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forehead, ready for use. Then she pulled the door open and slid outside, moving low so the parked cars hid her. She swung up into the bike's leather seat, keyed in its ignition code, and rocked the Harley forward, taking it off its kick stand in one smooth motion. The engine's loud rumble filled the street, echoing like thunder off the buildings to either side.
    Just as she was wheeling away, Night Owl caught a glimpse of a running figure in her rear view mirror. He was young, Asian and armed—and looked pissed as hell. He ran out into the street, heedless of honking traffic, and leveled the Uzi he was holding. Its barrel flared red. Bullets punched into the parked cars behind Night Owl, shattering windows and exploding tires. Pedestrians on the sidewalk dived for cover.
    Night Owl wrenched the bike right and disappeared around the corner onto
First Avenue
. Thankfully the rain had eased up a little, although the streets were still slick. She twisted the throttle, and the Harley leaped forward, exhaust roaring. Steering with one hand, she pulled the night-vision goggles down over her eyes. The world shifted into greens and grays.
    She was weaving in and out of traffic when she heard the squeal of tires behind her. The bike's rear view mirror flashed her a glimpse of the Saab, hot on her trail. The ganger in the passenger seat was leaning out of his window, trying to line her up in the Uzi's sights, but there seemed to be too many cars in the way. He ducked back inside.
    She swung onto
Knight Street
, which offered a clear, straight run. She needed to lose those fraggers—but she wasn't going to do that in this part of the city, where the roads ran grid-straight. She needed a bolt hole, and she knew just where to find one. All she had to do was stay alive for the five minutes it would take her to reach it.
    Side streets and red lights flashed by, and somehow both bike and Saab managed to miss clipping any of the cars that they rocketed past. Rain stung Night Owl's bare cheeks like ice-cold shotgun pellets, and her wet hair streamed out behind her. The water-repellent jeans she'd tucked into her Daytons fluttered like tarps in a hurricane, and her leather jacket pressed back against her chest. Wind roared in her ears.
    When she reached the southernmost end of
Knight Street
, she deked around a barrier onto the
Knight
Street
Bridge
. It had been condemned a year ago, after the Big One hit. This end of the bridge was intact, but the opposite side was a twisted skeleton, just waiting to collapse—a bridge to the ruin that had been the suburb of Richmond. A bridge to nowhere.
    Bullets spanged off a sagging light fixture beside the motorcycle as Night Owl flashed across the bridge. Even with her night-vision goggles, she had to rely on luck to find her way—rubble and holes flashed past so quickly that only her instinctive, last-second swerves got the Harley around them. At the last moment she spotted a gaping hole in the deck of the bridge that hadn't been there last week and deked around it in a tight swerve. Then she was below the crest of the bridge and zooming down the other side. In just a few seconds more, she'd be in the ruins.
    The Saab behind her was still accelerating; the driver must have managed to avoid the hole, too. As the car shot into view in her mirrors, Night Owl took the first offramp and blasted down onto what was left of
Bridgeport Road
.
    The road was intact for a few meters beyond the offramp, but then it became chaotic. Abandoned cars lay crumpled under the light fixtures that the earthquake had toppled on them, and long-dead electric wires snaked in tangles across the street. The road itself looked like a jigsaw puzzle that had been punched from below by a giant's fist: jagged pieces of asphalt reared up at odd angles, with weeds filling the gaps. On either side of the road were the dark shadows of ruined buildings. Some had collapsed into piles of rubble; others had tilted into the air like sinking