The traffic was a wall of red brake lights stretching into the dark like a wound that wouldn't close.
"Move. Move, you useless —" Sterling slammed his palm against the steering wheel.
The horn blared, swallowed instantly by the chorus of a hundred other frustrated drivers going nowhere.
Five minutes. Maybe six. The silver car had been two turns ahead of him when the intersection choked shut.
Some construction barricade or broken signal or whatever godforsaken bureaucratic failure had decided to plant itself between Howard Sterling and the answers he was owed.
He craned his neck, straining to scan the choked lanes through the windshield.
Ahead lay nothing but an endless, bleeding procession of taillights stretching into the distance, with no sign of the bottleneck clearing anytime soon.
"Fuck." He killed the engine. Reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a cigarette and stepped out of the car.
