Milestone 44 at three in the afternoon looked nothing like it did at midnight.
The fog was gone. The ocean was visible, wide and flat and unremarkable in the way of the Pacific on clear days, the kind of blue that looked more like a painting than a physical thing. The coastal scrub along the barrier was winter-dry and silver. The road was empty in both directions.
The black panel van was parked on the shoulder.
And sitting on the concrete barrier wall, her small legs dangling over the edge above the four-foot drop to the coastal scrub below, was Trisha. She had a helmet on, one of the small ones from the estate garage, fitted to her head with the care of someone who, whatever else she was, understood that a six-year-old on a motorcycle required a helmet.
Beside her, not touching her, m
