Page 95 of Last Seen Alive
“Yikes. The sergeant has quite a mouth on her,” Amanda said to Trent.
“Wonderful. I so look forward to hearing it when this chase is over.”
“We catch our bad guy, and things will work out.”
“Ifwe catch him.”
“Don’t even think like that.”
The state police had left the pursuit, but she and Trent were joined by Metro PD cruisers. At first Amanda wasn’t sure if they were on their side or coming for them. But it was made clear rather quickly that they were there to help.
The pursuit through the city’s streets lasted an hour, but then it was like the Camry just vaporized into thin air.
“No. I can’t accept this.” She was shaking her head. Frustrated. Angry.
Trent pulled to the curb and parked. “Not much we can do about it.”
“You still have gas in this thing? Let’s move.”
He stayed put.
“What are you doing? Go.”
“We’ll get him another way. A traffic cam or maybe the state guys caught the plate? We’ll get him somehow.”
She punched her right fist into her left palm and let out a growl.
Trent didn’t say anything, but she could feel anger and frustration emanating from him too.
“You’re right. We will get him,” she said. “Somehow, some way. I won’t stop until we do.”
“Good. That makes two of us.”
“Take us back to Central. I’ll call Graves to let her know to expect us.”
“Just when I didn’t think this day could get worse.”
She thought of her murdered rosebush, the failed apprehension of a murder suspect. Shit-can day, to be sure.
“My ankle’s worse than I thought,” Trent eventually said. “That’s why I wasn’t running after the guy.”
“You get a good look at him, though? We didn’t even talk about that.”
“Nope. Too dark to make out any features. Say about six feet tall, average build. Beyond that—”
“Yep, useless.”
As Trent drove them to Central, she wished they had met with a better result—the Toyota driver in cuffs, answering for his crimes. Instead they were going to be forced to answer for theirs.
THIRTY-FIVE
“Whose idea was it to handle this without the proper backup?” Graves’s cheeks were a bright shade of red, her glare pinned on Amanda.
Obviously, her question was redundant. Amanda, Trent, and Graves were in her office, along with the police chief. Buchanan looked the least happy of all of them. They’d already run through the basics that got them to where they currently were.
“I called my partner,” Amanda said, as if that were a defense worth trying. “If I had called in everyone, he would have gotten spooked and fled.”
Graves peered into Amanda’s eyes. “And how would we be in a different position than now?”
