The Night Crew

circle at the end. There were two other homes on the circle, all three showing lights, and all with steel fences, darkened and turned to resemble wrought iron, facing the street. The driveways were blocked with decorative eightfoot-high electric gates between stone pillars.
    ‘‘We’ll just keep rolling through,’’ Harper said, looking out through the sweep of his headlights. ‘‘Look for dogs, anything that might be a dog . . .’’
    ‘‘I can’t see anything,’’ Anna said.
    They were back out at Corral: Harper stopped, looked both ways, then said, ‘‘We’d be crazy to try to get in the front.’’
    ‘‘Get in?’’ She looked back at the house, at the fence and the hedge behind it, the security sign next to the stone pillars beside the driveway. ‘‘That place is a fort.’’
    ‘‘Let’s go get an ice cream,’’ he said. ‘‘Isn’t there an ice cream place down at the shopping center?’’ She got a Dutch chocolate and he took a raspberry and they sat on a bench outside of a Ben & Jerry’s and ate the ice cream, talking about nothing of importance. When they finished, Harper wiped his hands and face with the tiny napkin from the ice cream parlor, pitched it into a trash container and said, ‘‘You drive.’’
    ‘‘Why?’’
    ‘‘I want to go back there and take one more look. . . .
Maybe get out.’’
    ‘‘Jake . . . this is a really bad idea.’’
    He nodded. ‘‘I know, but I can’t figure out what else to do. I just want to stand on one of those stone pillars, if I can, and take a look. See what’s in there.’’
    ‘‘Jake . . .’’
    ‘‘What, you chicken?’’ he asked.
    Never a chicken. Never. One of the houses had gone dark, but the target house showed lights on all three floors. ‘‘We’ll roll right up, I’ll hop out, do a quick step-up, look in and then get right back in the car and we’re out of there,’’ he said.
    ‘‘Aw, man . . .’’ But she felt a little thrill, a little of the roaming-through-the-night feel; she took the car into the hook and heard Harper’s door pop.
    She slowed and he said, ‘‘Keep rolling, slow, I’ll latch the door, don’t want them to see headlights stopping . . .’’ He hopped out with the car still moving, pushed the door shut until it caught, looked around once as he approached the fence and then stepped on a horizontal brace-bar, pulled himself up and looked into the yard. Anna continued through the circle, headed out toward the street; she rolled her window down and looked over at his back and said, in a harsh whisper, ‘‘Let’s go.’’
    ‘‘Just a minute . . .’’
    And suddenly he was over the fence and out of sight.
    ‘‘Oh, no . . .’’ She continued moving, but her mind was churning. Better to move than to stop, she thought; she’d go out to the street, do a U-turn out of sight, and come back in. What was he thinking, hopping over the fence? He was a moron. She was at the street, touched the brakes to show the red flash of a departing car, did the U-turn on Corral and started back in; rolled the window down on his side as she went, and tried to look out.
    As she did, somebody behind the fence screamed: ‘‘Get him . . . get him, over there.’’
    And Harper shouted, ‘‘Anna, the highway.’’
    She couldn’t see him, but his voice was clear enough: Anna rolled through the circle again, accelerating, the wheels squealing on the new blacktop. Down the short street, a finger of fear in her throat, left down the hill, the BMW tracking as though it were on rails.
    BAK!
    Was that a shot? Her face jerked to the right, but all she could see was hillside. She’d heard something, but what was it?
    BAK!
    A shot, that’s what it was. She jammed her foot to the floor, powering through sixty-five, downhill, then hammered the brake as she got to the bottom, paused at the highway, then ran the light and headed around to the left . . .
    She looked up the bluff, saw nothing but scrub brush and weeds; the house was right there, fifty feet ahead . . .
    And so was Harper. He was spilling down the hill, tumbling, hitting every ten feet, dirt flying, not quite out of control, but not quite under control, either. A car passed her going north, and as soon as it was clear, she swerved across the highway to the left, up onto the narrow weedy shoulder, powered through the dirt and rocks until she was directly below him. He landed in a cloud of dirt, struggled to get up, limped around the car as