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“Fuck you. I’m late for work. I don’t have time for this.”
The man moved to get into his car.
“You are not free to leave, Sir,” Sage said, her voice loud over the noise of the passing traffic. “This is now the scene of a crash, and you have to supply your information. You are officially detained.”
“You people act like you own everything,” the man said, throwing up his hands. “You’re always after the little guy. I’m going to lose my shitty job if you don’t let me go.”
Sage positioned herself at the window of his car as he climbed in and slammed the door shut. Now that he was in his own space, maybe he would calm down. Gary went to the opposite side and Sage waited for the man to supply his documents. He wasn’t doing anything, though. He was just sitting in his car, and she could see him muttering to himself, his hands shaking. She tapped on the window, trying to get him to roll it down.
Just then, dispatch radioed that the registered driver, Paul Freer, had a felony warrant out of Indianapolis. The man in the driver’s seat lifted his head. He didn’t look at her, but Sage knew he’d heard the call, and she had a gut feeling it was going to go bad. She looked up at Gary and she could see in his face that he thought the same thing. Glancing behind her cruiser, she saw backup was about a dozen car lengths away. Traffic was already beginning to pile up because they had a lane and a half blocked.
When the man started his car and began to shift into gear, Sage knew she had to act.
“Bust out the window,” Gary yelled.
Sage grabbed her Asp, expanded it with a flick of her wrist, and smashed it into the glass, but it didn’t shatter the first time. The car began to move, and she had to jump back. Gary jumped back as well. Sage slammed the baton into the window again, and it shattered. She reached in, grabbing for the ignition of the car, and the man slammed on the gas. Her feet came off the ground as the car carried her back. They slammed into her cruiser, then he shifted into drive. She heard glass smash on the other side, then Gary yelled out ‘taser, taser, taser,’ and the man jerked in his seat. Before she could grab the keys, the car jumped forward again, and Sage glanced around in fear. They were going to run into oncoming traffic.
Fuck!
For a timeless second, she glanced across. Gary was hanging onto the passenger side of the car, continuing to squeeze the trigger of the Taser. Sage wondered if that wasn’t what screwed them, because a split second later, the driver hit the Indian woman’s car again in the rear, then scraped on through. Sage heard Gary cry out and she wondered if he’d been pinned. Something popped in her shoulder, and she knew she was going to be in pain, but she held onto the steering wheel for dear life.
She could no longer hear the snap of the Taser, but she heard the siren behind her. Whoever their backup was, they were screaming around the traffic through the median. Then the backup car pulled directly in front of the car dragging her and the suspect finally stopped. Sage got her feet under her and elbowed the man with her right arm, several times, then ripped the door open. She grabbed him by the neck and dragged him out of the car.
The man rallied, though, and he started swinging. Sage took a fist to the temple that completely rang her bell, and she went down hard on her ass. Her head snapped back against the roadway, and she prayed that traffic had completely stopped. The backup officers were running toward her, and one split off toward the suspect, who was trying to run. He wasn’t going to get away.
Dragging in oxygen, she pushed to her feet and took off after the driver. She and the backup officer tackled him at the same time, and they went rolling. Sage took another fist to the gut before they managed to overpower the driver. Then the third officer piled on and they forced the guy’s wrists into cuffs.
For a second, Sage just sat on the debris-strewn road, catching her breath and waiting for the world to stop spinning. Her entire body was throbbing, and she knew she was more hurt than she could catalog at that moment.
Years ago, she’d been sitting at a red light, on-duty, when a drunk driver had plowed into her. That had been about four years ago, right around the time Tim had left them. She’d ended up with a broken arm and a broken collar bone from that crash and she remembered the all-consuming pain. Every time she’d breathed, she could feel the pain in her collar bone.
She hadn’t broken it this time, but she felt as beat up as she’d been then. One of the backup cops kneeled beside her, his eyes concerned. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she croaked out. “Thanks for getting there when you did. He would have kept dragging me. Did you see Gary?”
She lifted her head, looking around. They had ended up about fifty feet in front of the Indian woman’s car. She was still in the car, sobbing, with her hands to her face. Sage’s gaze drifted past her, looking for Gary.
Then she saw booted feet near the guardrail. Sage immediately radioed for squad, reporting an officer down, and she ran for Gary.
10
Brian looked down at his buzzing phone, and his heart picked up speed. He debated not answering, because they were trying to create distance. Or he was, at least. It had been a week since the steak dinner, and he still thought about Sage every chance he got. Actually, thoughts of her intruded at completely inappropriate times, and it had created enough of a problem that Parker had snapped at him to pull his head out of his ass yesterday. That hadn’t been all he’d said, but Brian didn’t want to think about that.
Giving in to the inevitable, he answered the phone. “Yes, Sage,” he said, rocking back in his chair.
“Brian,” she said, her voice so rough he barely understood what she was saying. “I hate to ask, but I have a bit of an emergency.”
Brian rocked forward, alarm slamming through him. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t reach the lady that kind of watches Adam for me, and I need someone to stay with him tonight. I had… a bit of an accident at work, today.”
Brian flashed back to the Newsbreak article he’d seen on his phone for Columbus. “Were you part of that crazy crash out on Hogue Ave.?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m okay, but I’m at Mt. Carmel and they want to keep me overnight. I have a slight concussion. Gary is here, too, but he got pinned. He’s not doing as well.”
Brian could hear the pain in her voice, and it made his heart ache for her. “I’ll go get Adam. Did you tell him you were hurt? You know he’s going to want to see you.”
“Yes, I told him. Don’t worry about bringing him in. He’s been struggling with worry, recently, and I’ll be out tomorrow morning. I’d probably scare the crap out of the kid, because I don’t look really great. Just tell him I love him.”
