‘You can ask, I’m just not sure I have an answer,’ Hannah said. She looked strong, tall, competent, perfectly put together … she held herself like a woman who wasn’t afraid of anything, and that was almost true. She was afraid of failure, and she’d failed at being mayor, because that was a job nobody could win. But give her a weapon, a uniform, and a problem, and I couldn’t think of anybody I’d rather get behind. ‘I can’t tell you what they are, Shane, because I don’t know. All I know is that we got a report of a wild dog last night that was attacking people, and it looked just like this one. Had to shoot that one, it was going after a kid. Two more tonight. I’m hoping like hell this is the last one.’

‘Experiment gone wrong out of Myrnin’s lab?’ Michael wasn’t afraid to go there. Well, he was only half a step ahead of me, actually.

‘I checked,’ Hannah said. I’d have paid to hear that conversation. ‘He says no. He says he wouldn’t. He likes dogs.’

‘Probably true,’ I said. ‘And Claire would never put up with him experimenting on helpless animals. He cares what she thinks, even if he doesn’t care about anybody else.’

The sound of the dog in the trunk was like a demon in a tin can, and it was unnerving me. The whole police cruiser was rocking on its tyres. Hannah didn’t so much as glance at it. Michael cleared his throat and said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Find out what’s going on, or try to,’ Hannah said. ‘So far, nobody’s been killed, but I don’t like it. Nothing good ever comes of weird things happening in this town.’ Before I could comment on how true that was, not that she needed my opinion, she focused in on me. ‘How’s your arm?’

I showed her. I’d wiped the blood away, and all that showed was bruising. ‘Nothing broken. Coat’s toast, though.’

‘It makes you look tough,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Going somewhere?’

‘Yeah. You know. Out.’

‘Of town.’

I was silent. I’d gotten approval from the Founder to bug out of Morganville for a while, but that didn’t mean Amelie couldn’t change her mind. She did. Often. And I wasn’t her favourite person, anyway.

‘Well,’ Hannah said after a few seconds of whistling wind, ‘I suppose you should be on your way, then. Tell Claire we miss her.’

‘She’s only been gone a day.’

‘And yet,’ Hannah said. She was still giving me a professional kind of smile, but now it had a softening of warmth to it. ‘You’d better do right by that girl, Shane.’