Montgomery County, Maryland
Seven years later
December 21st
Alexandra was running late and would be charged a fine by the daycare. Again. But sorting through her deceased friend’s belongings had been gut-wrenching. Kendall’s suicide in late October was a heartache she hadn’t yet begun to process.
Spending the day with Kendall’s sister, Tanya, had opened the floodgates for the grief she’d been holding back as the fall term wound down. She’d had to get through her first semester teaching again after taking a yearlong maternity leave before she could let herself feel.
The mind was a strange, wonderful, and terrible thing in how it could pack stuff away until one had time to process it.
Today was that day, but as a result, she and Tanya had gotten less done than they’d hoped. They’d spent too long going through photo albums from college, back in the days before everything was digitized.
The digital photos that were taken in subsequent years could be viewed at her leisure, as she now had the hard drive of the computer they’d shared when she and Kendall had been roommates. It was bound to have hundreds of photos.
Her heart ached. Kendall had emailed her in October—days before her suicide—to ask Alexandra if she wanted the computer and other items Kendall had that belonged to her. They’d made plans to meet, but then Gemma had gotten sick and Alexandra had canceled.
The next day, Kendall was gone. Alexandra had missed her chance to reconnect with her friend and heal the rift that had widened again right before Alexandra moved to Switzerland.
Now all she had of the friend who’d meant so much to her since freshman year of college were the photos on the old hard drive and a box of trinkets in the cargo space of her SUV.
She wasn’t ready to look at the photos from grad school, including the early years of her time with JT, but she was glad to have them. Maybe in another seven years or so, her brain would be ready to process that hurt and anger that she’d given so much of her life to JT, she’d nearly been too late to start living for herself.
But today had belonged to Kendall. The friend she’d loved. The friend who’d hurt her. The friend she’d left behind when she finally forged her own path.
She drove down a rural road, away from the farmhouse Kendall had moved into after she’d negotiated a part-time telework agreement with the Bethesda office of T&D, where she’d worked for the last nine years of her life.
Lee had been the one to hire Kendall, in one of his last acts as manager of the Bethesda office. At the time, Alexandra had been excited for Kendall to have landed on her feet after a difficult period, but then Brent had weaseled his way back into her bed, and the yo-yo started up again.
Kendall had lived alone in the house, only going to the office two days a week. No one had seen the signs that her ongoing battle with depression had taken a sharp turn.
Regret filled Alexandra. She’d been so busy as a single mom. Combined with returning to teaching, she hadn’t been there for her friend in need. It didn’t matter that they’d drifted apart. She should have gone to see her the moment Kendall reached out.
Gemma was sick with a stomach bug and fever. The mental reminder changed nothing. Guilt never gave way to logic. It joined the mountain of regret in her heart as she navigated the dark road.
Now that the semester was over, today had been the first opportunity to help Tanya sort through Kendall’s belongings. Much as she’d ached at putting Gemma in daycare during winter break, Tanya needed help, and Kendall deserved her attention. Now, she was running late after a teary goodbye with Tanya, who was heading back to her home in Pennsylvania until after the New Year.
Alexandra’s heart thrummed with a surge of happiness that poked through the grief. As soon as she picked up Gemma, their winter vacation would begin.
She was so eager for this time with her baby. It was her daughter’s second Christmas, and this year, she was walking and talking and excited by the lights and sparkles that came with decorating. She wanted to savor this holiday. She’d been dreaming of these kinds of moments for more than a decade, and now, at last, they were upon her.
Blue lights flashed in the rearview, and she frowned as she glanced at the speedometer. Even though she was in a hurry, she hadn’t been speeding. Maybe there was some sort of emergency, and the officer wanted to pass on the dark two-lane road?
She spotted reflectors marking a driveway on the left, and the opposite shoulder widened to accommodate a mailbox on the right. She braked quickly, stopping just in time to park on the widened shoulder.
The cruiser didn’t pass by. Instead, it pulled up behind her fast, the officer likely forced to slam the brakes. The headlights hit the rearview, and the bright light blinded her.
Shit. The late pickup fee would double after thirty minutes. Quickly, she used a voice command to call Erica, who answered immediately. “Hey, Alexandra, what’s up?”
“I’m running late to pick up Gemma, and I’m being pulled over—I don’t know why. I wasn’t speeding.”
“You want me to pick her up?”
“Would you mind? I know it’s a huge ask.”
“No problem. Gracie will be thrilled with the company. I’ll head out now.”
“Thanks, Erica.”
She disconnected and let out a relieved sigh as the cop climbed from the vehicle and approached. Thankfully, Erica was authorized to pick up Gemma anytime. The daycare was only a mile from Erica’s house in Virginia, which made the arrangement extremely convenient. As a single mom, it was always good to have a backup mom at the ready. Erica was an absolute gift in that regard.
Erica was the one friend Alexandra had refused to give up when she and JT split for good, and the only time Alexandra had seen JT in the last seven years was at Erica and Lee’s wedding.
She shouldn’t have gone. After all, JT was best man. But she’d wanted to see Erica finally marry Lee after years of struggling with her own decision.
Not wanting to mar the happy day knowing JT could be a moody bastard, Alexandra had left right after the ceremony.
Now that she lived near Erica and Lee and their daughters played together, she was bound to cross paths with him, but so far, her luck had held.
The officer tapped on her window, and she rolled it down. The cold December air wafted into the car, making her hope this wouldn’t take long. Her coat was in a heap on the passenger seat.
“Please step from the vehicle, ma’am.”
The command startled her. “Don’t you want to see my license and registration?”
“I said step from the vehicle.”
She took a deep breath and tried to remember Maryland law on this. Could he compel her to leave the safety of her vehicle without offering any reason for why he’d pulled her over?
This didn’t feel right.
“Why did you pull me over?”
He reached inside the window and hit the unlock button, then yanked the door open. “Out. Now.”
She reached for her phone and hit the camera button on the lock screen, snapping his photo.
He yanked her phone from her hand, dropped it on the ground, and stomped on it.
Fear like she’d never felt before swept down her, leaving her dizzy.
This didn’t make sense. He couldn’t be a real cop, could he?
Was he some sort of serial killer who drove down back roads and pulled over women driving alone?
But how had he known she was alone? Her SUV had tinted windows. It was pure luck that Gemma wasn’t in her car seat in the back.
Oh god. Her baby. Would she see her again?
In the midst of her panic, she had a moment of relief knowing Erica was on her way to pick up her baby girl. No matter what happened, Gemma was safe and would be with someone she knew and loved.
The cop tried to yank her from the car, but her seat belt was still buckled. He cursed and reached across her—she thought to unlatch the belt—but he twisted the key, shutting off the engine, then he yanked upward, snapping the plastic fob from the end of the key.
She shoved at him, trying to smash his head into the steering wheel. She might be assaulting a cop, but what he was doing couldn’t be legal.
His elbow snapped back, hitting her in the face. Pain exploded along her cheekbone and radiated out to her jaw and ear.
Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t know if they were from fear or pain.
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.”
“For what?”
“Assaulting an officer.”
“Why did you pull me over? I wasn’t speeding. My taillights aren’t broken. I signaled for every turn and lane change.” Truth was there hadn’t been any. She was only a mile or so from Kendall’s house.
The man took his baton and smashed her taillight. The quick violence of the action made her flinch.
She would point out that the bits of broken plastic now littered the roadside, much like her shattered phone, but she didn’t need a genius IQ to know telling him what to do to conceal his actions would be a serious mistake.
He turned to her again and said, “Hands. Above. Your. Head.”
He swung the baton so it hit his palm. His goal was definitely to terrify her, and she couldn’t envision a scenario in which she walked away from this encounter.
She knew people. The former US Attorney General being one of them. She and Curt Dominick had known each other from the earliest days when she dated JT, before he was the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. They weren’t close—not since things ended with JT—but she had no doubt he’d used his clout to make sure the investigation into this “traffic stop” was thorough.
But to get that investigation, Alexandra needed to make it to the police station alive…and she had a hard time thinking this officer really planned to arrest her for assaulting an officer. Not when everything he’d done since flashing his blue lights was blatantly illegal.
If she got in the back of that patrol car, she was a dead woman. She’d probably disappear from the face of the earth. Just her car and a broken phone and taillight to show she’d been here.
She thought of her daughter and the life she had now that she loved so desperately. Gemma. Erica. Colleagues she adored. Tanya, who she’d reconnected with just today. A career in a field she was passionate about.
He took another step toward her. Alexandra didn’t hesitate.
All those years with JT, who’d given her lessons in his private dojo for more than a decade, had prepared her for this moment.
First, she landed a roundhouse kick to his chest, then batted away the baton with one hand as she dropped the coat that covered the other. He cursed and grappled for his gun, and she swung the hand that clutched the hard drive, hitting him in the head.
He dropped like a stone. She stood above him, breathing heavy, watching his hands.
When she was certain he was out, she reached for his gun and wrapped her hand around the grip but then spotted the Taser on his belt and grabbed it instead. She pointed the weapon at him while she checked his pulse.
He was breathing with a steady heartbeat.
She rose to her feet, trying to figure out what to do next. Could she get the SUV’s engine to start with a broken key? It was still in the ignition.
It was that or steal the police car. She supposed she could cuff him and put him in the backseat. But the odds that other cops would shoot first and ask questions later were high if she were to take the wheel.
Her phone was destroyed. Could she use the police radio?
Headlights rounded the bend. The one thing she’d wanted desperately a few moments ago, but now…it would look to a passing motorist like she’d been the aggressor.
Against a cop.
She grabbed her coat and the hard drive—which had blood on it—and dove for the side of the road, jumping across the ditch behind the mailbox.
She’d hide until the car had passed. If they stopped, she’d decide if the driver was safe to approach.
She burrowed into the shrubs that lined the ditch and managed to pull on her coat as protection from the cool mid-December evening air. The temperature was supposed to drop tonight. Cold enough for snow if there was precipitation, but luckily, the forecast said the rain would hold off until tomorrow afternoon.
As she burrowed into her hidey hole, she shivered, not with cold but with the enormity of what she’d just experienced. Who was the officer? What was he up to?
She tucked the bloody hard disk into the coat’s inside pocket, and now her hand was balled in a fist, but she could feel the sticky fluid.
She couldn’t see the road from her hiding place and didn’t dare raise her head to give herself away, but she could hear the car pull over. The crunch of footsteps on the gravel shoulder.
A low curse in a man’s voice. Then the air cracked with the sharp bark of a gunshot that echoed down the long dark road.