“Protocols,” Olson said. He spoke as if it were the saddest word in the English language.

The Accord followed the highway into a sweeping curve and disappeared from view. A few seconds later, however, we caught up to it. The red car was fishtailing in the lane, and my first thought was that it blew a tire and the driver was trying to bring it back under control. The red taillights flared, and the car pulled to the side of the road and stopped, its nose on the shoulder, its rear on the highway, blocking us. The deputy brought the Charger to a halt several car lengths behind the Accord and watched intently.

“What the hell is she doing?” he asked.

Forget what you’ve seen on TV and in the movies about inattentive guards who regularly ignore barking dogs; sudden, unexplained noises; and the odd behavior of complete strangers. In reality, most are trained to react—hell, overreact—to anything out of the ordinary, and they are never, ever taken out by a single punch or karate chop. The deputy, however, wasn’t one of them. When the blonde stepped out of the Accord he smiled brightly, showing all his teeth. I didn’t blame him. She was wearing the longest hair, shortest skirt, and highest heels I had ever seen. She tottered toward us, carrying a highway map that hid her chest.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Olson said. He put the Charger in park, opened his door, and slid out. “Lady, what are you thinking?”

The lady dropped the map. She was carrying an M26 Taser gun. She squeezed the trigger and two barbed electrodes exploded from the bright green nose, imbedding themselves into the deputy’s chest and flooding his body with 50,000 volts, all before the map fluttered to the ground. The deputy’s muscles locked up. He fell to the pavement like a square of shingles tossed from the roof of a two-story house.

The woman dropped the Taser, kicked off her heels, and went quickly to the deputy’s side. She squatted next to him, her short skirt riding up high on her thighs, and searched his pockets for the key to the handcuffs. She took the key, removed the Glock from the deputy’s holster, and padded purposely in bare feet to the Charger, where she found the latch that unlocked the back door. She moved as if every step had been carefully choreographed.

I slid out of the backseat and turned around. The woman unlocked the cuffs and gave me both the key and the Glock. I shoved the Glock between the waistband of my scrubs and the small of my back and followed her to the deputy. Olson was just starting to regain his senses as I cuffed his wrists behind his back. He said, “Huh, what?” while the woman and I dragged him to the patrol car.

“What are you doing?” Skarda wanted to know. His mood had switched from depressed to manic just like that. “What’s going on? Is this an escape? Are you trying to escape?” His eyes were bright with the possibility even as he flattened against the far door. “Take me with you.”

We ignored him, shoving the deputy inside; Skarda swung his legs up and away to give us room. The deputy shook off our hands and turned painfully until both his knees were planted on the floor of the car and his torso was folded over the backseat. His forehead was pressed against the hard vinyl as if he were using it to push himself upright.

“Stop this, stop it right now,” Olson said.

I slammed the door shut.

“Luck,” the woman said.

It was the only word she had spoken during the seconds—yes, seconds—it took to disarm the deputy. She gathered her shoes and ran to the Honda Accord. A moment later, she was motoring down the highway at a speed that invited arrest.

I slid behind the wheel of the Charger, shut the door, and put the vehicle in gear.

“You’ll never get away with this, Dyson,” the deputy said. His voice was hoarse and low.

“What did you say?” I asked. I accelerated down Highway 169 until I was going the speed limit and then set the cruise control.

“You’ll never get away with this.” This time he was shouting.

“I bet you say that to all the escaping prisoners,” I said.

“Do you think the police are asleep up here? You think they don’t know what you’re doing?”

“No, actually, they don’t know what I’m doing. That’s why I took your car instead of hightailing it with the babe in the red Accord, so some citizen wouldn’t see you parked in the middle of the highway and call it in. Time is my friend. It’ll be hours before the county sheriff knows what happened, and by then I will be far away from here.”

“This car is equipped with a GPS tracking device.”

“It is?” Skarda asked.

“Cops want to make sure they can recover their vehicles if they’re stolen,” I said. “Did you know some guys started a cab company in Detroit a while back using nothing but stolen police cars? God’s truth.”

“Dyson, listen to me,” Deputy Olson said. “We can still work this out. It’s not too late.”

I glanced at him through the rearview mirror and smiled. “Of course it is,” I said.

“Goddammit!”