“Where’re you going?” the young officer asked.
“To speak with my father-in-law.”
“You need to stay put,” the officer instructed.
“Why? What the hell is going on?”
“Just stay where you are for now, sir.”
Jake watched as the detective he’d spoken with a few minutes ago stood in the middle of the family huddle. An animated discussion was going on among all of them. Jake received several looks, but no one bothered to head over to him. Had they been instructed by the detective not to speak to him? He could see Lars looking in his direction with eyes like slits and his jaw set hard.
Finally, the detective—a fiftysomething man with a thick mustache wearing a tattered brown sport coat—came back over to the officer who had been watching Jake. “Put Mr. Slater in the car for now.”
“What?” Jake exclaimed. “Am I being arrested?”
“Not yet. Just detained. Still gathering information.”
“This is ridiculous. I’d like to speak to my wife’s family.”
“That’s not going to happen right now.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Let’s just say they’re not all convinced of your innocence.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Look, I haven’t been able to corroborate your story about a man in a tow truck. And according to your father-in-law, you’ve had lots of issues lately. He claims you were angry at the woman inside because of some family custody battle.”
“This has nothing to do with that!”
“Then we’ll get it sorted out, Mr. Slater. For now, just sit tight.”
“But what about my daughter?”
“We’re already doing everything we can with that.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
The detective motioned at the officer, who opened the back door to the police car and asked Jake to get inside. Jake was shocked. How could anyone from Sarah’s family believe he might have had something to do with any of this? He wanted a chance to walk over and explain himself to his in-laws and beg them to help with Piper’s pursuit. But he reluctantly complied, realizing that fighting with the officer was not going to get him anywhere except put in handcuffs. The officer shut the car door behind him and then drifted up the sidewalk about ten feet to speak with another officer.
Jake looked down and noticed there were no door handles in the back of the police car. He ran his fingers through his hair and then tugged on it out of frustration. He rubbed at his jaw, which was throbbing in pain from his fall. But thankfully, it didn’t feel like anything was actually broken. Peering out the window, Jake felt completely helpless. He could see a group of neighbors standing on the opposite sidewalk, taking in all the drama, and thought about what the detective had just said. No one had seen the black tow truck? None of them had heard the truck tearing through the neighborhood? That seemed unlikely. Someone had to have seen something.
Jake was startled by his phone suddenly vibrating in his front left blue jean pocket. The police had taken his wallet—and still had it—but they had not asked for his phone. Pulling it out, he squinted at it and felt his heart jolt. Piper! A cute profile picture of her in her green-and-black acro-tumbling uniform filled his screen.
He quickly answered it. “Baby! Are you OK?”
There was no response. Just dead air.
“Piper, are you there?”
Again, she didn’t say anything. But Jake could suddenly hear someone else speaking, although it sounded muffled and from a distance. He cupped the phone closely to his ear, listening as carefully as he could. It sounded like a man and a woman. Was Piper in the room with them? What was going on?
Man: “What the hell was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave her there!”
Woman: “I told you just to scare them, you idiot. Not to shoot anyone!”
Man: “It was an accident. Stupid woman went for my gun. It just went off.”
Woman: “This is bad. So very bad.”
Man: “I knew I shouldn’t have gone over there.”
Woman: “All right, look, we just gotta calm down a second and think.”
Man: “I need to talk to Beth. Tell her what’s going on.”
Woman: “No, no . . . not yet. She’s going to completely freak out.”
Man: “We can’t just let her talk to her boss like nothing happened.”
Woman: “Let me figure out a plan.”
Man: “It’s your damn plan that got us into this mess in the first place.”