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She smiled again and made a show of leaning forward, narrowing her eyes as if to examine him. "Ah, see, there's something you need to know about me: I can read minds. I can tell you're skeptical, so let me give it a shot. Ready?"

She narrowed her eyes farther, comically exaggerating her concentration. At this point, Abbott was 99 percent of the way to driving off and marking the ride as canceled.

"You have trouble getting to sleep at night," she began, "because you can't turn off your brain. Usually, it's replaying something stressful that happened in the past or rehearsing something stressful that could possibly happen in the future. You then have to down constant caffeine just to function through the day—I bet you've got one of those big energy drinks in the center console right now. You sometimes get really good ideas in the shower. You can't navigate even your own city without software that gives you turn-by-turn directions. You get an actual, physical sense of panic if you can't find your phone, even if you know it's still somewhere in your home."

She was rocking in her seat, rolling the trunk's tiny wheels back and forth, back and forth.

"You don't have a girlfriend or a boyfriend," she continued before Abbott could interrupt. "You've never had a long-term relationship, and at least once in your life, you thought you were dating someone while the whole time they thought you were just friends. You actually don't have any close friends. Maybe you did when you were in school, but you don't keep in touch. You've replaced them with a whole bunch of internet acquaintances—maybe you're all members of the same fandom or a guild in a video game—but you'd be traumatized if any of them suddenly showed up at your front door unannounced. Sometimes, out of the blue, you'll physically cringe at something you said or did when you were a teenager. When you use porn, you may have to sort through two hundred pics or videos before you find one that will get you off. You're sure that humanity is doomed and feel like you were cursed to be born when you were. Am I close?"

Abbott had to take a moment to gather himself. Forcing a dismissive tone with all his might, he said, "Congratulations, you've just described everyone I know."

"Exactly. It describes everyone you know."

"I really do have to get back to work, I don't—"

"Don't get offended, please, none of that was intended as an insult. I'm only saying that I know you're an outsider, just like me! I think the universe brought us together. But I'm not done, because this is the big one: The reason you're hesitating to make this trip, even for a life-changing amount of money, isn't because you're worried that I'm a scammer or that my employer is a drug lord and this box is full of heroin. No, what you fear above all is humiliation at the hands of the unfamiliar. What if you get a flat tire on a highway in Tennessee—do you even know how to change it? What if we wind up in the wrong lane at a toll road and the lady in the booth yells at you? What if you get a speeding ticket in Ohio—how do you even pay it? What if you get into a fender bender and the other driver is a big, scary guy who doesn't speak English? Then there's the absolutely terrifying prospect of spending dozens of hours in an enclosed space with some weird woman. What if you embarrass yourself? Or, worse, what if I say something that makes you embarrassed on my behalf? You'll have no mute or block button, just unfettered raw-dog, face-to-face contact, with no escape, for days on end. What if I'm so unhinged that we literally have nothing to talk about, no shared jokes, no way to break the tension? What if, what if, what if—all of these scenarios that humanity deals with a billion times a day but that you find so terrifying that you wouldn't even risk them for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. So the question is: Would you do it for two hundred?"

She fished out a fourth hunk of bills. The escalating amounts actually didn't make an impression on Abbott; at this point, the dollar figures all registered as equally impossible sums of money. But the hand that held the cash was trembling, and he sensed the thrum of desperation inside the woman, the vibe of one who has exhausted every reasonable option and is now trying the stupid ones.

"A hundred now," she said, "and a hundred after we arrive in DC. If you think it's a trick, that we'll get there and I'll steal back the money at knifepoint, we can swing by somewhere and you can drop off the first payment. You can even take it to your bank, let the teller do the counterfeit test on the bills. If we hurry."

"How do you know I wouldn't do that and then just refuse to drive you?"

"Because I can see into your soul. You would never do that. Not just because it's wrong but because you'd be torn apart by the awkwardness of that conversation, of having to see the look on my face when I found out you'd double-crossed me. Also, you'd soon realize that you wouldn't just be screwing me but my employer. And even if he's not a criminal, you can guess that's probably a pretty bad idea. He could send guys in suits to your house to demand the money back, and just think how awkward that would be."

Abbott heard himself say, "Can I have time to think about it?" and knew that his automated avoidance mechanism had kicked in. He'd been developing this apparatus since his first day in kindergarten when the Smelly Girl had asked him to play with her and, in a panic, he'd had to come up with a plausible excuse not to (he told her his family's religion forbade touching plastic dinosaurs). These days, it was pure reflex: If an acquaintance invited him to trivia night at the bar, a ready-made, ironclad excuse would fly from his lips before he'd even given it a thought. Sure, sometimes he'd find himself wondering if maybe he should be filtering these invitations before they were routed directly into the trash. Here, for example: On some level, he knew this offer deserved more consideration. But his request for time wasn't about that, it was just one of the stock phrases he deployed to get to a safe distance where plans could be easily canceled via text or, even better, by simply avoiding that person for the rest of his life. Sure, this woman was in some kind of distress, but that would be no burden to him once she was out of sight—