“No.”
He smiled tiredly. “You don’t get a choice in this, darlin’,” he informed me. “The people in question are the Shaws, the boy I was telling you about this week, the one that assaulted my sister; they were his parents. They’re rich, and they’ll do anything they can to ruin my life. I should’ve remembered that before even befriending you. They’ve ruined everything that they could. Followed me here from fuckin’ Texas just to make my life miserable. Trust me, they won’t hesitate in doing the same to yours if they know that you’re with me.”
My chin rose even higher. “Well, they can just do their worst.”
Tobias started to laugh but it wasn’t with humor.
No, the laugh rang of something that sounded similar to defeat.
“I’m tired.”
Chapter 15
Nothing compares to taking your bra off after a long day.
-Things men will never know or understand
Tobias
I watched the video again, studying it while I ran over that night, again and again, in my mind.
I’d been called to a domestic dispute that’d been going down at a truck stop bathroom when I spotted a vehicle going twenty-five miles an hour over the posted speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic, not caring whether they passed other vehicles on the actual road or on the shoulder.
After calling in the license plate, I got confirmation that the car was stolen. A mother had reported it as missing and then stated that her daughter was likely the suspect since she’d done it before.
After learning that it was stolen, I’d pulled up behind the car and turned my lights and sirens on.
Like water parting, all the cars started to move out of my way, until there was only one left.
***
The girl showed she had at least a little bit of common sense when she pulled over after a mile of her pretending not to notice my pursuit of her. I followed closely behind her…on the wrong side of the road.
Normally, a driver would pull over on the right side of the road since there was more room on the shoulder. Not to mention that was where you were supposed to pull over if there was the opportunity. This girl pulled over on the left side, with her car hanging half out onto the interstate.
Hopefully my patrol car’s flashing lights would be enough to warn oncoming cars of our position.
It was also well past two in the morning, so there wasn’t anywhere near as many people out on the road as there would be during the day.
Once I called in that I was stopped to dispatch, I walked up to the side of the car, cursing the way the tall grass came up to my knees, and stopped at the window.
I tapped on the glass with barely concealed impatience.
“License and registration,” I said.
The girl finally rolled down her window and handed me what looked like her entire wallet.
“It’s in there,” she said stiffly.
I didn’t take it. “Just hand me your license and registration,” I ordered.
She sneered at me but complied, reaching into her wallet and extracting the two items I requested before handing them over.
I took them, and tucked them into the front pocket of my shirt. “Have y’all been drinking?”
My eyes flitted to the passenger seat where I could see the other girl, who looked to be about the same age as the one driving, with her purse sitting in her lap.
Her phone was sitting out on one thigh with the camera app engaged, causing me to groan inwardly.
Jesus.
I sure the fuck hoped that I didn’t find my face on YouTube later.
That would just make a perfect end to my shitty day.
“No,” the girl driving barked angrily. “We haven’t been drinking.”
I looked at the girl’s eyes, and reached for my flashlight.
The girl in the passenger seat reached for her phone.
Once the flashlight was in my hand, I shined it into the driver’s eyes, and clearly saw the way her pupils were dilated. “Have you been doing drugs?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” the passenger said. “We were only driving.”
I wanted to roll my eyes.
“This car was reported stolen,” I told them both. “Ma’am, step out of the car.”
I reached for the door handle and pulled the car door open, and that’s when things went to shit.
The moment I had the door out of the way, the driver made a lunge for my gun, and I acted on instinct from there.
An innocent driver, in their right mind, wouldn’t have made that attempt. It was sloppy, and at best fairly inexperienced, but I hadn’t been expecting the move from this girl who looked like she could have been one of my little sisters.
All brown hair and big green eyes, I hadn’t once expected her to make the move.
But when she did, she brushed my gun and pulled it slightly down and out, causing me to react like any officer would have by pulling her out of the car and restraining her.
Granted, I likely could have found a better hold than her hair, but at that point my adrenaline was soaring through my veins, and I wasn’t aware where I’d grabbed her until I already had her on the ground in front of me.
Then the other girl had to go start digging through her purse, and she pulled out a knife while also keeping the blinding light from the phone firmly directed on my face, making it nearly impossible to see what she was doing.
Before she could get the black device all the way out of her purse, I reached forward and dragged her out by her wrist, pushing her down onto the ground beside her friend.
Both females were young. Late teens, at most, but it didn’t matter.
Not to me, and not to any other police officer out there once a weapon had been pulled on them. It didn’t matter if it was a twelve-year-old who was in a gang or a fourteen-year-old who hated you on principle, someone pulling a weapon on a police officer was perpetrating a crime, plain and simple.
Police officers experience all the crappiness of the world, and in the midst of a crime, we knew never to assume that even young kids were just kids, despite the fact that they should’ve never known the violence of the world at their age.
Or, at least, I did.
My mistrust of kids had come from a thirteen-year-old, wanna-be gang member who’d been given the task of shooting a police officer.
It’d been my rookie year as a cop, fresh out of the Navy, and I’d stopped on the side of the road to help what I’d thought was a woman and a child. The child was the thirteen-year-old kid who’d held his mother at gunpoint until I’d pulled up, and then had turned the gun on me.
Luckily, his aim was terrible or I’d have been feeding the worms.
I’d, of course, been wary of small children in Iraq during my deployments. It wasn’t unheard of for them to be used as diversions or bait.
I’d just not expected that similar things from children on my own home soil.
“Get off me!” the teen screamed.