Taking the Highway

NIKHIL PARKED HIS CAR in the weed-infested lot and double-checked his locks. He turned away from the car, then back to it, linking the geopoint alarm to his datapad. It wouldn’t stop anyone from trying to boost his car, but it would at least let him know if it happened.

The apartment block was a square of concrete, crumbling at the corners, the layers of spray-painted graffiti the newest thing about the place. It sat on the western edge of the oh-zone, close enough to claim solidarity with the zoners, but still within the city borders. Roads were repaired here, trash picked up, streets lit after dark. The people here had city water and electricity, not to mention police and fire protection.

Nikhil walked around a pile of animal dung and up two flights of exterior stairs, taking the shared balcony walkway to the number that Topher had given him. He knocked, and after a terminal pause, the door opened, but instead of Topher, it was Wilma Riley on the other side of it, wearing jeans and a halter top that did nothing for her stick figure. Her hair was piled on top of her head and secured with one of those beaded clips all the girls on campus wore.

“Oh. Hi, Wilma.” Nikhil shifted his package to the other hand. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I live here.” She opened the door wider and walked into the apartment. Nikhil followed.

Topher jumped up from the kitchen table, which stood on foldable legs and didn’t look big enough for two dinner plates, much less the papers and electronics that were strewn across it. The only other furniture was a futon, covered with clothing and hardcopy books. The narrow kitchen counter along the back wall held take-out containers and dirty dishes. The sink was half full of scummy water, as if the drain had clogged.

“Good, you brought it.” Topher reached for the plastic bag and tore into it. He pulled out the new datapad and frowned at the protective packaging. “You didn’t open it?”

Nikhil smiled proudly. “Brand new, like you said.”

“Jesus, Nikhil, do I have to tell you everything?” Topher examined its tell-tales. “Not even a passive solar charge. Where have you been keeping it?”

“In the trunk of my car. Look, Topher—”

“It’s okay. I got it.” Wilma took the datapad and plugged it into the wall behind the futon. She immediately flicked it open and started poking its surface.

“Wilma, how long?”

“Eight hours,” she said. “Ten for a full charge.”

“Too long.” Topher held out his hand and flicked his fingers toward himself. “Let me see yours a sec.”

Nikhil took a step back. He didn’t care how good Topher’s cause was, or how many plans he had. No way was Topher taking his pad. “All my stuff is on it.”

“I’m not going to zorch it. Just let me see it.”

Nikhil folded his arms. “Pay me for the other one, first.”

“Sure, sure. Wilma?”

She stood and pulled a wad of cash out of the front pocket of her jeans. She counted bills into Nikhil’s hand. He put his backpack on the floor, stowed the cash, and sighed. There was no helping it. He handed over his datapad.

Topher tossed it underhanded to Wilma, who scooted back to the futon. She married Nikhil’s datapad to the new one, gulping all of its information into the memory before he could stop her. She unplugged the new pad from the wall, and thrust it toward Nikhil.

“Bullshit,” Nikhil said. “Give me mine.”

Wilma hooked a thumb into the waistband of her jeans and slid Nikhil’s datapad down the front of them, where it bulged at her crotch. She pointed to the new pad. “You’re upgrading. All your stuff is on it, so what’s the zoo act? Charge it a few hours and you’ll be fine.”

Topher clapped him on the back. “I need a working pad, buddy. I can give you a few more bucks for the inconvenience.”

“This isn’t about the inconvenience!” He grabbed Wilma and tried to fit his hand down the front of her jeans. He didn’t care if it was in her underwear, he was getting his datapad back. Wilma bent forward at the waist, stopping his access. He held tighter as she struggled and squeaked and kicked his shins. He pressed downward on the pad, trying to force it through the leghole of her jeans.

The blow came out of nowhere, Topher’s fist materializing at his face to connect with his cheek and knock him away from Wilma. “Keep your hands off her!” he yelled.

Wilma skipped to the other side of the room, putting the table between herself and the men. The datapad still tented her jeans.

Nikhil held one hand to his throbbing cheek and the other in the air, palm out, surrendering. He’d never be able to fight them both.

Topher was breathing hard. “Do you think I like this? Do you think I enjoy hiding like a rat? I could have bought ten datapads better than yours. But thanks to you, I can’t leave the house, I can’t use my multicard, I can’t do anything!”

Nikhil looked from Topher to Wilma and back again. A door slammed nearby. The neighbor’s toilet flushed. Wilma crossed her arms and glared. The datapad never moved. Shit, it really was stuck in her underwear.

Nikhil bent to pick up the new datapad. “You seem to be doing fine.”

“I’d be doing a lot better if you hadn’t involved your uncle.”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me.” Topher moved to the kitchen wall and pulled ice out of the freezer. He wrapped it in a stained towel and handed it to Nikhil, gesturing toward his face. “I don’t want to fight about it. I just know that things would be a lot easier if the cops weren’t involved.”

Nikhil held the cold towel to his face. It smelled like yogurt, and stung where it touched his cheek. “Can I talk to you privately?”

Topher glanced at Wilma. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of her.”

“No, it really can’t.”

Topher shrugged and opened the front door, gesturing Nikhil to go first. Nikhil shouldered his backpack, catching Wilma out of the corner of his eye. She smirked and waved before handing his datapad to Topher. Topher put the pad in his pocket and the door closed behind them.

Nikhil put his elbows on the balcony rail and pressed the ice to his cheek. He stared down at the weedy lot full of even weedier cars. “What are you doing, Topher?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long have you been tied to Wilma?”

“Since . . . you know. For a little while.”

“What about Sandor?”

“What about him?” Topher faced the opposite direction, leaning ass and elbows on the metal railing. “Sandor is great at organizing and all, but Wilma’s the one who’s working on a new virus. It’s beautiful, man. So much more powerful than anything she’s made before.”

“So if Sandor was the programmer, you’d sleep with him?”

“F*ck you. It isn’t like that, okay? I care about her.”

Sirens in the distance, coming closer. Topher stiffened and slunk into the shadow of the doorway. More than one siren, but fire trucks, not police cars. They waited, not speaking, as the sound grew louder, then softer as it passed, eventually blending into the other city noise.

Topher took up a position at the rail and they gazed into the parking lot together. “This place sucks.”

“Yep.”

Topher jerked a thumb over his shoulder, at the oh-zone. “That one sucks worse.”

“Yep.”

“It’s time, my friend. It’s time to do something so big that the mayor’s office can’t call it a malfunction, or try to play it like it never happened. Madison Z will finally listen to the CEJ and the city will bow to our demands.”

“Then you can go home.”

“Then I can go home.”

“Except you can’t.” Nikhil removed the wet towel from his face and let the chunks of ice fall out of it. He didn’t watch to see where they landed. “You can’t set up an Overdrive failure just to save yourself.”

“I’m not!” Topher grabbed the limp rag and shook it out. “Wait until you see it. Shutting down Overdrive is one thing, but what good does that do when everyone hits the brakes and the on-ramps redlight themselves? We don’t need to shut down Overdrive, we need to take it over. Proximity sensors be damned. We’re going to throw cars right into one another. It’s everyone’s worst nightmare when they find out that they can’t manually override.”

“You mean . . .” Nikhil stared at Topher in horror. It was one thing to simply turn off Overdrive. It was quite another to deliberately cause crashes. “The ramps?” he squeaked.

“Wide open,” Topher said “Everyone has to know what we can do. They have to see it with their own eyes. Once the mayor and the city council sees our power, they’ll have to make some changes, bring the oh-zone back into the city, start paying attention to what’s really going on around here.”

“And it has nothing to do with saving your ass.”

“It’s your ass too, Nikhil. I’m saving the entire organization.”

Nikhil stood straight and adjusted his backpack strap. He wondered when things had changed, when it became more about saving the CEJ itself than fixing the city.

Topher pulled Nikhil’s datapad out of his pocket and held it in front of Nikhil’s face. “If it means that much to you, take your datapad back. I’ll make do with the other.”

Nikhil could almost smell Wilma’s scent on it. He pictured her dirty apartment, the sour rag, her none-too-clean clothes. He pictured her underwear. “It’s all right. I’ll take the upgrade. But you’ve got to erase that one, man.”

Topher started scrolling through menus. “You got pictures on here?”

“Names and numbers.” Nikhil caught Topher’s arm, make him look up. “Listen. You don’t need a virus. The highways have been shut since Monday. It’s been two days and they haven’t opened 94 yet. You’ve shown your strength, now it’s time to negotiate.”

“They’re scheduled to reopen tomorrow.”

“So?”

“Unless I deploy the virus, I’m not in a position to—”

“Yes, you are.” Nikhil patted his backpack. “I took some of my dad’s hardcopy files he kept at home. I’ve got names, dates, numbers.”

“So?”

“I’m sure they denied it. They had reasons and covers and explanations for everything. It’s not like anyone would complain, not if they were making the city safer. The city council didn’t even know what they were doing, and it happened right under their noses.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Madison Zuchek.”

“What about her?”

Nikhil pulled out the files and gave them to Topher. “Looked at one way, these files are completely innocent. Looked at another way, Madison Zuchek has her own personal hit squad. It’s been going on for years. It’s usually drug dealers, mafiosi, people like that. But now she has a new target.”

“Us? Shit.” Topher riffled through pages, forward, back. It didn’t take him long to reach the same conclusion that Nikhil had. He bit his lip and exhaled one quick breath through his nose, then opened the apartment door. “Wilma!”

Nikhil slammed the door and held the knob. “No.”

“I’ll use every weapon I’ve got. I’ll take down the entire city.”

“Don’t you see? We have the power.” He tapped the stack of papers. “Use these, Topher. These are so much better than crashing innocent people’s cars.”

“Fine. I’ll do it your way.” Topher flicked on Nikhil’s old datapad and started scrolling through it.

“Who are you calling?”

“Madison Zuchek. We’ve got to call her, make our demands.”

“Not yet! I’ve got to . . . there are some things I have to do first.” Nikhil looked over the railing. Uncle Andre would kill him if he tried to call. He said not to contact him no matter what. But there had to be a way to tell him what was going on. “Don’t do anything until I say so.”

“Sure, right.” Topher still had his head in Nikhil’s datapad.

Nikhil snatched it out of his hands, wound up, and threw it as far as he could into the parking lot. It cracked in half the moment it landed on the cement. Nikhil sprinted down the stairs, ran to the biggest half, and jumped, coming down hard with his shoe. The pad splintered under his foot with a satisfying crunch.

He hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, brandished the new datapad, and looked up at the second-floor balcony. Topher still stood at the rail, his arms full of paper, watching him. “I mean it, Topher,” Nikhil called. “You want my help, you don’t make a single move until you hear from me.”





“VISITOR.”

Not again. “Audio.”

“Andre.” Sofia’s customary coolness was gone, and the two syllables of his name sounded white hot. “Open the door. I mean it. Open this door right now or I will kick it in.”

“You may have good legs, but you could not kick in the door.”

“Try me and see. Three hundred fifty bucks and change to fix the lock and the frame. I’ve checked.”

Andre opened the door.

“I’m wearing my boots.” He looked. She was. Tall boots. Boots that were not so much made for walking as for kicking the shit out of things. With the dangerous boots, she was wore the same black pants and blazer she’d worn to Oliver’s party—an outfit for sipping cocktails or arresting bad guys with equal ease. He stepped aside and let her in.

Sofia moved into the room. She clicked off the companel, and frowned at his datapad, which sat propped against the open comscreen.

“I was listening to that.”

“So?”

“Did you know that The Chicago Development Commission dropped out of the economic summit? So did Quensis and Boeing. Without Overdrive, Detroit’s playing to an empty house.”

Sofia waved her arms at the comscreen. “Look at this. You’re trapped in some virtual nightmare. This is not real. This is not healthy.”

“Why are you here?”

“You didn’t answer your phone.”

“I know. I was the one not answering it.” Andre turned his back on her and walked to the kitchen.

Sofia followed. “Why weren’t you at the funeral this morning?”

Andre shrugged. “Black isn’t my color?”

“Andre, the last thing I want is to hurt you, but it’s still on the list.”

“Me being at Elway’s service would have been like spitting on his grave.”

“Not being there is like pissing on it!”

He couldn’t look at her. He opened the refrigerator and stared into it as if it were modern art in need of interpretation. “I’ve got spinners calling me at all hours. It’s only a testament to the strength of the privacy laws that they haven’t found my house yet. You know they were staking out the funeral.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“If I had shown up, the attention would have been on me, not on Elway.”

“Elway is beyond caring. Everyone else isn’t. You should have been there.”

Andre reached into the fridge and rearranged the bottles there. “I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t take the idea of everyone hating me.” He closed the door and leaned forward against it. “I guess that makes me a coward.”

“Just human.”

He could stand straight now, could turn and look at her. “I should have let you in the other day.”

“Well, it’s probably for the best. Last time, I just wanted to kick your ass. But that isn’t why I’m here. I need you. I may have a lead on our Overdrive terrorists.”

Andre stared into her eyes. Did she have Nikhil’s name? Was that why she came here? “You got the court order to unseal the database?” If the false fourths still didn’t know the badges could be tracked . . .

“Honeywell is still stalling and she’s got the U of M legal machine in gear. No, I got an anonymous tip. Routed through an info broker. They didn’t know it was one of ours. I got a name. A girl named Wilma Riley.”

Not Nikhil then. He counted to ten, hoping she’d go on, but she waited him out. “How did she know to call you?”

“She didn’t. She called you. I’m still showing up as the head of the task force—for now, at least—so all of your calls are coming to me. There’s been a hell of a lot of them, thank you very much.”

“Spinners?”

“Anchors too.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You don’t think I can handle them?”

“This tip. Why’d it come to me? I’m off the task force. Even if I weren’t, this isn’t our case.”

“Don’t be an idiot. We’re investigating dead fourths, you saw fourths sabotaging Overdrive. Don’t tell me it’s not connected.”

He said nothing, letting the question eat into the silence. Finally, her lips compressed into a line, she forced a breath through her nose. “I’m trying to save your ass. You don’t deserve the roasting you’re getting. At least not all of it.”

“Did they mention any names?” Did they say Nikhil? Did they say LaCroix? But he had to tread carefully, even here, even now.

“No names. This Wilma Riley says she knows who the terrorists are, where they are. Might just be a pissed-off girlfriend. Sounded angry and scared. She said she’d meet with us, but only face to face. Gave me an address near River Rouge Park.”

Doubt spread small wings in his stomach. “In the zone? I don’t like that.”

“We’re not delivering pizzas, we’re armed law enforcement.”

“You’re armed.”

She rolled her eyes toward his empty gun holster hanging near the door. “Do you—”

“I’ll be right back.” Andre marched to the bedroom, knelt on the floor, and ran his thumb over the lock to open the hidden safe. The Yavorit had almost the heft and size of the Guardian, if not its range and accuracy. He holstered it, wondering if he was just reacting like a typical Detroiter to the oh-zone. Or maybe just like a typical cop, who wanted his informants in an interrogation room, in broad daylight, with recording equipment at hand. If he wanted the terrorists stopped, he had to go where they were. Still, something about it didn’t sit right. He called to Sofia from the bedroom. “If she wanted to name names, why not just tell you on the phone?”

“You could have asked her that yourself if you’d taken the call.”



“LEAVING OVERDRIVE, TAKE MANUAL control,” the Banshee’s dashboard announced. “Leaving Overdrive, drive safely.”

Sofia resettled her hands on the wheel a moment before she absolutely had to, a gesture Andre wouldn’t have noticed last week. He wondered if that was a universal habit and if so, how that kind of thing began. He resolved to look for it in the future then dismissed the idea. Let it go.

Houses at the edge of the zone showed token efforts toward renovating. Some were lit by kerosene lights or electric generators. Others had smoke coming from the chimneys. It was too warm for a fire, but people still had to cook. As they moved deeper into the zone, occupied houses and rudimentary businesses gave way to the sad emptiness of the truly abandoned.

The display showed their path moving through a complicated maze of once-suburban neighborhood, their headlights piercing a bright path through the fading twilight. “I’d love to meet the genius who laid these streets out in looping curves,” Sofia said through gritted teeth.

Andre had liked neighborhoods like this when he was a kid, but he saw her point. His nostalgia disappeared altogether as another thought occurred to him. A story he’d heard from an older patrolman about these neighborhoods and sightlines from a patrol car. He reached out and accessed the companel.

“Who are you calling?”

“I just want to see if there’s anybody in the area if we need backup.”

“Backup?” Her voice shaded between amusement and scorn. Andre understood. If she were on her own, without a disgraced partner in the car, then maybe she could ask for some. As it was, unless things went very shitty very fast, they were on their own.

Sofia spun the wheel around a sharp corner with an obstructed bend and stood on the brakes.

The active and passive restraints held Andre tight against the passenger seat, but his head still bobbed forward. Across the narrow road, two derelict cars, burnt-out minivans from thirty years ago, stood nose to nose, their side-mirrors sticking out like handles.

Sofia swore and was about to move to reverse when a gunshot slapped her window, fogging it white-gray in an instant. She and Andre ducked down, fighting their seatbelts for room just as the window sagged and fell away, followed by the one on Andre’s side.

“Yes, backup!” Andre yelled over the thrum coming from his implant. Sofia must have triggered the alert and a single, deep note pooled at the base of his skull. Designed to resonate with the hypothalamus, the signal acted like a battle cry, triggering an adrenal surge from the nervous system. Fine if you were on the receiving end, but the person triggering it was usually already panicked enough.

Sofia fumbled to draw her weapon.

Andre grabbed her wrist. “Get us out of here!”

Rounds impacted the doors with ineffectual thumps. The lightweight memory plastic between the panels was designed to absorb and disperse crash energy, but it had the added benefit of making the doors nearly bulletproof. Sofia reached for the shift lever again and flinched when several rounds entered from each side and blew out the rear windows. She ducked in the seat and pushed the accelerator to the floor panel.

The swoop of elation Andre felt as they surged backward was as short as their movement. They hadn’t gone three meters before they were thrown against their seats and ground to a skidding stop, the left rear of their car now raised off the ground by whatever they’d hit. Fire from the right impacted the windshield. The slight tilt forward pushed them against their seatbelts and left them hanging, helpless. They’d hit hard, but not hard enough to trigger the airweb system.

Andre tore off the restraints and kicked his door open. He nodded to Sofia as she freed herself and followed him. Using the open door for cover, they scrambled out and around the rear of the car. Both of them had drawn their weapons and crouched against the ruined rear bumper of the Banshee where it angled up and onto the wreck of yet another junker, this one unburnt. Everything about the car—except the tires—looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Who put new tires on a car like that?

Sofia was breathing hard. A cut near her right eye trailed a thick line of blood down her cheek. Fat drops fell from the line of her jaw. “Where the hell did this thing come from?”

Andre risked a look and saw the driver side door hanging open, a glimpse of something dark and lean running farther along the street they’d turned in from. She ran like a panther, black hair flying, disappearing around a corner. “I’d say that’s the lid on the pot.”

Gunfire continued to impact the car—cars now—but it had slowed. The three-round bursts had stopped and the attackers, whoever they were, were using single shots, conserving ammunition. Or, Andre thought grimly, trying to make us think they’re low on ammo. He touched Sofia’s cheek and held up his fingers. “You’re bleeding.”

“Nicked by the windshield glass,” she said impatiently. “I think those are Ingram nine millimeter, the longer barrels for accuracy.”

Andre was glad Sofia’s mind was still working, analyzing, but her assessment was depressing. Nobody wanted the gunpowder shooters anymore. Everyone wanted light and quiet and odor-free, so Ingrams were everywhere on the black market and clips were cheap. These guys could shoot all night.

From the implant, the criss-crossing spread of responses to the distress call were filing in. Sofia made a quick report to amplify. “Officers under fire. Two or more assailants armed with automatic weapons—probably Ingram. Wear your body armor.” She clicked off. “They’re still ten minutes away.”

Andre nodded. It had been maybe two minutes since the first shot and they were already pinned down. In ten more minutes, they would be dead. He glanced out and back. Left, then right. The houses on either side both had large empty picture windows facing the bend in the street. He had to admire their assailant’s choice of location, even as he raged at his own blindness. They were police officers for crissake. Criminals might snap off a shot in sudden fear, but an ambush? Cops just didn’t think of it. He nudged Sofia. “I say we flank these bastards.”

“What if there are more than two emplacements?”

As if in answer, the tire behind Andre took a burst and settled with a gusty puff. “We don’t have ten minutes to sit and guess.”

She nodded and jerked her head to one side. “Cover me left?”

He hefted the Yavorit and wished for his Guardian. “Go.” He came up in a crouch, sighting through the gap between cars at the yawning window frame on the right side. The slugs the little pistol sprayed out had very little to recommend them for this kind of distance, but they tended to ricochet. Fine with him if they bounced around that decaying suburban living room like deadly little wasps. He was satisfied to note that there seemed to be no fire from that side while he was shooting.

Sofia’s voice came into his head. “I’m at the house. Go.”

He heard the small pops of her Guardian and a distant curse of a man’s voice from her side of the street. Then she was laying down cover fire on his side. Andre charged forward and reached the side of the other house, his shoes gritting on broken glass in the waist-high grass.

Silence descended, disturbing and sudden after the barrage of gunfire.

Sliding the wall, Andre positioned himself under a window with a shoulder-height sill. The moldy smell of long-abandoned property mixed with the oily metallic sting of gunpowder weaponry. He brought his arms over the shattered sill in a single smooth motion and found himself looking through two adjoining rooms into the front of the abandoned house. All he could see was the top of the gunman’s head as he crouched under the bay window facing the street. “Freeze!” he shouted. The bare walls turned his voice into thunder. “Stand up—slowly—and turn around.” Under the circumstances, an officer was under no obligation to issue a warning, but Andre wanted to see who was shooting at him.

The gunman stood from his crouch, arms wide, and turned to face Andre.

Topher Price-Powell.

Andre’s finger tightened to squeeze if Topher brought the gun around, but Topher’s hand and arm relaxed. Only his eyes moved to take in the sight of Andre standing outside the window with a weapon aimed at his head.

“Drop it! Drop it, now!”

Topher obeyed. The Ingram—Sofia had been right—hit the floor with a flat clap that seemed to echo. Topher’s eyes locked on his. He raised gloved hands.

Gunfire sounded from across the street—the ripping sound of an Ingram on full auto, punctuated by a shriek from Sofia. Andre flinched, and Topher’s lips quirked upward.

“Andre!” his implant sent. “Andre!” Between gunbursts, he could hear Sofia’s yells for help and his attention was drawn that way for the split second Topher needed to dash toward the back of the house, out of sight.

“Shit!” Andre withdrew from the window and pressed himself to the wall, feeling the rough brick at his back. No Topher, no gunfire from either side of the house. He could circle the property, but he’d probably still miss Topher, and get himself shot in the process.

He waited a moment more. Silence. Nothing from Sofia, nothing from that side of the street.

He ran back to the bullet-riddled tangle of cars in the middle of the road and took cover there. He looked across the street at the house of the second gunman. A heavyset white man was working his way around the garage. He must have been quicker than Topher and had flanked Sofia in turn. From his position, Andre guessed that Sofia had taken cover in the connecting passageway between garage and house and the only way she’d get out was in pieces.

Andre pulled the trigger without even considering the distance of his shots. He must have adjusted by reflex. In the silence that followed the gunman pitching to the ground, Andre whirled back to the house where Topher had been. He dashed into the house and found Topher’s gun, but no sign of Topher. The cowardly little f*cker had abandoned his partner.

“Clear,” he sent to Sofia via implant.

He joined her over the crumpled form of her assailant. The Ingram had clattered a meter out of the man’s hands when Andre dropped him. He probed for the guilt that came from taking a life, but there was nothing there yet. No glory in it, either. Nothing except the knowledge that he was still alive. Sofia was still alive. This man was the price.

Her hand was a vice around his arm. “Fade. Don’t look back.”

Andre heard the sirens and the ETA update. She was right. He was under suspension. He had just shot and killed with a weapon he was not legally allowed to carry anywhere outside a shooting range. “What are you going to say?”

“I’m in the goddamned zone.”

He wanted to laugh at that one, but he couldn’t work up to it. “Vigilantes?”

“Can they disprove it?”

“Don’t do this. It’s your career.” It could have been your life.

She grabbed his shirt front and pulled him toward her. “You were never here. You spent the evening at home, watching your stupid newsnets.”

“You can’t make that—”

“I can if you leave now.” She released his shirt and gave him a weak shove. He could hear the line of police cars squalling around corners as they threaded their way through the winding streets.

He leaned forward and brushed her lips with his own, then moved off at a trot past the barrier cars that had trapped them.

“Andre,” she called after him. “This is as far as I go. This far, no farther.”

“You shouldn’t have to go this far.”

“I go where I want. Now get out of here.”