Page 4 (1/2)

I press the engine-start b.u.t.ton.

“Turn on the navigation.”

I turn it on.

“Click on ‘previous destinations.’ ”

I’ve never owned a car with built-in GPS, and it takes me a moment to find the right tab on the touchscreen.

Three locations appear.

One is my home address. One is the university where I work.

“You’ve been following me?” I ask.

“Choose Pulaski Drive.”

I select 1400 Pulaski Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60616, with no idea where that even is. The female voice on the GPS instructs me: Make a legal U-turn when possible and proceed for point-eight miles.

s.h.i.+fting into gear, I turn out into the dark street.

The man behind me says, “Buckle your seat belt.”

I strap myself in as he does the same.

“Jason, just so we’re clear, if you do anything other than follow these directions to the letter, I’m going to shoot you through the seat. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes.”

I drive us through my neighborhood, wondering if I’m seeing it all for the last time.

At a red light, I pull to a stop in front of my corner bar. Through the deeply tinted front pa.s.senger window, I see the door is still propped open. I glimpse Matt, and through the crowd, Ryan, turned around in his stool now, his back to the bar, his elbows on the scuffed wood, holding court for his postgrads. Probably enthralling them with a horrifying cautionary tale of failure starring his old roommate.

I want to call out to him. To make him understand that I’m in trouble. That I need—

“Green light, Jason.”

I accelerate through the intersection.

The GPS navigation guides us east through Logan Square to the Kennedy Expressway, where the indifferent female voice instructs me, Turn right in one hundred feet and proceed for nineteen-point-eight miles.

Southbound traffic is light enough for me to peg the speedometer at seventy and keep it there. My hands sweat on the leather steering wheel, and I can’t stop wondering, Am I going to die tonight?

It occurs to me that if I do survive, I’ll carry a new revelation with me for the rest of my days: we leave this life the same way we enter it—totally alone, bereft. I’m afraid, and there is nothing Daniela or Charlie or anyone can do to help me in this moment when I need them more than ever. They don’t even know what I’m experiencing.

The interstate skirts the western edge of downtown. The Willis Tower and its brood of lesser skysc.r.a.pers glow with a serene warmth against the night.

Through the writhing panic and fear, my mind races, fighting to puzzle out what’s happening.

My address is in the GPS. So this wasn’t a random encounter. This man has been following me. Knows me. Ergo, some action of mine has resulted in this outcome.

But which?

I’m not rich.

My life isn’t worth anything beyond its value to me and to my loved ones.

I’ve never been arrested, never committed a crime.

Never slept with another man’s wife.

Sure, I flip people off in traffic on occasion, but that’s just Chicago.

My last and only physical altercation was in the sixth grade when I punched a cla.s.smate in the nose for pouring milk down the back of my s.h.i.+rt.

I haven’t wronged anyone in the meaningful sense of the word. In a manner that might have culminated with me driving a Lincoln Navigator with a gun pointed at the back of my head.

I’m an atomic physicist and professor at a small college.