She had been on her way home from a work meeting. Driving her own personal car, off duty, in plain clothes. That was the only reason they hadn’t recognized her — there was nothing to recognize. She was just a young woman on a quiet road, until she wasn’t.
The second officer’s hands were shaking now too as he handed the case back. His voice, when it came, had lost every trace of the swagger from a minute ago.
“Why didn’t you — why didn’t you say something?”
Victoria met his eyes without flinching.
“Because I wanted to see how you treat ordinary people,” she said. “Now I have.”
There was a silence after that. A real, heavy silence, the kind that presses down on a scene like weather. The two men stood there in the fading evening light, and for the first time since the lights had gone on in her mirror, they looked less like officers of the law and more like two men who had just watched the ground open up in front of them.
