There comes a time in a young woman's life, Ashley decided, when she is done playing backyard dress up, and ready for the prince’s big balls, so to speak. Flipping open a compartment in the center console, she pulled out a small canvas camouflage bag with a clear laminated compartment. She tossed it into Jynx's lap, startling Sir Pugsley, who responded with an indignant snort, sniffed at the package, and chose to relocate to the back seat.

  Printed in sloppy lowercase letters like a child's handwriting, the label in the laminated sleeve on the little military surplus fanny pack said: “Boom!” Jynx glanced over at Ashley who responded without taking her eyes from the rearview mirror as she skittered across a lump in a cross street, nearly disrupting the hair styling, already in progress. “Relax, honey. It's a self-destruct sequence alright, but it's strictly metaphoric. -- I think.” She considered the package contents, wondering if she had left the fireworks in there, or if they had tossed them all out before they hit the border crossing at Mexicali. “Yeah,” she nodded, smiling. “Pretty sure.”

  Jynx unzipped the bag and reached in. Ashley had two passports, one US, and the other Mexican, for some reason, and the name listed was Ashton LaCroix, like the seltzer water she always drank.

  “Honey don't poke around in there. I don't know if that pistol's still loaded."

  Again, Jynx leaned away slightly. She pulled a few phones, each in a durable rubber case, and color-coded red, yellow, and green. She snagged the red phone and held the power button until the screen lit up. “So yeah, hon. I don't want you to feel responsible or anything, but it looks like it is time for Mr. Ouija to go away for a little while.”

  Jynx refrained from rifling through the remains of the "boom" bag, nervous about the pistol, but intrigued by several stacks of hundred-dollar bills, US currency, fresh and clean as the day they were printed and wrapped in a paper sleeve, just like in the movies. As she reached for them, Ashley plucked an earbud case from a satchel pocket, pulled them out of the little plastic charging case, and tossed the little case over her shoulder, apologizing to Sir Pugsley. Recognizing Jynx's curiosity, she took the satchel from her lap and set it on the floor at Jynx's feet. “I mean, honestly, I was just waiting for an excuse. I've wanted to do this for months.” She flipped down the passenger side visor, revealing a small screen where the vanity mirror ought to have been. She tilted it towards herself slightly and pressed the power button, cursing under her breath as she waited for the spinning wheel on the screen to finish.

  “Uh, Ashley?” Jynx didn't want to bother her, but she preferred to skip the gauntlet run, even if it was her fault that they were on it. “If there's any way you could just drop me at the shop, that would be just fine. I have a few things I wanted to get done,” she said.

  The image on the screen cleared to reveal the same sort of GPS tracking map as Ashley's phone, but a more rugged edition. Moving vehicles were marked as beacons and potential obstacles, the government vehicles were marked in green, a detail which delighted Ashley. “Well, that's cool, Hector never showed me that!” She flipped down her visor, revealing another screen instead of a mirror. She powered up the new one, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum as she waited, humming as if she were merely waiting her turn in a dentist's office.

  “What is all this stuff?” Jynx asked, indicating the screens and small LED displays attached to nooks and crannies in the dashboard. Jeremiah's Batmobile jokes aside, Jynx had never noticed how much aftermarket tech was wired into Ashley's car. She doubted a spacecraft would need so much but was willing to learn. For just a moment, careening at high speed across a residential cross street, it occurred to Jynx that her saucer might not have cup holders, and she might want to grab one from the Desert Sands 99￠ bin before she got into her saucer. To her right, she saw a white Aerostar minivan waiting for the right of way to chase them now, presumably.

  Ash took random turns that became a sort of preflight holding pattern. She bobbed her head from side to side, poking at the various screens, choosing her displays, but she could just as easily be ordering a boba tea for pickup. She dialed a number and waited, twiddling her fingers. “I probably can't make it up to the shop, sweetie. It'll be hard enough to make it to the highway at this rate. She watched the drifting green dots on the screen above the passenger seat. As yet, they had no “bogies” as Ash liked to say. “I need a window, Jynx. I need you to call the street.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Jynx glanced up at the display screen like it was a fish tank bracketed to the ceiling. “What?”

  “Watch the green dots. See the way they're moving? They're going to set up an opening without knowing it, and you're going to guess exactly when and where.” She pulled the screen from the visor and set it in Jynx's lap, patting it like an activity on an afternoon road trip. “It's just like one of your video games, hon.”

  Jynx watched the convergence of green dots, clearly delineated as law enforcement. Like the activities on her tablet, she watched the tiny dots all move, seemingly random. She didn't understand them as well in two dimensions. They did seem to ebb and flow, taking turns at intersections, and moving down the highway lines in pairs.

  She really could see it. It was not necessarily a pattern, but the seemingly unpredictable points moved together. Some came from points off-screen, moving back towards town.

  “Jynx, hon, I meant like, now. We gotta get out of here before these guys start collecting in one spot.” She saw what Jynx had seen, not by some solid calculations, but some sort of gut feeling like Lisa had described. Jynx focused, pushing the little dots around in her mind, seeing twenty points on a grid, thirty seconds into the future. Anything else was unpredictable.

  “Jynx! Now!” Ashley yelled.

  Jynx blinked at the dots and then spoke. “Two blocks north go left.”

  “We need to get into town, not back to Arroyo Viejo.”

  “Just, left. And faster.” Watching the dots move, she felt almost as if she had slipped into a trance. She calculated without numbers, watching for the green dots especially. “Okay. Turn right and punch it for two blocks.” Ashley seemed to have gone into a trance of her own, following Jynx's instructions without paying much attention to the road. She collected another phone, the yellow from the stack, and fiddled with buttons. The dialing sound played over the speakers briefly before Ashley heard it in her earbuds.

  Jynx glanced over her shoulder to confirm that Dr. Vickers was back on their tail and realizing that she could pick out which dot was his on the screen, double-tapped it to change the color instinctively.

  “Ooooh!” Ash exclaimed. “See, I told you we'd be good at this.”

  Despite driving significantly over the speed limit, Dr. Vickers was still not keeping up with them and planning their move, Jynx was confident they could lose him without drawing much attention. “Right here.”

  Ashley skittered around a corner turning down a mostly empty street.

  “Left at the next block and then watch your speed through the traffic light across the highway.” She watched the green dots crisscrossing their target intersection, confident she timed it correctly. Ignoring the front windshield, she checked Dr. Vickers's dot and confirmed they lost him as they took a left. “Oh!” Ashley flicked a toggle switch beside the stereo console, and it was as if all the sound was instantly sucked out of the cracked sunroof. They coasted along in a serene, soundless bubble. Even Mr. Ouija's fierce growl was reduced to a delicate purring. She held her pointer finger aloft to cease the nonexistent chatter. “Uh, yes, I'll hold,” she said to the phone.

  Ashley ground gears to slow, her engine growling low as she coasted conspicuously across the intersection, attracting the eyes of nearly a dozen of those big meaty agents, all lined up at the red light. Cruising just below the speed limit she crossed all four lanes of the highway, lined with curious or even just randy undercover extraterrestrial investigators only too happy to see Ashley's smiling face, even if it was only faintly familiar for some reason. Had they seen the rest of her, they would have recognized her for certain. She treated the lot on her side to a delightful Miss Arroyo Grande-worthy princess in a parade wave that elicited a few ingenuous smiles.

  Jynx just stared at the faces on her side, sinking further into her seat. Not nearly as entertained by the attention, she became all too aware of how many of these guys there actually were, with a dozen dots on the screen that she couldn't see through the windshield. Every single one of them wanted her saucer.

  Ashley dropped a gear and stomped the gas again on the other side, leaving skittered ellipses of melted Goodyear behind as she sped off. “Yes, hi! She chirped into the phone. “I feel so silly calling you, but I've looked everywhere, and I just can't seem to figure out where my car has gone.” She held her manicured fingernails to the ear bead as if the noise canceling device was making the 911 operator difficult to hear. “Well, I just didn't want to say it out loud, but I am beginning to believe that it has been stolen!” And she smiled nonchalantly at Jynx.