I got to the end of the lane and glanced up and down, to see which way Freddy had gone. Taillights disappearing to the right—that figured. Away from town.

Just then another set of headlights appeared across the road from me. A pickup truck pulled out of a small side lane and took off after Freddy’s taillights.

I couldn’t be sure with the brief glimpse I got as it passed—but it looked like Seth Early. Apparently he’d eventually figured out where he’d lost his prey and backtracked to the last place he’d seen it. Our caravan was reassembled—well, minus Rob’s car.

It took Mr. Early a little while to figure out that the new caravan was going at a much higher speed, but once he caught on, he fell into the same comfortable trailing distance he had before. I turned on my headlights after a couple of turns and followed suit.

After a couple of miles, I realized that another car was following me. Was it Arroyo, perhaps, in a borrowed car? Or his backup? I hoped so. The only other people I could think of who might be motivated to keep pace with our breakneck crew would be some criminal ally of Freddy’s, and that would definitely be bad news.

When we reached the Clay Hill Road, Freddy turned left—away from Caerphilly. I fished out my cell phone and managed to dial 911 without landing in a ditch.

“Hello, Meg, how are you?” Debbie Anne, the dispatcher, said.

“I’ve been better,” I said. “I’m on the Clay Hill Road, heading toward the county line at sixty-five miles an hour, chasing an illegal bird smuggler who may also be Jasper Walker’s murderer.”

“Oh, my!” Debbie Anne said. “You don’t mean Freddy Hamilton, do you?”

“The very same,” I said. “He’s not driving his own truck—he stole a car. Dark blue Honda Accord. I have the license number—oh, damn!”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m bleeding all over my notebook.”

“Bleeding! What happened?”

“Just another Spike bite.”

I managed to find the page where I’d written down the Honda’s tag number, used the map light to read it to Debbie Anne, and then held on while she issued an all-points bulletin. We were going seventy-five now, and I was getting a little nervous about how close behind me the unknown car was following. And, for that matter, even more nervous about who was in the unknown car.

“So you already knew about Freddy?” I asked, when Debbie Anne came back on the line.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The chief and the DEA have been watching him for days. I have to tell you, the chief’s a mite peeved at the way you kept showing up over there.”

“He could have told me what was going on. Warned me off.”

“Those DEA men wouldn’t have liked that, now, would they?”

So there were DEA men in town. I made a note to tell Henry Blanke he’d been right after all.

“I mean, the chief knows you and your family wouldn’t be mixed up in drugs or murder,” Debbie Anne was saying. “But it’s different with the Feds. I can tell you, the chief is going to be that relieved when we’ve finally got them out of our hair. Oh, good, the chief’s heading your way, and one of our patrol cars, and they’ve got a couple of state troopers coming from the Clay County direction. You should hear the sirens pretty soon.”