I’m soaping up my hair when the water in the shower cuts off and I feel that sudden sick feeling like when a vehicle surprises me by starting to move. We’d parked my motorhome on the side of the hill out on the very edge of the designated surveillance perimeter, watching for any sign of movement from the Sidorov human trafficking cartel.

  My partner, Agent Monica Ochoa of the FBI, is mad at me, no one will tell me why, and for a second I think she might’ve been ordered to relocate or reposition or something, only I don’t feel the rumble of the engine.

  I’d gotten bored and sleepy after a long day of Monica dodging every effort to start a conversation, answering every question with a yes or no or a shrug, offering nothing, so when the clock ticked over to three in the morning, I told her I was going to wake back up by taking a shower. I figured it was reasonable since nothing at all was happening in the streets here in downtown Akron. It was about as lively at that hour as I expected, which is to say, not at all.

  The parking brake is a button under the dash by the hinge of the door. If she’d fallen asleep, it’d be very easy to bump that with a knee. Too easy. I’ve been meaning to have that changed to something more secure. That’s it. I’m calling them later and getting something more secure installed. With my luck, something like this was bound to happen eventually.

  Any moment now Monica will wake up and hit the brakes.

  Any second.

  I’m nearly knocked off my feet when we hit a pothole. If it was a pothole and not somebody’s cat or something. There’s no slowing down, no turning. Instead, my home rolls faster and faster. The center of town is hilly. Akron has seven of them, just like Rome, and we’re not far from the courthouse and the police station. I’m trying to remember what street we’re on. Bowery? High? How many cross streets? Does it end in a T? I think it’s about two blocks and then a restaurant.

  Great. My lawyer will be so pleased when we crash right through the doors.

  I decide I’d better lay down on the floor and brace myself, while trying to keep the soap out of my eyes. The goddamn water shut off as soon as the wheels started turning. A safety feature, they said.

  A sudden, noisy, messy stop is in my immediate future, so I Push. Either Monica will wake up and stomp on the brakes or we’ll hit a parked car or someone hits us. I’m not too worried. This thing has been suped up by engineers and practitioners until it’s the next best thing to a tank. That and the aethings, or Amorphous Entropic Thingies that I can see only because I’ve been cursed, twice, are showing me that the ambient good luck in the area is much stronger right now than its counterpart. I shouldn’t have to Push too hard to keep anybody from being hurt.

  Still, it’s weird. Somehow, me, naked and covered in soap, cowering on the floor of my shower aboard my out-of-control motorhome, is a good thing. Welcome to my world.

  “Monica?” I yell.

  No answer.

  Yeah, par for the course lately, but this isn’t like her. She wouldn’t move without orders, and wouldn’t have hit the pothole. Not even to fuck with me. She’s not up there, arms crossed, holding her breath, being stubborn to the point of property damage.

  I’m worried about her. We’ve got to be at terminal velocity now and she hasn’t woken up?

  I try to remember if I heard a door slam shut or felt the lopsided rocking of someone entering or exiting the vehicle, but I don’t think so. Besides, I doubt I would hear anything over the running water, and Monica is so itty bitty she wouldn’t make much wobble getting in and out of a Prius let alone my home.

  We must have passed the first intersection by now. The motorhome feels empty.

  Something’s wrong.

  Wronger.

  More wrong?

  I’m weightless for a moment as the motorhome sails over a slight rise in the road and when I get squashed back into the floor, my elbow catches on the lip of the shower, right on the funny bone. I howl with pain and my left arm goes limp and numb. A beat after that and there’s this huge pop, like when an asshole middle school kid blows into his brown paper lunch bag and pops it behind that girl he likes because nothing says I love you like making your love interest piss herself in the school cafeteria in front of all her friends, only instead of a brown paper bag, it’s a Greyhound bus being popped by King Kong. Yeah, and I’m inside the damn thing.

  I’m slammed into the shower door, cracking it, as the motorhome lurches to the right, and I’m sent headfirst into the corner of my tiny bathroom. Somebody must’ve hit us.

  I’m able to stand. A hand to my head comes away wet with soap and water, but there’s no blood. No bones broken, though my left arm feels like it’s on fire from earlier. I can move it. The motorhome’s stopped. So there’s that.

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  I wrap a towel around me and head for the side door.

  I’m probably calmer than I should be. Maybe I’m getting a bit too used to what my life’s become since I got cursed twice eight months ago? I mean, compared to some things I’ve gone through, a little naked fender-bender isn’t so bad. Still, my heart’s racing, my adrenaline’s going, and I’m scared Monica or somebody’s been hurt.

  She’s not in the driver’s seat.

  Maybe she’s outside already dealing with whatever happened? It sure felt like someone hit us. That’s probably lucky, and kept us from aggressively visiting that restaurant in a manner that would only excite their insurer.

  Yeah, I’m cracking jokes, but the aethings are still paler than the norm, so I’m expecting not much more than some embarrassment on my part as my soapy ass shares my information with the unhappy motorist. For all I know, the guy who hit us is drunk, and we just saved a family of five from being knocked off a bridge or something.

  “Monica?”

  There’s no answer.

  A coffee cup has shattered on the floor by the table, but aside from that, I don’t see any damage. The airbags haven’t even deployed. My angle through the windshield isn’t great to see much, but there’s a streetlight and a large dark shape nestled against the front of the cab. There’s no smoke. No shouting or screaming.

  I shrug and open the side door. Stepping down onto the asphalt in my bare feet, I’m careful to look down first. With my luck, there could be anything down there. Uncomfortable pebbles, broken glass, a spinning, hissing tear gas canister, an anaconda, landmine, but the street is clean and its roughness is warm against my toes.

  I hear tires ruffling off to my right. There’s an SUV halfway down the block turning around. Good. A witness.

  It’s a pleasant early morning in early June. The day had been hot and drier than usual. Like the Akron in my world, the downtown has been revitalized, the traditional urban decay shoved into the alleyways and fringes more effectively than most other rust belt cities have managed. It feels cleaner, safer than a lot of similar places I’ve been and figure there’s probably some kind of psychological correlation.

  The man stepping around the front of the cab would seem to disagree. The barrel of his freaking submachine gun precedes him and stays steady, even as his eyes widen in surprise. He’s dressed in black fatigues, black stocking cap, and a snake tattoo coils around his neck. All Sidorov’s people have them.

  My towel falls off when I raise my hands. I duck to grab it without thinking and hear three loud knocks behind me. Startled and off-balance, I stumble further to my right. When I look back at the gunman, there’s a flash and I hear another impact. His weapon hasn’t made a sound, but he’s fucking shooting at me!

  I’ve been training with the FBI, thank God. They teach you to do! To think! So, I react instead of freezing. I snap the towel at his eyes.

  He staggers back. His trigger hand stays where it is, but the other goes to his face, his teeth gritted in pain, the barrel of his gun angles down at the road.

  I crouch further and step forward, driving my fist, with all my weight behind it, into the gunman’s groin. It’s a solid shot, and he doubles over. When he does so, I take a step toward him and launch myself upward, the top of my head smashing into his face.

  He’s falling and I shove him aside, away from the motorhome. My intention is to get back inside and drive away, but I hear something behind me and the possibilities grow dark around me. Wrong move.

  I hurry forward instead.

  We’ve t-boned a big passenger van. It looks full. The shadows of figures of varying sizes inside it provide no clues who they are, but none of them are writhing in pain or screaming. They seem still. Waiting. There’s no damage to either vehicle that I can see, and that’s surprising. I can’t vouch for how fast either of us was going, but it felt like quite an impact from where I was. On the floor of my shower.

  There are two other vehicles stopped behind it. Black SUVs.

  Armed men are standing around them, watching over the others who are checking out my motorhome, I suppose. I keep low and head for the driver’s side of the van.

  The top of my head hurts. There’s a sharp pain there, and I have to fight the temptation to check it. The less movement I make, the better. If they see me, they’re liable to shoot even if I am naked, wet and soapy, with a towel in my hand.

  The SUV I figured was a witness has pulled to a stop, but I’m pretty sure now it was the lead vehicle in some kind of motorcade, and it won’t be Mister and Missus Jones interrupting their late night adventures come to see if everybody’s okay. It’ll be Sidorov Asshole numbers One and Two approaching to cancel any witnesses.

  The driver of the van is standing by his open door, pistol by his leg, while he watches his companions. I’m hoping to get close, but he sees me and brings up his gun.

  I throw the towel in his face, and Sparta-kick him right in the sternum. He goes flying and I’m in the driver’s seat of the van before he lands.

  The moment I slam shut the heavy door, it’s like I’m inside a popcorn popper. Gunfire from all directions. I’m surrounded by muzzle flashes and sparks flying, but there’s no pain. The glass holds. The bullets aren’t even leaving a mark. In fact, I see a man go down, blood fountaining from a hole in his throat from a ricochet.

  “Bulletproof?” I turn to the people behind me.

  They’re all shapes and sizes, varying in age, gender, and race. All of them are squeaky clean but unkempt. The men are unshaven, nobody’s hair has felt a brush in weeks, and judging from the winking, grinning old lady in the back, there’s an average of a tooth missing for every year past thirty years of age.

  A teenage kid sitting just behind me with a lumpy afro snorts and gestures at the window where bullets snap at the glass and puff away like they’re made of dust. Like any idiot can see, yeah, bulletproof. Duh.

  A tall black man three seats back says, “Son, you ain’t got nothing on.”

  The old lady cackles and cheers.

  I bark a laugh. “It’s been that kind of evening.”

  The keys are in the ignition, and the engine is running. I fasten my seatbelt.

  The former driver’s face fills my side window, his eyes roving over my features, committing them to memory. If he’s startled by my soapy nudity, he makes no sign.

  I give him the finger.

  The old lady howls with laughter.

  I turn around. “You guys have seatbelts?”

  The teenager smirks in derision and shakes his head.

  A skinny white guy wearing a happy face t-shirt from the eighties twitches and says, “No, we ain’t got no fucking seatbelts, fuck-o.”

  “Right. Better hold on then.” I put the van into gear, spin the wheel away from my motorhome, and stand on the gas pedal. There’s the shrieking of tires, and the heavy van pounces to the left, scattering Sidorov’s psychopaths toward their cars, and the chase is on.