Page 52 of So Silent

"Well, no, but it'd be nice for someone to ask."

“Because you could tell them to shove it?”

“I’ve always wanted to do that. What’s wrong with that?”

She laughed. “Can’t say I haven’t felt the same way sometimes.”

The police radio buzzed, and Wanda's strained voice came over the channel. "Hey, agents, are you anywhere near Bowling Green right now?"

“I have no idea where that is,” Faith said.

“It’s about five miles east of Holbrook.”

“I’m not from here, Wanda. I need addresses.”

“Got it,” Michael said, holding up the GPS on his phone. “We’re eight minutes away, Wanda.”

Wanda sighed. “Thank God. We got another call. Same thing, dogs going crazy.”

Faith instantly went to high alert. “Did they give a description of the suspect?”

“No, they only heard the dogs.”

“Where exactly?”

"One thousand blocks of Amish Lane."

Michael tapped that into the cruiser’s GPS. The route came up, and Faith turned the lights on and exited the freeway.

“All right,” she said. “We’re on our way. What’s the ETA for your units?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“What? Seriously?”

“We called off the patrols after we picked up Adrian Clarke.”

Michael threw his hands up in the air and stared at the ceiling. Faith’s blood began to boil.

“Any reason you would do that?” Michael asked. “Especially before interrogating Clarke and making sure he was actually our guy?”

“He looked really good. He was violent, he resisted arrest, he had a dog whistle—”

“He didn’t have the goddamned murder weapon!” Michael shouted. “Did you want to wait to make sure it was in his truck or at least in his home before you threw the victory party?”

“Forget it,” Faith said tersely. She was just as upset as Michael was, but now wasn’t the time to argue. “Wanda, get those units to us ASAP, and get a helicopter in the air searching for a suspect.”

“Yes, of course,” the detective said contritely. “Will do. I’m… I’m sorry for—”

“Save it,” Faith said. “Just get us some backup.”

She sighed and looked at Michael. “That’s why I’m not happy.”

“Yeah. Me too.” He took a deep breath and said, “Well, whatever. We’ll do it ourselves. We’ve done it before.”

Turk barked firmly, and a smile came to Faith’s lips. “All right, Turk. Let’s go catch a bad guy.”

***

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