Page 51 of Cassidy

Based on the lack of traffic and being in a more rural area, she settled on option two. Better to be safe than sorry.

With an abrupt move, she hit the brake and cranked the wheel. The tires squealed in protest as she sharply turned and drove out into the empty field to the west. The SUV bumped over the hard and uneven terrain, but she continued turning the wheel to make a circle around the car that had been following them.

Her maneuver must have caught the driver off guard because the car slowed without trying to follow. She hit the gas, sending their SUV surging forward. Less than a minute later, they were back on the road heading in the opposite direction, back toward the restaurant.

In the rearview mirror, she watched the car continue down the street away from them. “Alice, Henry, King, 4,” she said. “Alice, Henry, King, 4.”

“What?” Gabe looked at her in surprise.

“I only caught the first few letters and number on the license plate.” She tried to remember what the vehicle had looked like. “I think it was a black SUV, like the one who tailed us before. But color can be deceiving in the darkness; it could have been gray, dark green, or dark blue. And I wasn’t quick enough to get the make or model.”

“A partial plate will narrow down the possibilities,” Gabe said with excitement. “Especially if you know it’s an SUV. I’m sure we can identify who the car belongs to. I’ll run it through the system when we get back.”

“Good. I hope we get a hit.” Even as she said the words, a sliver of doubt moved in. Had she overreacted to the possible tail? If that guy behind them was one of the bad guys, he gave up the chase rather quickly. Was that because he knew they weren’t far from having police backup? Maybe.

Yet if the driver of the SUV had been watching the restaurant for them to arrive, why not ambush them while they were inside? Unless the driver hadn’t seen them right away, and by the time they’d been noticed, the local cops had shown up.

Thinking back, she estimated they hadn’t been in the building for longer than fifteen minutes before the cops arrived. She had kicked the door in, though, so that should have attracted their attention. Unless they were too far away to have heard the noise?

She was driving herself crazy with theories. No point in second-guessing her actions. It wasn’t like they had a lot of other clues to follow up on. And running the partial plate wouldn’t take that long. Well worth the effort to get a lead. She could go through the list of vehicles while Gabe went back to his mystery code.

She pulled up beside one of the squads at the restaurant, then lowered her driver’s side window. “Hey, any chance you’d be willing to escort us back to the Seventh Precinct of Milwaukee? I just shook a tail off and don’t want to run into another problem.”

“Okay,” the cop agreed, after a subtle glance at his watch. His partner shrugged, too, as if to say,Why not?“I’ll let the other officers know we’ll be off scene for a while.”

“Thanks.” Cass had pegged them for a couple of rookies who were often assigned to the graveyard shift. It was nice of them to offer to drive well outside their jurisdiction to shadow them back to Milwaukee.

She executed a three-point turn. The officer of the squad pulled out behind her. This time the trip to the precinct was uneventful. So much so that she felt a little guilty for taking the officers so far out of their way.

“Thanks,” she said, waving them off. The driver acknowledged her with a return wave, before hitting the gas and heading back the way they’d come.

“At least they weren’t territorial,” Gabe said as she killed the engine. Reaching beneath the seat, he pulled out the laptop. “After our last encounter, I was expecting the worst.”

“They were decent,” she agreed. “Generally, cities that have smaller departments are less concerned about jurisdiction than larger ones. They tend to accept their limitations and are more often grateful for additional assistance.”

“That’s the way it should always be,” Gabe said as they headed to the side entrance of the precinct.

She shrugged. “Keep in mind, we wouldn’t be so anxious to hand off a case to another precinct either. Especially one that involved one of our team members. Which is mostly when we end up operating outside of the city.”

He grimaced and nodded. “I see your point.”

At his desk, they shrugged out of their coats and removed their protective gear. She was glad they hadn’t been in a position to need it but decided not to put everything back in the equipment room. She wanted the vests handy if they had to head back out again.

“I’ll start with the partial plate,” Gabe said as he logged into the computer. “I’ll run a list.”

“Send it to me,” she suggested. “I can comb through that while you focus on cracking that code.”

“Okay.” His fingers danced along the keyboard, making quick work of the task. A moment later, he’d sent the file to her email.

“Thanks.” She pulled the file up on her phone, grabbed the closest chair, and settled down to review it.

She took each vehicle one at a time, instantly bypassing any pickup truck, minivan, or light-colored vehicle. For sure those were not the vehicles she’d passed. Once she’d eliminated those possibilities, four names were left to investigate in more detail.

Grabbing the laptop Gabe had brought in, she started checking the DMV registrations for each of the four vehicles. The first belonged to an elderly man, the second to a middle-aged woman. Since their children could have used the vehicle without their knowledge, she couldn’t cross them off completely.

But the third car was a black SUV belonging to a twenty-eight-year-old by the name of Miles Wayland. Without being judgmental, she took note of Miles’s long, stringy dirty-blond hair, a scowl on his features, and hard eyes.

Miles moved up the suspect list, but that didn’t stop her from investigating the fourth vehicle too. That was a blue Honda SUV that was registered to a sixteen-year-old girl by the name of Patrice Curtis. Based on the DL photo, the girl looked as if she could be a high school cheerleader. Pretty face despite the extensive makeup, hair stylishly curled, and a broad smile. Maybe Cass was being sexist, but she struggled to imagine this girl shooting at them.

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