Behind her, obscured by the rain and the steam of the collision, sat a dark charcoal-colored police cruiser. Its front end was completely smashed into the trunk of her Camry.
Suddenly, the night erupted in blinding flashes of red and blue light as the cruiser’s emergency lightbar was violently switched on, casting frantic, spinning shadows across the desolate industrial landscape.
Evelyn took a slow, deep breath. Her eyes narrowed, the adrenaline transforming into a cold, diamond-hard focus. The game for the night, it seemed, was not quite over.
Officer Thomas Griggs gripped the steering wheel of his wrecked cruiser, his chest heaving as he stared through the spiderweb cracks of his windshield. The smell of radiator fluid was already seeping through the air vents.
He had messed up. He had messed up monumentally.
Griggs was a twenty-year veteran of the force, a man who had long ago traded his ideals for the comfortable, corrupt lethargy of a precinct that looked the other way. He was overweight, his dark charcoal uniform tight around his waist, his face permanently flushed with the high blood pressure of a man who drank too much and slept too little. For the past three miles, he had been looking down at his phone, angrily typing a text message to his bookie. He hadn't seen the red light. He hadn't seen the silver Camry stopped at the intersection until he was practically inside its trunk.
Panic clawed at his throat. If internal affairs looked into this, if they pulled his dashcam footage or his phone records, he was finished. He would lose his pension. He might even face jail time given his previous infractions.
But as Griggs stared at the unassuming, mid-range sedan he had just rear-ended, a different kind of instinct kicked in—the instinct of a predator recognizing an easy mark.
It was a Camry. A cheap, civilian commuter car. It wasn't a luxury vehicle. It wasn't a politician's town car. In Griggs's mind, whoever was driving that car was nobody of consequence. A nobody he could intimidate. A nobody he could blame.
He unbuckled his seatbelt, a dark, desperate plan forming in his mind. He would control the narrative. He was the law out here in the industrial wasteland. He would claim the Camry had thrown it in reverse, or stopped illegally, or brake-checked him. All he had to do was overwhelm the driver, establish dominance immediately, and force a confession or compliance out of sheer terror.
Griggs kicked his door open and stepped out into the misty rain. He adjusted his heavy leather duty belt, the weight of his sidearm and handcuffs giving him a false sense of invincibility. He slammed the cruiser door shut, the sound echoing sharply in the quiet night, and began his march toward the Camry.
He didn't walk like a man who had just caused an accident; he walked like a conqueror. He puffed out his chest, letting the flashing red and blue lights paint him as an imposing figure of undeniable authority.
"Hey!" Griggs bellowed, his voice rough and laced with manufactured fury. "Get out of the vehicle! Now! Keep your hands where I can see them!"