We scattered. Hatch began hoisting Blackstone's corpse over his shoulder but stopped when Josiah said to leave it. I joined the avalanche of stomping feet out of the study, past Blackstone's soccer-ball-chasing daughters, my sandals collecting more and sharper shards of glass. Noise crisscrossed in my brain—siren bloops, yelled instructions, shrieks. I kept my head down and legs moving.

Outside felt twenty degrees colder than before. People ran all directions, trampling vines, tripping over garden hose.

Where was the Prius? Left or right?

Beyond the Blackstone's private tennis courts rose a majestic willow tree. I passed through its branches with other Mice, curtains of leaves whipping our faces, and came out the other side still more disoriented.

Was I in the back or front yard?

Rumors swirled around me, that somebody had fallen off a balcony (what balcony?) and broken his leg, that Blackstone's wife was chasing us, that cops were out front. A bike whizzed by, the rider's breath and pumping pedals quick in my ears.

It was obvious the Blind Mice had no clue what they were doing. They were hackers. Computer jocks. I got the sense Josiah had decided to kill Blackstone all by himself—possibly on the spot—without formulated an escape plan. We were all going to end up in jail.

I ran. The glass worked itself out of my sandals, and dimly I perceived that I was approaching a property line—the grass changed up ahead, mowed at a different angle.

The guy with great hair was running beside me, nose up like dog's.

"Which rendezvous point, did you hear?" he asked me.

I blinked. Maybe there was plan. "No. I—tonight's my first night."

"Oh. Cool." He grimaced at the stupidity of this word in this moment. "I'm Garrison."

"Molly."

We had paused in the middle of a neighbor's yard. I did a half-wave, from my waist outward. He ducked his head awkwardly. Six-foot, mellow eyes. His backpack straps had broken; he carried it in one fist like a brown paper bag. Guessing, I'd say he was an even decade younger.

"I can't believe that happened," he said. "This is so borked."

I had started to nod agreement, but stopped short at the term.

"Sorry, I code. You probably blog, huh?"

"Right." I scanned nearby streets for the Prius, deciding smalltalk could wait. "You said something about rendezvous points?"

"Yeah. It was supposed to a gas station or this IHOP, but that—I mean, that was before we murdered somebody."

My stomach plunged at his use of we. "Do you have a car?"

"Not here. I caught a ride with ..." He fluttered his fingers toward the mansion. "Whatever. No. No car."

I described where I had parked, and together we figured out which direction to move. A piked privacy fence ruled out behind us, but both left and right were clear. Garrison was 50/50 on whether we needed to circle back around the Blackstone property.

"If it's a tossup," I said, "let's get as far away as possible."

He gathered his hair behind his head, holding it like a mane. "For sure."

I grabbed his hand and we sprinted for the road. Halfway, we heard a car engine start. Then another. Tires whinnied. Headlights swept over the wide chimneys of the Tudor whose yard we were crossing, throwing zigzag shafts all about.

We were being left behind.

Garrison asked what color my car was.

"Blizzard pearl," I said, automatically reciting the first words of the want-ad post I had answered. He quirked his brow only a second before pointing through a copse of junipers.

"That's it!" I said. "Come on!"

As we darted past a garden shed and between the chains of a swingset, I whipped out my phone—which I had forgotten in the chaos. I swiped it alive expecting a bunch of missed texts from Durwood, but there was nothing. Why? He had lost audio but still, wouldn't he have detected the break-in some other way? Had he been detained by security?

What kind of security could miss the Blind Mice but catch Durwood Oak Jones?

Lights came on up the block. Dogs barked. The neighborhood seemed to realize it had been violated—skid marks on its cobblestone, the stink of low-ends cars—and was crying foul.

Police would be here soon.

Finally we squeezed through the junipers to my Prius.

"Get in!" I said to Garrison, who'd become snagged on a limb.

I clicked my key fob and took the wheel. Garrison scampered into the passenger seat, shoes crunching on Target receipts and the kids' worksheets/lesser art projects.

The engine started with that near-silent purr that in other circumstances cheers my heart.

Garrison said, "My apartment's in Highland Park."

I twisted to check behind, then pulled away from the curb. "Gotcha. We're not going there. We're going wherever we need to not get arrested."

He didn't argue.

Reversing us out of a cul-de-sac, I thought more of Durwood. Quaid Rafferty might let you down—almost certainly would let you down, given enough time—but not Durwood Oak Jones. What could've happened? Had he peeled off after Josiah? Or tried to revive Ted Blackstone?

Doesn't matter, I told myself. Durwood isn't here. It's all you.

An elderly couple had emerged from their house. The woman in her nightgown pointed as I drove past; the man craned his neck. Was he getting my license plate? I couldn't worry about it. I gunned it through a stop sign, leaving electric mode, almost clipping some straggler on a bike.

Moments later, we were zipping underneath the enclave's wrought-iron gates when a trilling reached our ears.

"Is that ... a car?" Garrison asked.

I followed a right fork in the road. The trilling rose, coming closer.

"A car going fast, I think."

In the next block, headlights blared in both my mirrors. Careening, wagging side-to-side. I didn't see roof lights, and the front-end looked too small for a cruiser. The car lurched and zigzagged, using the whole road.

"Let's pull over, let them pass." I eased us to the curb.

Garrison and I watched through our headrests as the car barreled on. Bucking through a stop, speeding right at the fork. Watching its jerky progress, I had a flash memory of Karen's favorite book as a toddler, Sheep in a Jeep, those flighty sheep always forgetting to steer.

The headlights swelled. The trilling intensified. Twenty feet away the car began a power skid that I thought would carry it safely past us, but at the last moment, the front fishtailed and slammed the Prius's left side.

The impact spun us a quarter-turn. Garrison pitched into the dashboard. I held on to my headrest; my legs, whipped out from underneath, ended up in his lap.

Although it had felt like an iceberg hitting the Titanic, the blow had been glancing. The Prius's motor was still running.

The other car had spun too. Its driver's side was aligned with mine such that I could see, through panes of spiderweb-cracked glass, the person behind the wheel.

Josiah.

"To the turnpike!" he yelled. "We're golden! Don't sweat the cops, Piper's got them. Just head for the turnpike!"

"O—okay," I said. "But should we, uh ..."

What, exchange insurance information? Before I could manage a full sentence, Josiah said, "Just go, roll!" and blazed off, his side mirror dangling by wires, knocking against the door like a tin-can wedding streamer.

The car's trilling—which had acquired a slight hiccup in the wreck—receded, and for a confused moment I thought I had dreamed the last thirty seconds. Then I tried turning towards Garrison and my neck seized to stone.

Nope: that'd been real. Just like the murder I had unwittingly participated in.

I put the car back in gear and followed Josiah, driving swiftly but abiding traffic laws. Congestion was light at this hour. We covered ten miles of NJ-10 in ten minutes.

I-95 was in sight, its cloverleaf entry- and exit-ramps curling into the night sky ahead, when the sirens began.

Bloo-bloop, bloo-bloop.

Nausea jolted my midsection. I gagged over the steering column. Eyes squeezed three-quarters' shut, I peeked in the rearview.

There they were: blue lights. Several hundred feet back, but coming.

Garrison sat with wrists pinched together, as though trying to hide his Mice tattoo. "They said just data."

I glanced from the road. "Tonight?"

"For always. We were just supposed to zap data, start everyone back at zero."

Ahead, Josiah whirlybirded through a traffic circle and started up the turnpike ramp. I pegged the accelerator to keep pace.

You are officially running from the police. You are in a high-speed car chase.

I was going to jail.

Presently.

In my head, the kids were already in foster care. Karen—and this was best case—taken in by some kindly childless couple that would buy princess bikes and never challenge her. Zach bouncing from one overcrowded group home to the next, learning the worst from each pack of unwanted adolescent boys, tolerated by his embittered hosts only as long as the monthly stipend outweighed the hassle.

The sirens bleated louder. Garrison's mellow eyes found mine across the dash, and our shared regret was palpable. Why couldn't I have been happy at First Mutual? Or said no at the tattoo shop? Or scrammed at the azalea bushes, or when Josiah smashed into Ted Blackstone's conservatory with a pool brush?

This was my mess. True, it had started with Quaid and Durwood's assignment, but I was the one who'd given mollyforchange.org its voice. I had participated far beyond a plant fulfilling her cover. I had adopted the Mice's snarled emotions. Internalized their grievances. Now here I was.

I whispered a silent prayer that He deliver me to safety. That I be rescued from these awful, inexcusable mistakes.

Then, at the stroke of midnight, all the sirens stopped.