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glanced in the rearview mirror. “Shit!” He slammed the accelerator and the pickup rocketed and swerved, throwing her against the door that wouldn’t open. “Shit, shit, shit!” They lurched across two lanes and back, cars honking, and then hung on the rear quarter of a tanker truck, its warnings of explosive cargo spattered with mud.
    “What, what!”
    “Get down, it’s them!” Another burst of speed and they shot ahead, pulling narrowly in front of the truck, its horn blaring. Barrow’s hand, wide and powerful, grabbed Rominy’s head and shoved it down on the bench seat so hard that her cheek bounced against the old vinyl, her only view his blue-jean thigh and the dirty floor of the pickup. “Stay down, they might shoot!”
    She didn’t dare look, imagining bullets puncturing the old truck as if it were aluminum foil. They were weaving like Road Warrior lunatics, and all Rominy’s attentions were focused on trying to recall half-forgotten Hail Marys for what she was convinced were the last seconds of her life. The nuns were right, she should have gone to Confession.
    “They’re coming . . .”
    She squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear the full-throated roar of a heavy SUV or truck and the answering whine of the old pickup. Then a pop, and a whistle of wind.
    “Damn.” He seemed resigned. “They’re shooting.”
    “Please, please, stop this thing . . .”
    “Cops!” He sounded exultant and their speed abruptly slackened. “They tried to keep up and the Patrol nailed them!” They swerved a final time and steadily decelerated. “Hallelujah yes, the cops are stopping them! Oh boy, they’d better get rid of that gun.”
    “Are the police following us, too?” she asked with hope.
    “No, thank God. They’re busy with skinheads.” The truck’s sound changed, and she sensed they’d taken an off-ramp. She was shaking in fear and confusion, humiliated at having her head almost in this bastard’s lap. Then they coasted to a stop.
    He put his hand on her head again. “Stay down, for a light or two.”
    Of course, maybe he’d saved her life once more. Or he was a complete schizoid. Hail Mary, what in heaven is going on? “Where are we?”
    “Everett. We’ll go through town to make sure we’ve shaken them before getting back on the freeway.”
    “Please go to the authorities.” She felt defeated, exhausted, hopeless.
    “I told you, the police can’t help us, not yet. Though I gotta say, three cheers for the Washington State Patrol. They nailed those bastards. That’s a big ticket, driving like we were. They’ll have to breathalyze, the whole nine yards. I think we’re safe, Rominy. At least for the next five minutes.”
    “I don’t feel safe. I thought we were going to crash.”
    “I’m a better driver than that.”
    “It felt like Mister Toad’s Wild Ride in Disneyland.”
    “I’ve done some amateur stock car.” He gently touched her shoulder. “You can sit up now.”
    They were on an avenue that ran by Puget Sound, still heading north, a bluff with houses to their right. Rominy felt sick, and light-headed from fear. Her cheeks were wet from tears, and she was ashamed of them. Shouldn’t she be braver?
    “I just want it to end.”
    “Sorry, it’s just beginning.” He gave her a sympathetic look, his features strong but not unkind. “But we’ll make it, you’ll see. It’s important, or I never would have involved you.”
    She groaned and noticed a draft of cool air by her neck and a thin whistling. She turned.
    There was a bullet hole in the pickup’s rear window and a web of radiating cracks.

7
    New York, United States
    September 10, 1938
    T he American Museum of Natural History was a castle of curiosities bordering New York’s Central Park, a national junk drawer of the sensational and the educational. Depression crowds still paid their quarter to see bone hunter Barnum Brown’s Tyrannosaur in the Jurassic Hall, the reconstructed Pueblo Indian village in the