Page 7 of False Evidence

He unlatched her seat belt as she grappled for her coat and the heavy metal hard drive it covered.

He yanked her from the vehicle. She landed on the icy-cold pavement; the hard drive made a crunching sound as it landed beneath her coat.

At this point, she didn’t care if she’d broken it. She didn’t care about the photos or the data it held. No. Now it was a brick. A weapon.

“Get up!” the man barked.

She moved slowly, her hand buried under her coat as she wrapped her fingers around the hard drive.

It contained so much more than photos. The computer had been a gift from JT in the early days of their relationship and was better, faster, with more storage than any computer she or Kendall could afford, so they both used it for the most important projects. It contained an archive of emails from the early 2000s, plus school and work files for Kendall, along with some of Alexandra’s earliest research and theories about dark matter from her grad school days.

The files they’d saved on this brick added nothing to the weight, but the fact that they were there was the only reason she had this potential weapon now.

Dark matter to the rescue.

She wrapped her hand around the heavy brick that held information on neutron stars’ relationship with free quarks along with dinosaur-killing matter and hoped it would have enough heft to save her.

Gemma needed her mom. The only parent she had.

She slowly rose to her feet, not faking the slight wobble as she reached her full height. “Why are you doing this?”

The cop said nothing. The headlights from the patrol car lit the dark road, and she could see his face now that he wasn’t shining a light in her eyes.

He was a Maryland State Police officer. His uniform looked genuine. The patrol car was real enough. But no one could say anything about this stop was legal.

Surely a car would drive by and see what was happening. Maybe she could wave for help and someone would call 911 on her behalf. Or someone in the house she’d parked in front of would come out to see why police lights were flashing.

But a glance across the road showed only a long driveway. No house in sight. No lights.

“Who are you?” she asked. The bearded officer didn’t look familiar.

The man smirked and said, “I need to search your vehicle. Do you consent to the search?”

At last, a nod to legal procedure. “Hell no.”

“Then I’ll just have to handcuff you while I do it. You have the right to remain silent?—”

“What is your probable cause? What am I being arrested for?”

“You refused the search, and you assaulted an officer.”

“I have the right to refuse, and you assaulted me first and never gave me a reason for pulling me over. You stole my phone and destroyed it, then you broke my car key.”

“It’s your word against mine, Dr. Vargas.”

He knew her name. He could have gotten that information from running her plate, but somehow, she didn’t think that was it.

“I’m a respected theoretical physicist. I don’t have a credibility problem, while a cop who doesn’t have his dashboard or body cam on during a traffic stop has something to hide.”

“What makes you think my camera is off?”

“My genius IQ.” She didn’t usually make references to her Mensa status like this—IQ was a biased construct, after all—but right now, she’d do anything to hold the crushing fear at bay, and letting this guy know she was neither weak nor a dummy seemed like a good idea. Also, every second they stood here was another second in which car headlights might appear from around the bend.

The officer held up his handcuffs and stepped toward her. “Hands above your head.”

She took a step backward. Her coat draped over her hand, hiding the brick she gripped so tightly, her fingers were going numb.

“Stop resisting, Dr. Vargas. I’ll put you in the back of the patrol car while I search your vehicle, then we’ll go to the station and book you.”

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