Three blocks later, she pulled into an empty parking lot and stopped again. Her fingers shook so badly that she could barely open her contacts list. When she finally made the call, the person who answered did not ask why Maya sounded frightened. He simply listened.
"James," she said, "something happened."
"Are you safe?" James Wu asked.
She looked at her wrists. "I'm not sure how to answer that."
"Where are you?"
"Maple Ridge. Near the pharmacy."
"Don't drive if you're shaken. Tell me where you're parked. I'll come to you."
Maya closed her eyes. For the first time since Callahan ordered her out of the car, she allowed herself to feel the full humiliation of those seven minutes. And beneath it, harder and steadier than humiliation, something else began to take shape. She knew the man had believed the encounter would end when she drove away.
She knew, with a certainty that kept her from crying, that he was wrong.
James reached the parking lot twenty minutes later in an old gray sedan that had never inspired confidence in anyone who judged cars by appearances. He was thirty-six, lean, with neat hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and he approached Maya's window with the same careful manner he used around witnesses who had suffered a shock. He did not reach for the door or ask her to move. He waited until she unlocked it herself.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
"My knees. My wrists. I think I'll be okay."
"You need a medical examination."
"I know."
"Do you want me to call Zoe's grandmother?"
Maya looked at the photograph tucked into her dashboard: a smiling fifteen-year-old girl in a school uniform, her arms looped around Maya's shoulders. "Not until I know what I'm telling her," she said. "I don't want her hearing it from somebody else."