The car was really shaking now, the envelope buzzing against the dash. In profile, Rothstadt’s lips pressed tight, wrinkling so they looked like a wound stitched together. Her blue eyes were wide and glassy.

The car was silent except for the slow squeak of the wipers against the misty windshield and the feverish tapping of paper on plastic.

The vibration grew until all of us were shaking, until the trees on the right side of the road, visible in breaks in the fog, were dancing, leaves glinting like silver dollars as they fluttered toward then away from the streetlamps.

The vibration had a sound now, not like the train whooshing past. A rumble like earth-bound thunder.

“Stop the car,” Rothstadt said.

The guard already had, but he put the SUV in park. In the rearview mirror, I could make out the Suburban that had been following us, and it stopped as well.

“Stay with the witnesses.” Rothstadt swung the door open and climbed out, shoes clicking as she walked along the headlights’ trail. She paused, staring into the foggy night, her blazer taut on her lifted shoulders, her hand resting at the gun on her hip. She turned back, hand cupped over her eyes to block the light as she stared through the front window. She shrugged, and her voice reached us dimly: “Nothing.”

But still the ground was vibrating like a massage chair, and the envelope was jittering on the dashboard.

THWACK. The car bounced as something thumped against the roof.

Levi and I jumped in our seats, but Sofía stayed still, calm. The driver swore under his breath, hand going toward his own gun as he eyed the sunroof suspiciously.

Rothstadt was still standing in the middle of the road, blanched by the car’s headlights. She had her gun drawn, but her eyebrows were knit together in confusion as her gaze wandered from one side of the road to the other.

“FBI,” she called out. “Come out slowly, with your hands up!”

Her hand slid into her pocket and withdrew a phone. Gun still poised in her right hand, she lifted the phone to her ear with her left.

THWACK. The car jogged again. Then twice more as two black objects careened into the hood of the car.

Levi’s hand slapped to his mouth, stifling a yelp. The guard undid his seat belt and scrambled out of the car to get a better look as the three of us leaned forward to see what had struck us.

Birds. Two more hit in quick succession, beak first, blood spurting toward the windshield.

The other soldiers, the ones from the second car, were moving tentatively around us on either side, trying to see what the holdup was. Rothstadt was striding back toward the car, calling out to them, but the rumbling was too loud to hear.

The fog broke apart as they came barreling toward us, a moving sea of black and white and brown.

Cows, hundreds of cows breaking through the mist with wide, wild eyes and hoarse screams of panic, hooves pounding the asphalt, shaking it, as they stampeded toward us.

Rothstadt and the others dove out of the way as the crush of cows hit the front of the car like a wave, breaking around it, surging past on either side, their noise drowning out the shouted commands of Rothstadt and the others.

“You knew?” Levi crowed enthusiastically. “You knew we were about to get ambushed by cows?”

“I’ll explain later,” Sofía said. The car rocked violently as the cows converged around it, mooing and groaning against it on all sides.

Hooves pounded and slid against the hood as two cows tried to pitch themselves onto it. Gaping mouths and wild eyes pressed in against the windows, thick tongues drawing patterns of slime on the glass as the animals pounded against the car. The herd hit the left side of the car so hard the tires lifted off the road, and all three of us screamed as they slammed back down, just in time for the right-side tires to catapult off.

Snatches of shouts broke through the chaos. Camouflage was visible in flashes as the soldiers tried to push through to reach us.

Sofía gripped my arm and shouted over the noise, “Are you ready?”

“Ready for—” My voice wrenched into a scream as another slam against the left propelled the car over, glass shattering on impact, raining down on us from the uptilted left side of the car. Hanging hard against my seat belt, I threw my arms over my head as glass fell on us like confetti and cows pushed in around the window.

Still suspended in his seat belt, Levi jerked back from them, bracing his legs against the driver’s seat headrest to push himself deeper into the car.

“We have to go,” Sofía hissed. “Now.” She unclipped her seat belt and crashed to what was now the floor, the shattered right window flush against the asphalt. I followed suit, dropping beside her. Levi was still hanging, dodging the wild-eyed cows like some reverse version of whack-a-mole.

Sofía reached across me and undid Levi’s seat belt. He dropped like a sandbag against my forearms, crushing me to the car door-turned-floor. We were all smushed together painfully, but Sofía climbed clear, toward the upturned window.

“They’ll crush us!” Levi said.

“Or we’ll get shot!” I added.

Sofía looked back over her shoulder, her face dark in the foggy night. “Can you trust me? Just once, I need you to.”

We wouldn’t always have each other. No one could have a guarantee like that. But so far, Sofía had come through for us—for me—every single time we needed someone.