Page 8 of False Evidence

“For what?”

“Assaulting an officer.”

“Why did you pull me over? I wasn’t speeding. My taillights aren’t broken. I signaled for every turn and lane change.” Truth was there hadn’t been any. She was only a mile or so from Kendall’s house.

The man took his baton and smashed her taillight. The quick violence of the action made her flinch.

She would point out that the bits of broken plastic now littered the roadside, much like her shattered phone, but she didn’t need a genius IQ to know telling him what to do to conceal his actions would be a serious mistake.

He turned to her again and said, “Hands. Above. Your. Head.”

He swung the baton so it hit his palm. His goal was definitely to terrify her, and she couldn’t envision a scenario in which she walked away from this encounter.

Sheknewpeople. The former US Attorney General being one of them. She and Curt Dominick had known each other from the earliest days when she dated JT, before he was the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. They weren’t close—not since things ended with JT—but she had no doubt he’d used his clout to make sure the investigation into this “traffic stop” was thorough.

But to get that investigation, Alexandra needed to make it to the police station alive…and she had a hard time thinking this officer really planned to arrest her for assaulting an officer. Not when everything he’d done since flashing his blue lights was blatantly illegal.

If she got in the back of that patrol car, she was a dead woman. She’d probably disappear from the face of the earth. Just her car and a broken phone and taillight to show she’d been here.

She thought of her daughter and the life she had now that she loved so desperately. Gemma. Erica. Colleagues she adored. Tanya, who she’d reconnected with just today. A career in a field she was passionate about.

He took another step toward her. Alexandra didn’t hesitate.

All those years with JT, who’d given her lessons in his private dojo for more than a decade, had prepared her for this moment.

First, she landed a roundhouse kick to his chest, then batted away the baton with one hand as she dropped the coat that covered the other. He cursed and grappled for his gun, and she swung the hand that clutched the hard drive, hitting him in the head.

He dropped like a stone. She stood above him, breathing heavy, watching his hands.

When she was certain he was out, she reached for his gun and wrapped her hand around the grip but then spotted the Taser on his belt and grabbed it instead. She pointed the weapon at him while she checked his pulse.

He was breathing with a steady heartbeat.

She rose to her feet, trying to figure out what to do next. Could she get the SUV’s engine to start with a broken key? It was still in the ignition.

It was that or steal the police car. She supposed she could cuff him and put him in the backseat. But the odds that other cops would shoot first and ask questions later were high if she were to take the wheel.

Her phone was destroyed. Could she use the police radio?

Headlights rounded the bend. The one thing she’d wanted desperately a few moments ago, but now…it would look to a passing motorist like she’d been the aggressor.

Against a cop.

She grabbed her coat and the hard drive—which had blood on it—and dove for the side of the road, jumping across the ditch behind the mailbox.

She’d hide until the car had passed. If they stopped, she’d decide if the driver was safe to approach.

She burrowed into the shrubs that lined the ditch and managed to pull on her coat as protection from the cool mid-December evening air. The temperature was supposed to drop tonight. Cold enough for snow if there was precipitation, but luckily, the forecast said the rain would hold off until tomorrow afternoon.

As she burrowed into her hidey hole, she shivered, not with cold but with the enormity of what she’d just experienced. Who was the officer? What was he up to?

She tucked the bloody hard disk into the coat’s inside pocket, and now her hand was balled in a fist, but she could feel the sticky fluid.

She couldn’t see the road from her hiding place and didn’t dare raise her head to give herself away, but she could hear the car pull over. The crunch of footsteps on the gravel shoulder.

A low curse in a man’s voice. Then the air cracked with the sharp bark of a gunshot that echoed down the long dark road.

ChapterTwo