURSE ZOO MERRY-GO -ROUND

The Taurus was falling back, outgunned. Jimmy was at eighty, leading the thing. Jean sat with her hands on the dash in front of her, like it was a roller coaster.

The first climbing left into the higher parklands was coming up fast. Just as they went into the hard curve, the BMW came up on their right, door to door. Jimmy dropped down a gear and the Challenger and the BMW took it together, mirror to mirror.

Jimmy looked over to see the driver. The BMW eased off and fell back in behind him, then rolled over onto Jimmy’s left, moving up. They went like that through a pair of esses, a chicane. Jimmy would surge ahead for a moment, but the BMW would gain in the corners.

“I might have brought the wrong car,” he said.

Jean was wide-eyed.

“Stop, please,” she said.

The two cars banged fenders as the BMW driver tried to shove them into the outside rail. Jimmy got his first good look at him, but didn’t have time to process it.

The Taurus was back.

The three cars came around a corner, three wide, and there was the Griffith Observatory, lit up, green-domed, as sudden as an explosion. The turn was a hairpin and the screeching tires made people look, tourists and teenagers crossing over from the parking lot.

The BMW sideswiped a van and spun into the parking lot and the Taurus rear-ended it. They were stopped.

Jimmy pulled away.

It was all downhill now, a straightaway down the backside of the low mountains. He wasn’t slowing.

Jean looked back.

“Stop,” she said. “They’re gone.”

But as soon as she’d said it, she saw the two pairs of headlights coming after them. She looked at him, at the look in his eyes. He was all the way into it, given over to it. It was frightening.

They roared past two men standing close by a tree. Ahead was a cluster of cars, lights out, pairs of men leaning against the fenders, others sitting atop picnic tables, eyes bright dots in the Challenger’s headlights.

Jimmy braked hard and stopped. Stopped dead.

“What are you doing?” Jean said.

“Get out. I’ll come back for you.”

She didn’t want to get out.

“Get out.”

Jean opened her door.

“It’s all right,” Jimmy said, but he was still that same man, changed and frightening and too full of purpose.

She got out and he sped away, the power slamming the passenger door closed.

Jimmy looked up in the mirror at the paired men and Jean, a couple of them stepping toward her.

Ahead he had a clean straight run through a corridor of tall, dusted eucalyptus, a bridle path on one side. The speedometer, dim and green, touched a hundred. The Challenger was made for this.

He smiled.

In the moment he thought he was made for this, too. He shifted up a gear. The engine sucked in boost. Ahead, the mouth of a gentle curve. Jimmy barely slowed as he steered into it.

Horses. Horses.

Suddenly there were horses alongside the road, six horses, empty saddles, tied together and led by