The pursuing squad car was growing larger in my mirrors and the cop on board would be coordinating other units to block me somewhere ahead. I shot through intersection after intersection, then past the impressive George E. Edgecomb Courthouse and another squad car, idling at the corner of Zack Street while it waited for the lights to change. As I zipped by, I saw the blue lights come on and it pulled out in pursuit, falling in behind the other cruiser.

There was a major junction ahead, and I went through it laying my hand hard on the horn. Only fortune saw me through the junction safely, but all around me I saw vehicles screeching to a halt, some fishtailing in the road. The cop car behind me slammed into the back end of a pickup truck, spinning out both vehicles.

I hoped everyone was okay: I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but neither could I go back and offer assistance. I pressed the throttle harder and kept going, taking Orange Avenue north, knowing that Interstate 4 was somewhere ahead. If I could get beyond it, my options for escape would become much greater.

The cop car that had been near the courthouse took up the chase and it cut down my lead every second. Until now I hadn’t been pushing the Audi for fear a pedestrian might step out in front of me, but now there was nothing for it: I tromped the gas pedal.

There was no way I could get into a duel with the pursuing cop car so I relied instead on speed, pushing the Audi under the interstate and taking a quick left on a surface street of a residential neighborhood I didn’t know. The cop car was still behind me, but a series of turns left him confused at the direction I’d taken. Conscious now that there could be kids playing in the streets, I slowed down to a more sensible speed and continued to traverse the neighborhoods, heading northwest through Riverside Heights and out toward the suburbs of the city.

I had a place on the Gulf Coast up near Mexico Beach but I couldn’t go there. That would be the first place the cops would think to look. My best friend and the man I officially worked for, Jared Rington, had an office in the downtown district and a condominium in a wooded area outside Temple Terrace. Rink would help hide me, but I couldn’t go to either of his registered properties because they would be points two and three on the cops’ radar. At this moment it was dangerous even to make contact with Rink by the usual avenues; his phones would be checked for any calls from me and they’d try and press him for my whereabouts. Rink wouldn’t tell them, and they might charge him with harboring a felon. Something like that wouldn’t help his private-investigations business.