Luckily, she noticed somebody who might be pulling out. Whoever it was hadn't turned on his headlights yet, but somebody was sitting in the driver's seat, and she slowed.

'We there?' Kevin slowly eased himself up in the seat.

'I just want to ask this guy if he's leaving…' She'd stopped, leaned over to roll down Kevin's window. 'Excuse me,' she said, 'are you…?'

The man's own window was down and suddenly there was a bright light shining in their faces. Kevin put a hand up, shielding his eyes or trying to hide, but she had no time to react before there was a forceful knock right at her ear, on the window on her side. A man standing there, holding a badge.

'Kevin…!'

'Jesus…jam it!'

'I don't know, I-'

'Melanie…!'

And her foot was down and her little GEO Sport actually got some rubber, squealing on the fog-slicked street.

'What am I doing…? I can't do this…'

'You're doing it. Just keep going, drive!' He was turned around, looking behind them. In her rearview she saw headlights come on, then the terrifying red-and-blue flash of the police, which must have reminded Kevin…

'Turn off your lights!'

It was a short block, and as she turned the corner she saw them pull out, thought she heard another screech of tires, the sound of a siren winding up. No more looking back. She had a block on them. She would whip the next corner before they'd even come into view.

'Damn streetlights…'

'Don't hit your brakes.'

'I know, I know.'

Their pursuers had to slow at the corner to see where they were. Melanie took the next turn, back onto Santiago, coming up on Hoover Junior High. 'Which way? Which way? Are they back there?'

'Nobody yet. Oh yeah, here they come.'

'Shit shit shit.'

Kevin looked at her, pleased and surprised in the midst of it all. 'Well, will you listen to that?'

'Shut up, Kevin, where are they?'

They had turned back onto another of the abbreviated streets. As long as they had short blocks so the pursuers couldn't pick up speed, they had a chance, but they were fast running out of them. Taraval was a fairly main thoroughfare, running up toward Twin Peaks, and if they got stuck on that the other car could catch them in two minutes, less.

Still, there wasn't any choice. They couldn't continue straight, couldn't go back the way they had come. She turned left, running dark. 'Watch out!' A delivery van nearly smashing her, honking, swerving. A batmobile-turn onto the next immediate left, a street dead-ending in half a block at the entrance to the school, a pedestrian walkway with a three-foot-high metal post in the middle of it, on either side a six foot maximum clearance before you hit fences. She was heading directly for it.

Kevin, turning back: 'What are you doing?'

'Stay down!' she yelled, 'I'm jamming it!'

'Shee-it!'

'They back there?'

'Not yet.'

'All right. Now.' There's no way, she was thinking.

But it was the only way. Aiming the car at the dead center of one side of the walkway, she slammed her foot to the floor. She didn't realize that the screaming she heard was her own.

The side mirror snapped off with a pop, and they were in the school's open asphalt playground. She jerked the wheel as hard left as she could, hoping they were out of sight of the street behind them.

They there?'

'No.'

She kept moving, along the fence, seeing her spot, streaking then across the lot to the corridor between the low buildings, finally daring to use the brakes – lights or no lights, she had to stop – pulling up, killing the engine.

They both sat, breathing heavily, Kevin's attention still glued to the gate they had barely cleared.

Ten seconds passed.

Twenty.

They'd lost them.

'How did they know where you lived? Cindy?'

'I think so. Must have been.'

They waited a couple of minutes in their hiding place between the buildings at the school, then turned on their lights and exited at the main-entrance parking lot, getting back out to 19th and turning south, away from the city.

Melanie needed to spell it out for herself. 'She must have told the police about us, that you might try to get in touch with me.'

'She's a sweetheart, that Cindy. What do you say we go by her apartment and kill her.'

Melanie shook her head. Almost, for a minute, took him seriously. 'I think we should break her kneecaps first,' she said.

Kevin chuckled, going with her. 'Her kneecaps are already astoundingly ugly.'

'All of her is ugly.'

'Hideous. Grotesque. The ugliest woman on the planet. And you did good.'

'I'm prettier than her, that's why. You're as ugly as her, you can't drive straight.'

He reached a hand over and touched her hair, spoke softly. 'No part of you is as ugly as the prettiest part of her.'

She brought her hand up to cover his. 'So what do you think we ought to do now?'

' I think,' she said,' we' ve got to get you out of town, for a while, at least.'

A small hesitation, then Kevin nodded. 'Okay, one night. You call it, Melanie, you're doing better than me.'

It was a little after eleven. She took the first turnoff into Brisbane, home of the Cow Palace and little else. There was a row of strip motels, and Melanie pulled into the third one down on the right, the Star, because it had an interior courtyard invisible from the street. Kevin waited while she went to the office, his shoulders hunched, his ribs aching, unmoving.

'You know I've never done that before?'

'What?'

'Registered at a motel. I told the man it was just me. I think he was hitting on me a little.' She was whispering, turning on the television for background white noise, turning the channel to avoid news programs until she came to a rerun of 'Land of the Giants' and left it there, turned low.

Kevin had come in from his scrunched-down position in the car, which Melanie had parked directly in front of the room's door. Now he was making sure the drapes were closed all the way. Turning, he sat on the one double bed and looked across at Melanie sitting with one leg crossed over the other on the room's single, mostly green, upholstered chair.

Kevin thought that even though she had spent the better part of the day under tremendous pressure in the driver's seat of her car, Melanie was likely the best-looking female the night clerk had seen in a lot of days. No doubt he had tried to hit on her, an unattached young thing staying alone in a place like this.

In the room's dim light her dark hair still managed to shine. She wore a man's white shirt tucked into a pair of jeans that fit ideally. The shirt still looked ironed, its top three buttons undone and beginning to reveal the shadowy swell of her breasts. A glimpse of white brassiere with a lace border. He had no idea how she managed to retain her freshness under these conditions, and where before it would have bothered him that she was so perfect, tonight he thought it wasn't so bad.

Her shoulders seemed to settle. She let out a small sigh. 'Are you all right?' she asked.

'I don't know,' he said, the effort at speaking almost too much. 'I guess I should try Wes again.' He staggered over to the phone and listened to it ring eight times before he hung up. He didn't ask Melanie where she thought Wes might be – he knew what she'd say and he was afraid she'd be right, that Wes was somewhere getting himself into the bag.

He eased himself all the way into the chair, closed his eyes, letting his head fall forward, then raising it again, his expression tortured. 'I keep seeing it,' he said. 'I close my eyes and I keep seeing him…'

'Arthur Wade…'

'I think if I'd just known. I mean, it was like I didn't believe it was going to go that far, so maybe I didn't-'