Chapter 1863
[ 556 words ]
“We’ll be verifying that detail with your girlfriend.”
The Homicide detectives didn’t press him too hard just yet.
Whether the man was lying or not would be thoroughly investigated later.
Meanwhile, Captain Vance headed straight to Claire’s hospital room.
Claire was quietly reading a book.
Captain Vance gave a perfunctory knock.
Claire looked up and locked eyes with him.
This wasn’t their first meeting.
During her previous kidnapping incident, although Silas Carl’s team handled the
brunt of it, Homicide had provided backup.
“Captain Vance. We meet again.”
Claire was slightly pale, but her energy seemed perfectly fine.
Judging by how steadily she had been turning the pages, it was obvious the catastrophic crash hadn’t rattled her at all.
As for the dizziness, a mild concussion was practically a given after an impact like that.
“You really have terrible luck, kid.”
Honestly, even without Mr. Winthrop’s furious phone calls, Captain Vance would have treated this case with maximum priority just hearing Claire’s name.
After all, she had recently survived an attempted abduction by The Daybreak Syndicate from Sundara.
That organization was comprised of elite operatives who rarely failed.
They were relentlessly persistent; failing to extract her the first time practically guaranteed a second attempt.
What puzzled Vance, however, was the method. Why orchestrate a car crash this time?
During the last incident, Daybreak’s objective had been crystal clear: take her alive.
This time, the execution was brutally lethal. Ramming them into a truck was a move meant to obliterate, not capture.
Had Daybreak grown so enraged by Claire foiling their plans and exposing their embedded spies at the Solenian border that they had shifted from extraction to outright assassination?
Revenge was entirely plausible.
If they couldn’t take her, they’d kill her to ensure she didn’t grow into a threat they couldn’t reach.
That was precisely how Sundara operated.
“Did you secretly develop some kind of revolutionary research on your own?” Vance studied Claire with genuine curiosity.
Claire gave him a flat look. “Even your jokes should make a little sense, Captain.”
“I’m a college freshman. What kind of world-altering research could I possibly develop?”
Vance chuckled softly. “Who knows? You geniuses operate on a completely different wavelength than us normal folks.”
“I know you’ve already given your statement, but I need you to go over it again, specifically your assessment of the attackers.”
Captain Vance operated differently than the traffic cops; as a homicide detective, he was highly attuned to the micro-details of criminal behavior.
For example, the black car accelerating was explicitly designed to force Claire to speed up.
Approaching the merge, Claire had been cornered into yielding the lane.
Since the adjacent lane was empty at that exact second, anyone dealing with a maniac driver would naturally swerve to avoid them.
It was human instinct.
Rather than getting rear-ended at high speed, swerving offered a sliver of hope.
No one could have predicted
another car would perfectly synchronize its acceleration at the
mere Was everyone on the road
psychopath?
The current breakthrough hinged on the driver claiming he sped up out of fear of getting dumped.
As for the others, they were dead. The only remaining angles were their financial histories and recent contacts.
After Claire laid out the exact sequence of events, Vance was utterly convinced the crash was a coordinated hit.
But he was also deeply awed by Claire’s reaction.
“The fact that you turned that deathtrap around… I guarantee the mastermind
behind this never saw that coming.”
A normal person in Claire’s situation would be lucky just to survive, but Claire hadn’t
just survived—she flawlessly extracted herself.
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