“This is the last time we talk,” he said to her.

He looked down at the recorder. He knew it would be the last time they talked-until he needed more money from her.

“How did you get him to go off the road?” she asked.

He smiled. They always ask that. “My friend Arty did it.”

“You brought a third party into this. Don’t you see that-”

“Relax. Arty doesn’t talk.”

He started into the turn. He realized the phone had gone dead.

“Hello?” he said. “Hello?”

He looked at the screen. No signal. These cheap throwaways were about as reliable as the weather.

He felt his tires catch the edge of the roadway and looked up in time to pull the car back onto the road. As he came out of the turn, he checked the phone’s screen one more time for the signal. He needed to call her back, let her know how it was going to be.

There was still no signal.

“Goddamnit!”

He slapped the phone closed on his thigh, then peered back at the road and froze as his eyes caught and held on two glowing eyes in the headlights. In a moment he broke free and jerked the wheel right to avoid the coyote. He corrected, but the wheels caught on the deep edge of the asphalt. He jerked harder and the front wheel broke free and back up on the road. But the back wheel slipped out and the car went into a slide.

Clewiston had an almost clinical knowledge of what was happening. It was as if he was watching one of the accident recreations he had prepared a hundred times for court hearings and prosecutions.

The car went into a sideways slide toward the precipice. He knew he would hit the wooden fence-chosen by the city for aesthetic reasons over function and safety-and that he would crash through. He knew at that moment that he was probably a dead man.

The car turned 180 degrees before blowing backwards through the safety fence. It then went airborne and arced down, trunk first. Clewiston gripped the steering wheel as if it was still the instrument of his control and destiny. But he knew there was nothing that could help him now. There was no control.