AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The idea of driving like this for a hundred miles terrified Faith. She watched Elena’s Tesla pull even farther away and seriously considered asking Michael to pull over and let the police handle it.
But this woman might have killed three other women. Considering her immediate choice to flee as soon as she saw their cruiser, Faith thought it very likely she was their killer.
“Can this thing go any faster?” she asked Michael.
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”
The engine roared and Faith’s head slammed back into the seat. Elena’s Tesla was faster than they were, but that didn’t mean Elena was willing to drive it like it was. Faith felt her stomach twist nauseatingly as Michael weaved through traffic, tires screeching and sirens blaring as the poor civilian populace of Seattle tried desperately to avoid getting flattened by the speeding cars.
She looked at Turk and found him completely unconcerned with the breakneck speed at which they were traveling. He trusted his human partners completely.
Must be nice to be a dog, Faith thought.
Elena reached the freeway and turned toward the on-ramp, but when she saw the police cruisers, she screeched to a halt. She backed up and tried to accelerate the other way, but Michael pointed the nose straight at her.
“Michael?” Faith cried. “You’re going too fast! We can’t hit her this hard!”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said.
He slammed on the brakes at the last second. The car skidded forward, and Faith caught a look of Elena’s terrified face just before the cruiser hit her. Despite Michael’s brake application, they still hit hard enough that the windshield shattered. Faith shielded her eyes, and when she looked through the shattered glass, she saw smoke rising from their hood.
But Elena’s front driver side wheel was crushed, and her front bumper was crumpled. When Elena tried to accelerate, the bumper pushed into the ground, and her car only spun in a lazy quarter-circle. Without waiting for Faith and Michael to follow him, Turk leapt out the shattered windshield and rushed Elena.
The fleeing suspect had started to open her door, but when she saw ninety pounds of snarling fury barreling toward her, teeth bated, she shrieked and pulled the door shut.
Faith got out of the car and slowly approached Elena’s vehicle. She felt dizzy and wondered if she had suffered a concussion when they hit. She would have to make sure to give Michael a hell of a lot of crap for that.
Speaking of Michael, he didn’t look so hot himself. His face was pale, and his legs wobbled a bit. They would both have to get looked at by EMS before they interrogated Elena. And they would almost certainly owe Redmond PD a new cruiser.
But they had Elena. Faith drew her weapon and pointed at the door. Elena had her hands lifted so Faith could see them, and tears streamed down her face.
“Don’t shoot!” she said. “Please! I’m unarmed!”
“Come out with your hands up,” Faith commanded.
“Will he eat me?” Elena whimpered, looking at Turk.
Faith rolled her eyes. “No, he won’t eat you. Just do as I say. Turk, come here.”
Turk walked back to Faith's side, still growling at Elena. The woman got out of her car, trembling, and a moment later, one of the police officers cuffed her.
Faith sighed and holstered her weapon.
“Told you I knew what I was doing,” Michael said smugly.
Faith cast him a glare. “Next time, I’m driving.”
Chapter Fourteen
Faith rolled her shoulders and worked a kink out of her neck. EMS had cleared them at the scene but warned them to take it easy for the next couple of days due to some mild bruising. All in all, they were lucky. Even with the last-second brake application, Michael had hit Elena’s car at close to forty miles per hour, and an electronic fault prevented the cruiser’s airbags from deploying. If the angle of impact had been a degree or two to the left or right, they could be in the hospital right now.
Elena had been lucky as well. Her airbags had deployed, and the force had been directed at an angle that sent most of it away from the driver’s seat. She was also treated for minor bruising and now sat across from Detective Simonich, who had insisted on interviewing her first.
That interview, it seemed, hadn’t gone well. Wanda stood and sighed, then walked out of the interrogation room and joined the federal agents behind the two-way mirror.
“We might have a problem,” Wanda said. “It sounds like our suspect wants to lawyer up.”
Faith frowned. At the moment, the only evidence they had linking Elena to the murders was tangential. If Elena got a lawyer, finding the rest of what they needed to convict would be incredibly time-consuming and tedious, and if it turned out Elena wasn't the killer, then they would only be wasting time until the killer claimed another victim. They needed to talk to her now. "Has she answered any questions so far?"
