It’s the only thought she can manage. Go north. And then possibly west, toward California, the only state she’s ever really called home. But when she tries to think any further ahead than that, her breaths grow shallow and her vision starts to shrink, so she just keeps saying it to herself over and over again. North, north, north.

A daze comes over her. She thinks it might be shock, but it doesn’t seem to affect her ability to drive, so what does it matter really? She’s not sure exactly how much time has passed when she realizes she’s forgotten to keep her grip on the steering wheel featherlight. Her knuckles look white in the dashboard’s glow, but the steering wheel’s intact. Slowly she eases her foot down onto the brake, pulls over to the side of the empty road.

She steps from the car, walks into the headlights, and picks up a jagged rock that’s about the size of a newborn baby. It’s heavy and lifting it hurts her arm. Which, in a normal world, is how it should be. When she tries to throw it with one hand, it slips and crashes to the asphalt. Her wrist sings with pain from the effort.

Whatever Dylan’s miracle provided, it’s over now.

The strength is gone.

And now, with the fears of an ordinary woman, she’s looking out into the vast emptiness where the shadows of jagged rocks and cacti are slowly resolving underneath a star-crazed sky.

She doesn’t have to be careful now as she reaches into her pocket and removes the cardboard packet. Two of the remaining pills have been reduced to orange powder inside their plastic bubbles. Another’s been cracked in half. The fourth and fifth are intact.

You’re the first one to take it and live.

She places the pills back inside her pocket and slides behind the wheel.

The Beretta’s on the seat next to her.

Facts, figures. Short-term goals. These are her salvation right now.

She checks the phone.

Three hours. That’s about how much time has elapsed between her first fight with Jason, the emergence of her miraculous strength, and this moment when it left her abruptly and without fanfare.

How could it have been only three hours? It feels like a lifetime.

She starts the car, eases back onto the highway. North, she tells herself again, just as the tears start. North, she tells herself as her hands start to shake in a way that’s all too human. All too normal. All too frightened.

Then she remembers she’s got five pills left, and the fear gradually starts to recede until her hands go still.

10

Before she reaches I-40, Charlotte pulls over to the side of the road and makes a call she should have made hours before. A call that will determine in which direction she heads now—east or west. Kayla answers after one ring. The same woman Dylan dismissed as being undeserving of the title of Charlotte’s only friend, despite the fact that she won the case against Charlotte’s dad and routinely battles wealthy wife beaters and corporations that poison entire communities.

The minute Kayla says her name, not her birth name but the name she chose for herself, Charlotte feels a sudden, hot sheen of tears in her eyes.

She speaks through a lump in her throat. “I need to meet. Someplace safe. Outside San Francisco. Wherever it is, make sure you’re not being followed.”

“Media?” Kayla asks.

“No.”

“Your dad?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Jason Briffel.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte answers. “It’s bad.”

The incompleteness of the answer feels like a lie.

“Where are you?” Kayla asks.

“Nowhere. Making a decision where to go next.”

“Whose number is this?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Whatever’s happening, you know you can trust me, right?” Kayla says.

“Why do you think I called? The problem is, I don’t actually know what’s happening.”

“All right, where are you now?”

“Near Flagstaff.”

“Are you in your car?”

“No.”

“But you have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Come to California. Once you hit the 5, go north like you’re going to San Francisco. You’re gonna meet me in Patterson. It’s south of the 580 split. When you get there, go east on Del Puerto Canyon Road, and in about two blocks, you’ll see a giant Amazon fulfillment center. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. Describe the car you’re driving.”

She does.

“OK. Pretty nondescript.”

“I’ll come in slow so you don’t miss me.”

“No, I’m glad it’s nondescript, ’cause you’re gonna leave it there and come with me.”

“I don’t want to go into the city right now.”

“I understand. That’s why I’m taking you to one of our safe houses. We put high-value witnesses who get threats there if law enforcement won’t step up.”

“Good. That’s real good. Thank you. I can’t th-tha . . .”

“Charley, drive now. Feelings later. OK? I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Drive now, feelings later, she says to herself as she hangs up the phone.

II

11

“Can we maybe do something about the glare?”

Cole Graydon isn’t sure who asked this question.

He’s one of seven people seated around the executive conference room’s frosted-glass table. The others include three members of his company’s legal team, the director of marketing, the chairman of his board, and Dr. Nora Suvari, head of gastrointestinal treatments for Graydon Pharmaceuticals.

It had to have been Nora, he realizes. She’s the only one looking at him and not the eighty-inch LCD screen at the front of the room.

Up until a few seconds ago, she was doing a pretty good job of pretending to watch the final edit of this idiotic video they’ve gathered to approve.

A better job than he was; that’s for sure.

For most of the presentation he’s been looking out the window at a group of kayakers down in La Jolla Bay. Their tiny yellow oars wink in the sun. Their kayaks are bright red, making them look like bits of shark bait determined to avoid their fate. Will they manage a full loop around the bay before the video ends?

That this is the question occupying his mind on the eve of their biggest drug launch in three years—well, it won’t be the first secret he’s kept since taking the reins of his late father’s company.

But Nora’s question, and her vacant stare, makes it clear he’s not the only one bored stiff. The glare to which she just referred is falling across the screen of her iPad, not the screen at the front of the room. When she catches him looking, she closes a Pinterest page and quickly replaces it with the first projection spreadsheet she can open.

He fights the urge to cackle. Instead he hits a button on the remote control next to his laptop. The wall of glass to his left darkens. The view’s still there, but now it looks shadowy and slightly unreal.

He owes his life to that view.

Maybe not his life—maybe just his sanity. The compact skyline of La Jolla’s village and the flower garland of mansions that crown the bluffs overlooking the bay have offered him countless mental escapes from the soul-crushing responsibilities of running this company, most of which bear down on him in this gleaming, glass-filled room.

He should chide Nora; he knows it. Call her out for pinning wedding dresses when they should be perfecting every detail of one of the most expensive launches in their company’s history. He’s pretty sure that’s why the chairman of the board, Tucker Albright, is giving him a long look now.

If Cole stays silent, Tucker will no doubt report this exchange to Cole’s mother, who may well see it as cause to hop in her hired car and be chauffeured down from her horse ranch in Rancho Santa Fe, just to see how Cole is handling everything. Which, after some prodding, she’ll admit is code for, I’m here to find out whether or not you’re about to run our family’s company into the ground again.

He’s not going to upbraid Nora. Not now, not later. She’s a Harvard PhD who came to Graydon with dreams of eradicating stomach-eating parasites in developing nations. Today she’s responsible for a piece-of-shit heartburn drug they’re about to market as the only thing that will keep America’s stomachs from exploding.

I know, Nora, he thinks. I had big dreams, too.

Tucker Albright, on the other hand, is one of the country’s wealthiest beef distributors, whose only qualification for running Graydon’s board is that he’s chummy with Cole’s mother.

But he’s still studying Cole with icy focus, so Cole gives the man a warm smile.

Tucker nods and returns his attention to the giant television screen.

Caught, Cole has no choice but to watch the video.

Again.

For the hundredth time.