Doyle laughed, a short, appreciative sound. “About time. You pull a couple more like this, you'll be out of the cruiser and into a suit by spring.”
Cynthia listened to them talk about her future as if it were a line item in their precinct's monthly statistics, a number that would quiet a captain and earn a shield. She thought about the women who had sat in this same back seat without a covert camera system, without a secure server in Quantico, without a title waiting in a concealed pocket, and who had listened to officers talk about them in exactly this way, knowing that no one would believe their version of events over the word of two men in uniform. She thought about the kids on the street she had worried about earlier, the ones who argued back and paid a higher price for it, and she felt a cold, steady anger settle beneath her calm, not hot enough to make her speak out of turn, but strong enough to carry her through whatever came next.
The cruiser turned off the highway and into the city, the rain easing slightly as they moved under streetlights and overpasses, the wet streets reflecting neon signs and traffic signals. Cynthia watched the city slide past through the rain-streaked window: closed storefronts, a bus shelter with a single person waiting inside, a gas station glowing bright against the dark. She memorized the route without trying, the way she always did, noting turns and landmarks in case she needed them later. O'Grady drove with one hand on the wheel now, the other still drumming occasionally against the dashboard, humming faintly under his breath. Doyle scrolled through his phone, the screen lighting his face in the dark car. Neither man spoke to her again for the rest of the ride, and Cynthia was grateful for the silence, because it gave her time to think.
She thought about the rental car being towed behind them, or ahead of them, or already on its way to an impound lot, and about the footage inside it, safe and encrypted and already beyond O'Grady's reach. She thought about the phone call she would eventually be allowed to make, and about the man she would call, and about how long she would need to wait before she made it. She thought about Captain Miller, whose name had come up twice now as the reason for the numbers, the pressure, the need for a catch. She did not yet know Miller, but she already understood something about him: he was a man who wanted results and did not ask too many questions about how those results were obtained, and that kind of leadership created exactly the kind of officer O'Grady had become.