Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(5)
What the…?
Holy shit. I was completely boxed in.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” I started to babble as visions of being kidnapped came to mind.
My normally cool under pressure heart was working at a frantic pace, overwhelming me with the urge to run.
Bright strobe lights surrounded me, flashing violently and blinding me from all angles. I felt the need to shield my eyes as red and blue police lights bounced off the reflective, wet streets.
No, this isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
I froze when I saw guns pointed at me from numerous open truck windows.
“Let me see your hands! Hands! Keep them up!” a man yelled.
My body jerked with fright, overriding my brain’s order to do as it was told.
“Hands up on the roof! On the roof! Do it! Do it now!”
A gun was pointed right at my head on the other side of my driver’s window. “Get out of the car, nice and slow,” a deep voice ordered. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I was shaking so hard I could barely move let alone follow orders. Bright lights blinded me at every angle. Men were shouting all around me. Several pistols were aimed at me when my car door opened.
A very strong hand grabbed my wrist and hauled me out of my seat. He twisted it behind my back, instantly immobilizing my arm, and pressed me face first into the trunk of my brand new car.
Vivid canary yellow lettering, announcing POLICE and AUTO THEFT TASK FORCE, stood stark against the all-black outfits that surrounded me.
“Ow,” I cried out, feeling my tired muscles strain as both of my arms were pulled behind my back. Cold metal handcuffs cinched around my wrists. Oh God! Not again! “Stop! Wait! I didn’t do anything! Why are you doing this?”
Someone very strong leaned into me; his thigh kept my leg pinned, although I could tell that whoever was cuffing me was reserving his strength.
As if I could ever be a threat to any of them. If I weren’t on the verge of tears and a full-blown panic attack, I would have laughed.
“Calm down, miss,” an enormously large, dark figure standing to my left said, trying to cajole me. I looked over and then way up into the face of one massive and very intimidating black police officer. “Romeo Seven to control,” he said into his radio. “We’re ten-fifteen. One in custody.”
Custody? What the hell?
Absolute terror clenched my chest, causing me to hyperventilate. My heart was pounding erratically. Everything around me was hazy, blurry, as if I was adrift in some nightmare and unable to wake.
“It was… yel… yellow,” I sputtered, my cheek stinging from making contact with the frosted metal. I didn’t realize that running a red light was such an offense, nor was it cause for so many cops to converge. Whatever this was, it was far from a typical traffic stop. I was in deep shit.
Cops were shining flashlights into my car, opening doors, inspecting everything. Once I was cuffed, the officer pinning me stood me up, turned me, and tugged my hood off my head.
His strong jaw, shaded by a low growth of stubble, was clenched, and dark eyes were glaring with angered intensity. Short, blunt-cut brown hair rimmed the edge of his black ball cap, turned backwards on his head to show the word “POLICE” in small yellow letters.
Another bright light was shone right on me. I squinted and winced, noting the source of the blinding light was connected to a camera hefted on top of someone’s shoulder. Another guy, a few inches shorter, was standing next to the cameraman. He was wearing headphones and a ball cap with the word Pantera written on it, staring at some sort of hand-held monitor that reflected colored images back onto his glasses.
Oh please, God, NO! Philly news was here to record the demise of my career.
Just as I was about to question why one, two, three separate cameras were filming me, the officer addressed me again.
“Eyes on me, Miss,” he growled.
My head snapped up at his direct order.
“What’s your name?” he asked with that foreboding cop authority.
“Erin. Erin Novak,” I breathed, fighting the urge to pass out.
“All right, Erin Novak, you want to tell me why you ran that red light back there and why I was doing almost sixty to keep up with you?”
I glanced down the street at the red light in question, my mind drawing a complete blank. “I thought… it was mostly yellow. I don’t know. Every time I turned, you turned. I was… I was scared being followed like that. It’s late and I just…” I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. “I just wanted to get home without getting kidnapped or killed.”
His eyebrows rose, causing me to focus in on his alluring brown eyes. “You knew we were following you?”
Why the humor in his tone? “Yes. Well, no. I suspected.”
The large black officer snickered. “So much for undetected.”
Apparently I was missing some part of the joke.
“We tagged you right after you peeled onto Broad Street,” my incarcerator said somewhat proudly.
Well, good for you. Tagged me for what, I had no idea.
He looked at my silver car. “Ford Taurus SHO. Nice choice. Expensive ride.”
I may have a mound of med school debt, but expensive cars were reasonably priced when your father owned two Ford dealerships.
His eyes rolled up and down my body, from my puffy ski jacket down to my sneakers and back again. Oh God. That’s when I realized I was still wearing my scrub pants. His flashlight stayed lit on my pants leg and then illuminated a spot on the top of my sneaker.