Free Echols, Jennifer by Going Too Far (v1.1) [rtf]

get a degree first in, whatsit, cop studies?"
    "Criminal justice," he said. "I wanted to be a cop sooner.”
    "Won't you need that degree eventually to move up in the department?"
    "Yes. I don't necessarily want to move up. I'm happy doing this."
    Yeah, you look happy, I wanted to say. But this convo was interesting. I couldn't sound too rude and give him the excuse he needed to walk away. "If Tiffany hadn't spilled the beans, were you going to tell me who you are?"
    "You mean that I'm nineteen and we went to high school together?"
    Duh, I thought. I couldn't say Duh. Too obvious. My brain would not cough up an alternative witticism. I hadn't slept in thirty hours.
    "I wasn't trying to hide it from you," he said. "But I'm in a position of authority, and I'm trying to control people in sometimes dangerous situations. Naturally I'm not going to offer to people, 'By the way, here's where I'm vulnerable.'"
    "Vulnerable," I repeated thoughtfully. Yes, this had been a very interesting convo. I'd discovered all sorts of buttons I could push to make him feel vulnerable and keep him off my ass for the rest of the week.
    And then he turned on me. "So, why do you run? Not for health. That doesn't seem like you."
    Where was that low hum coming from? I looked around, probably rather frantically. It was a streetlight malfunctioning behind Johnafter, flickering on in the middle of the sunny day, splashing additional light on his white head and shoulders.
    "More out of blind fear," I blurted before I thought.
    He stepped forward and opened his mouth to ask me for more.
    "See you tonight," I said, and dashed off.
    I was relieved when I finished my first lap and saw that his truck was gone. I felt a lot more comfortable with him in his police uniform. Impudence in the face of authority— that I could do. And after running the obstacle course of emotions in the park with hunky Johnafter, I much preferred a good old-fashioned high-speed car chase.
    Chapter 7
    Hold on," he said.
    This suggestion was completely unnecessary. I'd fastened my seat belt tonight. Still, I clung to the door and the dashboard for dear life as he slung the cop car around 180 degrees.
    He sped the car in the opposite direction after the suspect. The engine hummed low, then higher as he floored it. "Siren would be nice," he said.
    "Oh, sorry." I flicked a switch on the box below the dashboard and got the chirping sound. "Sorry, sorry." I flicked another switch to produce the proper wail.
    Lois had fed us a call that drug deals were going down on the wrong side of town. In typical Johnafter fashion, we snuck around the streets with the headlights off until we surprised the driver of this Kia in mid-buy. Officer Leroy and some other cops had stayed behind to clean up the sellers while John and I chased the buyer who got away.
    "Where do you think you're going?" John murmured. John talked to himself a lot—I'd noticed this last night. Actually he was talking to suspects who couldn't hear him. My guess was that he'd been on night shift by himself way too long. "Please, not downtown."
    "Yes, downtown," I said, as if he were talking to me. We flew through the deserted streets and went airborne over the speed bump beside the jail/courthouse/city hall. "Yee-haw!" I hollered. "I've always wanted to do that."
    "Try not to make us sound like The Dukes of Hazzard," he said. "At least not with the window open."
    "Sorry, sorry."
    "Not the roundabout," he said. Sure enough, the Kia entered the traffic circle in the center of town. We chased him around it twice.
    "Okay, damn it," John said, and I knew what he was about to do. At the last second, he jerked the car off the roundabout, down a street that was hard to see if you didn't know it was there. He accelerated through three turns and re-entered the roundabout to cut the Kia off.
    The Kia was too wise. He was out of the roundabout already. His taillights glowed way down at the high school. John cussed.
    "You need some backup here,