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PROLOGUE

START YOUR ENGINES

One

LORI KIMBALL HAD three rules for the death race home

One, no brakes

Two, no horn

Three, beat her best time by ten seconds, every day

She turned off her phone, stowed it in the glove box

On your mark Get set

She slaht position, shoved the Electric Flag’s cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor” into the CD drive, pressed the start button on the timer she wore on a cord around her neck

Go

Lori stepped on the gas, and her Infiniti EX crossover shot up the ramp and onto the 110 as if it could read her mind

It was exactly ten miles from this freeway entrance to her home in Glendale Her record elve minutes and ten seconds, and that record was made to be broken

The road was dry, the sun was dull, traffic wasthe canyon floor, the roadway banked on both sides, forueroa tunnels

Lori rode the taillights of the e to mash the horn with the paloing to budge

Her ten-year-old boy, Justin, did this when he didn’t want to go to school He Just Slowed Down

Lori didn’t have to put up with this She peeled out into the center lane, maneuvered around an old Ford junker in her way As soon as she passed the Audi, she wrenched the wheel hard to the left and recaptured the fast lane

This was it

At this point, three lanes headed north on the 110, and the lane on the far left exited and ed into the 5 Lori accelerated to seventy, flew past a chaht of her, and proceeded to tear up the fast lane

As she drove, Lori amped up the decibels, and the eleven-speaker Bose pounded out the blend of rock and urban blues Lori was now in a state that was as close to soaring flight as she could get without actually leaving the ground

Lori was six minutes into the race and had passed the halfwaythe adrenaline burn out to the tips of her fingers, to the ends of her hair