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Bycrafts was having an effect on the Sarge and he was growing a little more renegade each day he stayed in Little Town. Only a little though, and I could still trust his common sense to pull us up if anything became too irresponsible.
    If I’d been by myself, I would have pursued Red to hell and back, with one arm hanging from the window trying to shoot out his tyres while I steered with the other. I probably would have killed both him and me, and maybe even some innocent bystanders in the process. And not for the first time, I glanced over at the Sarge, glad that he’d arrived in Little Town to save me from myself. He was a much needed moderating influence in my life.
    Red must have noticed our flashing lights in his rear view mirror because he suddenly sped up and those tail lights grew fainter. The Sarge sped up in response.
    “Switch the siren on, Sarge. It’ll warn others to pull over. This rain’s hellish.” I flopped back in my seat, surprising myself with my unusual caution. Perhaps he was starting to rub off on me as well.
    He flicked on the siren and raced off after Red. And maybe it was because of the rain, my adrenaline from the morning or me being winged, but the whole chase had a surreal element to it that made me think that any minute I would wake up in bed, clutching my pillow. I wasn’t excited, I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t anything . I was disconnected. My arm hurt badly and I was having considerable trouble concentrating. We reached the crossroads to the highway and the Sarge spun the car left, away from town, chasing those lights.
    “Tess?” the Sarge repeated, becoming snappy as he always did when he was stressed.
    Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t realised he’d been speaking to me. “What?”
    He sighed with suppressed impatience but didn’t respond immediately, swerving sharply around a slow tractor that imprudently pulled out onto the main highway without checking. The rain had eased slightly, but the light remained gloomy.
    “I said we better call it in. He’s heading out of town. He’ll be across the border soon.”
    “ No! ”
    “We’ll have our arses handed to us, gift-wrapped with shiny paper and a bow if we don’t and something happens.”
    “No, Sarge! Keep driving. Drive faster! We can catch him,” I urged.
    He was silent for a beat, daring to throw me an evaluative glance as he drove at one hundred kays over the speed limit. When he clocked the determined expression on my face, he said flatly, “Call it in, Tess. Now.”
    Damn. I’d gone too far and set off his ‘Tess alarm’, as he called it. He knew I was angry – too angry to be coolly rational, too angry to be anything but wildly out of control. I’d rarely called in anything before he arrived, but he was a stickler for protocol and made me do it at least half the times we should have.
    Sullenly, I picked up the radio and called the situation in to the cops in the radio room at the station in Big Town. A bored woman answered. I didn’t recognise her voice. She must be new because I knew all the cops who worked in Big Town and they all knew me very well. I explained our situation to her.
    “ Where are you from?” she asked for the third time.
    “Mount Big Town,” I repeated impatiently, rolling my eyes.
    “Never heard of it,” she said, tapping loudly on her keyboard. She was probably buying something on eBay.
    “We’re ninety minutes away from you. To the south. Slightly inland.”
    “I don’t like the country,” she informed me, then said she’d have to consult her boss. She took a long time to do that, forcing me to listen to uninspired muzak and making me think she’d also taken the opportunity to go for a pee and a cafe latte.
    “Cease pursuit,” she said when she returned, then yawned noisily and tapped once more, giving a small snort of laughter. Not eBay – she was definitely on Facebook.
    “Ask your boss again,” I demanded through gritted teeth. “It’s Redmond Christopher