The taxi driver was distinctly uncomfortable at the look of me. Had been since he pulled over, got a closer look at the man at the roadside, smelled the sweat. He probably thought I was a junkie, a madman. With few words I directed him west, toward my old suburb, the sprawl of farmland and little residential settlements outside Sydney.

I could find Kevin’s new address easily enough. Now that I had his full name, I texted Frankie. I didn’t trust myself to speak, not with this kind of fury raging in my veins. She would check her police databases, come up with an address. Did I trust myself to go there and not kill Kevin Driscoll? My whole body was ticking and twitching with rage. I would at least beat him. I knew that. I would beat his brains out. There was a wild lion inside me, a furious and beaten thing, a creature reduced to its instincts only. I could see myself killing him. Smashing his face with my hands. Losing all control. I’d get the address, go there, and end him.

But as I waited for the reply from Frankie to come through, I looked at the other address, the one Chloe had given me, the rental house where she and Kevin had once lived. The image of Kevin kept flashing before my eyes, standing in the bar, holding his phone, looking at the picture of the little girl. He’d lied. She wasn’t his sister. Was she the neighbor child, the one he’d spoken to over the fence? The chances were slim. The world was full of pretty little girls, his for the taking. But she had looked so much like Claire. White-haired and slim, a perfect beauty on the edge of adolescence. His words whispered back to me as I stared at the address.

You’re a true inspiration.

I feel kind of … free.

Free to do what? Was he going to hurt a child? Was he going to hurt that child? I tried to remember the school uniform colors. The letters on the crest. It was impossible. My mind was racing, details and names and addresses crashing into one another, now and then everything being obliterated by a crashing wave of red-hot fury.

I knew I had to go to the old address, the one with the neighbor girl. As much as I wanted to go directly to Kevin’s house, to find him, to get my hands on him, I was a cop. I had once been a cop, anyway. This wasn’t about me. It had never been about me. It was about that girl in the picture, about Claire, about however many girls Kevin had hurt before, however many he might hurt in the future if I didn’t stop him now. I needed to make sure that girl was okay. A quick detour.

I gave the driver the address Chloe had given me. Every stoplight was an agony. Frankie wasn’t responding. Kelly called. I rejected it, wiped the sweat off my phone onto my jeans.