Chapter 16: The Ward

I got into the hatchback and put the key in with my hands shaking only a little.

"Talk to me," I said, and pulled out of the garage on two wheels.

"They're on Grand, northbound, fifty seconds ahead of you," Oz said.

"I can't touch the van. It's an old fleet model with nothing wireless on it."

"What about the lights?"

"The lights are ours. Jonas left me the keys to the whole camera network."

I thought about the white sedan on our street, and how easily he had steered it.

"Make Grand Avenue red," I said. "All of it, one block at a time, starting at Burnside."

"They'll just run it."

"Not with a cross-street full of buses."

"Mel, that's dangerous."

"So is the Halden Building."

I heard him swallow, and then I heard keys.

Ahead of me the lights along Grand Avenue went from green to yellow to a long, perfect red.

A bus pulled across the intersection at Burnside, and then a delivery truck, and then a line of confused taxis.

The black van stopped at the front of the knot with its brake lights glowing.

I slid my hatchback in diagonally behind it and cut the engine.

Two men in charcoal jackets climbed out of the front seats, swearing, looking up at the dead signal.

I got out and walked straight toward the back doors.

"Hey," the driver said. "Lady. Get back in your car."

"My cousin is in there."

"Lady."

"Oz, now," I said into my collar.

All four of the van's doors clicked at once.

It was a central-locking command for the whole Stanfield fleet, buried on the drive Jonas had left us.

Oz had found it in ten minutes, and I had agreed to it without understanding half the words.

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