The Night Crew

she popped the passenger door, fell inside and gasped, ‘‘Go . . . go.’’
    ‘‘I can’t . . .’’ She was looking into a stream of cars coming up from the south . . .
    BAK!
    ‘‘Go, that’s a fuckin’ gun.’’
    She jumped on the gas, still on the shoulder, blinked her lights a few times to intimidate a small white northbound car and swerved across the highway.
    ‘‘Are you all right?’’
    ‘‘Yeah.’’ He was out of breath, and his shirt was ripped. ‘‘Boy, was that stupid.’’ He was looking out the back window.
    ‘‘No kidding,’’ she said, angrily. ‘‘What did you . . .’’
    ‘‘Yell at me later.’’ He was looking out the back window. ‘‘Right now, I think they’re coming after us. A Cadillac just cleared the bottom of the hill coming this way, I heard them yelling about getting a car.’’
    ‘‘Oh, boy.’’ The highway was not particularly busy. The northbound cars arrived in short packs, with open stretches between the packs. In the rearview mirror, she saw headlights slewing left to pass a slow moving southbound car, taking advantage of a break in the oncoming traffic.
    ‘‘You’re gonna have to drive a little faster,’’ Harper said.
    ‘‘Hold onto your socks.’’ She floored it. Anna always liked speed, and the big BMW accelerated like an unwinding spring, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred, all without hesitation. She blew past two cars, had five seconds of peace in the right-hand lane, then squeezed past an idling Jaguar in the face of an oncoming pickup.
    Harper winced, then reached up to the overhead and found a handle to hang onto. ‘‘Maybe not this fast,’’ he said.
    ‘‘They’re still back there,’’ she said. The Cadillac was cutting through the traffic like a shark through a school of tuna—but its lights seemed to be getting smaller.
    They blazed through Malibu, past the shopping center, the garage doors of the beach houses blurring into one long gray line. ‘‘Anna, for Christ’s sake, you’re doing a hundred and twelve. Slow down . . .’’
    She shook her head: she was mad, and she could drive. He deserved to be scared. She took another car, pushed a
    little harder on the gas, glanced down at the speedometer: a hundred and eighteen. ‘‘This thing rolls.’’
    ‘‘Jesus,’’ Harper said. He turned to look behind them: ‘‘Anna, they’re out of sight. They’re out of sight.’’
    ‘‘Keep watching for them,’’ she said. She let the car out for a few more seconds, feeling the speed, then eased off the gas, watched the speed drop below a hundred. Fifteen minutes later, they burned through the Sunset intersection; two minutes later, she turned up Temescal, dropped to a cruise and looked at Harper.
    ‘‘You were limping.’’
    ‘‘I might’ve sprained my knee . . . I banged myself up coming down the hill.’’
    ‘‘And got shot at . . .’’
    ‘‘But nothing happened . . .’’
    ‘‘Jake . . .’’ she said in exasperation.
    ‘‘I was standing there, and I could see some people moving inside a window and there was a crack in the drapes. And I just thought I could take a look . . . and I got in and there was another window down the side. And then everybody started yelling,’’ he said, talking fast. ‘‘There must’ve been some kind of alarm, and I was stuck in the back and people were coming out the front. I ran right past the pool in back, there was a woman out there, she started yelling and I went over the edge and some asshole started shooting.’’
    ‘‘What do you expect, prowling a house? I used a fishwhacker on a guy who was doing that.’’
    ‘‘Yeah, well . . .’’ After a moment he said, ‘‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’’
    Anna laughed aloud, the first time since she’d heard that Jason was dead. She liked the speed. Harper made her stop at a gas station pay phone, got a number for the Malibu cops, dialed it and said, ‘‘There’s been a shooting . . .’’ He gave them the address, and hung up. ‘‘Stir up the bees’ nest,’’ he said.
    ‘‘What for?’’
    ‘‘See what happens.’’ There was no point in even trying to go to BJ’s; Harper was a mess from the fall down the hill. He looked, as he said, like he’d been whipped through hell with a soot-bag.
    At Anna’s house, Harper hobbled up the walk: ‘‘It’s not really damaged. It just hurts; but nothing’s loose.’’
    ‘‘I’ve got some of that blue ice stuff you can