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shoot.
    The stucco-sheathed, concrete-block wall was six feet high, capped with bull-nose bricks that were slippery with rain. He got a grip, pulled himself up, scrabbling at the stucco with the toes of his athletic shoes.
    As he slid onto the top of the wall, belly against the cold bricks, and drew up his legs, gunfire erupted behind him. Bullets smacked into the concrete blocks, so close that chips of stucco sprayed his face.
    Nobody shouted a goddamned warning.
    He rolled off the wall into the neighboring property, and automatic weapons chattered again—a longer burst than before.
    Submachine guns in a residential neighborhood. Craziness. What the hell kind of cops were these?
    He fell into a tangle of rosebushes. It was winter; the roses had been pruned; even in the colder months, however, the California climate was sufficiently mild to encourage some growth, and thorny trailers snared his clothes, pricked his skin.
    Voices, flat and strange, muffled by the static of the rain, came from beyond the wall: “This way, back here, come on!”
    Spencer sprang to his feet and flailed through the rose brambles. A spiny trailer scraped the unscarred side of his face and curled around his head as if intent on fitting him with a crown, and he broke free only at the cost of punctured hands.
    He was in the backyard of another house. Lights in some of the ground-floor rooms. A face at a rain-jeweled window. A young girl. Spencer had the terrible feeling that he’d be putting her in mortal jeopardy if he didn’t get out of there before his pursuers arrived.
     

     
    After negotiating a maze of yards, block walls, wrought iron fences, cul-de-sacs, and service alleys, never sure if he had lost his pursuers or if they were, in fact, at his heels, Spencer found the street on which he had parked the Explorer. He ran to it and jerked on the door.
    Locked, of course.
    He fumbled in his pockets for the keys. Couldn’t find them. He hoped to God he hadn’t lost them along the way.
    Rocky was watching him through the driver’s window. Apparently he found Spencer’s frantic search amusing. He was grinning.
    Spencer glanced back along the rain-swept street. Deserted.
    One more pocket. Yes. He pressed the deactivating button on the key chain. The security system issued an electronic bleat, the locks popped open, and he clambered into the truck.
    As he tried to start the engine, the keys slipped through his wet fingers and fell to the floor.
    “Damn!”
    Reacting to his master’s fear, no longer amused, Rocky huddled timidly in the corner formed by the passenger seat and the door. He made a thin, interrogatory sound of concern.
    Though Spencer’s hands tingled from the rubber pellets that had stung them, they were no longer numb. Yet he fumbled after the keys for what seemed an age.
    Maybe it was best to lie on the seats, out of sight, and keep Rocky below window level. Wait for the cops to come…and go. If they arrived just as he was pulling away from the curb, they would suspect he was the one who had been in Valerie’s house, and they would stop him one way or another.
    On the other hand, he had stumbled into a major operation with a lot of manpower. They weren’t going to give up easily. While he was hiding in the truck, they might cordon off the area and initiate a house-to-house search. They would also inspect parked cars as best they could, peering in windows; he would be pinned by a flashlight beam, trapped in his own vehicle.
    The engine started with a roar.
    He popped the hand brake, shifted gears, and pulled away from the curb, switching on windshield wipers and headlights as he went. He had parked near the corner, so he hung a U-turn.
    He glanced at the rearview mirror, the side mirror. No armed men in black uniforms.
    A couple of cars sped through the intersection, heading south on the other avenue. Plumes of spray fanned behind them.
    Without even pausing at the stop sign, Spencer turned right and entered the southbound