The light was red at Eleventh, but it was clear that the Jeep was going to run it, not a big surprise, and Nash did not brake either as they, too, shot through the intersection, drawing an outraged honk from a taxi. The Jeep made a big skidding right at Twelfth and headed uptown, Nash and the Fury on his tail, keeping a couple of lengths back, Nash now trying, through the pumping adrenaline, to take stock of the situation, gain some control. He should tell someone what they were doing. He should call for some backup. This was crazy. It was turning into a high-speed chase, on trail-slick roads; someone was going to get hurt, and not after some armed-bank-robber, mass-murderer type, but an asshole car-thief snitch…

Thinking thus, he still accelerated, now to ninety miles an hour. At Fifty-third right by the little park, they passed two blue-and-whites parked nose-to-tail for a conversation, and seconds later both of those radio patrol cars joined the pursuit, the radio crackling with demands to know what was going on. Nash did not respond because he was driving too hard. Cooley did not either, although it was his job. The Jeep screamed up onto the Henry Hudson. It suddenly became damply cold in the Fury. Out of the corner of his eye, Nash saw that Cooley had rolled his window all the way down.

"Closer!" he yelled over the wind blast.

Nash saw the needle pass a hundred miles an hour, the car shaking like a blender on the scabbed asphalt typical of the city's arterials, bits of chili flying around, his hands locked tight on the shuddering wheel, and then he saw that Cooley had his gun out, and he wanted to yell out something to make Cooley stop, but he had all he could do to keep the Fury from flying off the elevated highway. He should have stopped, he should have taken control, but he didn't, and he could not really have told anyone why, except that every cop in the world would have understood why not.