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virus. Then no one would hire him without a triple-check. A career killer, and not great for me either. I pulled the seat belt as near to buckled as I could manage.
    “What?” Gracie prodded. “What’s going on?”
    That was the last thing I wanted to discuss with Gracie. I felt like Guthrie ten minutes ago when he’d been facing me, reaching for excuses.
    Suddenly the words just burst out of me. “Omigod, Gracie, he said he was as close to loving me as any woman ever.”

    Gracie jolted back in her seat. “You close to loving him, too?”
    “Maybe. Probably. I have to catch him.”
    Gracie shot me a look like I was a teenager, and grinned.
    “No, listen, this is serious. He’s going to get himself canned. I don’t have his new cell number. When we called this morning about the gag, we had to use his land line. Now I don’t know where he’s going. We’ve got to catch him before he gets out of here, before he’s on the freeway and gone.”

4
    GUTHRIE WAS ON the freeway on-ramp before we cleared the port gate.
    “He’s heading north. Can’t you make this thing go any faster?” I demanded, though I knew the answer only too well. Gracie downshifted—somewhere she’d heard that lower gears produced more power. The car lurched and we shot onto the freeway.
    “He’s up there, second to left lane.” He was six or seven car lengths ahead. “We’re lucky it’s rush hour.” Otherwise he’d have been long gone.
    She nodded.
    Ahead, Guthrie veered west toward the converging lanes of the toll plaza for the Bay Bridge. Why was I surprised? Guthrie’s having some private thing to do in the city didn’t bother me. What struck me was that black convertible. Where’d he come by that car? Surely he didn’t tow it up here, though it would explain why he’d gotten to the set so late. Ditto, driving it into his truck and then having to find a loading dock to off-load it before using the truck in the gag. And chance holding up the entire production? I just couldn’t believe that. But it sure would explain why any lame excuse beat the truth.
    If the convertible wasn’t his, what did that mean? There was more I didn’t know about this man than I’d realized, and that was already a lot.

    Gracie’s car was no match for his, but she knew the tricks of the bridge plaza. By the time we cleared the toll booths we were only two cars back, though three lanes apart. “Get closer so we can honk.”
    “Relax. There’s nothing we can do till we clear the bridge. Meanwhile, what’s with your hands?”
    “Just a little burn. No problem. I’ve got salve—”
    “Let me see.”
    “You’re driving!”
    “I’m a doctor, let me—”
    “Keep your eyes on the road!”
    Gracie’s number five in the Lott family. I’m number seven. All my older siblings view me as a daredevil whose risky ventures end up affecting them. Gracie sees me as a potential disaster for her to clean up, stitch up, or pull out of a hole. John, the cop (number two), is personally offended at my challenging any law, even gravity. And Gary, a year older than Gracie and a lawyer, sees me as a way to find out what he can’t. Only Mike, who’s four years older than me and was my buddy and protector the whole time I was growing up, totally approved. He disappeared twenty years ago, and none of us has really gotten over that, least of all me.
    “This guy we’re so busy tailing,” she said. “He’s something special, huh?”
    “Yeah,” I informed myself as much as her. “He is.”
    “So, then, this guy”—she was choosing her words with a lot more care than normal for my mega-hyper sister—“this guy . . . is he like Mike?”
    “What? You think I’m trying to—”
    “Incest? No. I just mean, is he, well, like Mike?”
    “No!” What was she driving at? Why bring up Mike, now of all times? This conversation was going from bad to worse. I looked three cars ahead and a lane over at Guthrie, one hand on the wheel, his arm out the