You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 261 Private Army

Then, the headlights illuminated Leon clearly, and Bob saw more. He could see that Leon's trouser legs were soaked, his tactical boots were wet, his right hand was hanging at his side, and if you looked closely, you could see some bloodstains on his gloves.

"I just said Lyon was off today," Miller said, having already unbuckled his seatbelt. "I didn't say he was home."

"That's fucking amazing!"

Bob took a deep breath and opened the car door.

A cold wind mixed with rain poured into the carriage. He shrank his neck, but still stepped out.

Miller got off the bus from the other side.

When Leon saw Bob, his eyebrows twitched. He was genuinely a little surprised, as he had thought Bob would stay in the hospital for several more months.

"You're back at work," Lyon said.

"Today is the first day."

Bob walked around the front of the car, looked Leon up and down, his gaze lingering on the bloodstains on his gloves for a second before looking away.

"You look like you were run over by a garbage truck and then crawled out."

"Your mouth hasn't changed at all."

"I've been lying down for months, and I haven't practiced anything else but this."

Bob stopped two steps in front of Lyon, hands on his belt—a habitual stance of an experienced patrolman. "What are you doing standing in the middle of the road? Trying to hitch a ride?"

"Come and check if you hear the siren."

"Hmm." Bob nodded, glancing over Leon's shoulder towards the direction of the psychedelic cat.

The streetlights over there were dimly lit for some reason, and you could vaguely see figures moving things in the back alley.

He looked away, not intending to ask anything.

Lyon didn't intend to explain.

The two of them stood there for two seconds, the rain pattering softly on the car roof.

Miller walked up behind Bob, nodded to Leon, and Leon nodded back, as if to say hello.

Bob's lips moved slightly.

He saw the look in Leon's eyes.

Lyon's facial expression was the same as usual, but his eyes looked different.

He himself experienced the same thing after being shot, lying on a gurney in the hospital corridor, staring at the ceiling, his mind filled with all sorts of random thoughts.

"What happened?" Bob asked.

Lyon glanced at him.

"Don't look at me like that." Bob poked Lyon with his finger.

"You're standing here in the middle of the night, covered in blood. Someone from the Psychedelic Cat team just called the police saying they heard an explosion. I'm not blind—do you need my help?"

He paused for a moment after saying that.

"Well."

He thought of a very real problem.

Lyon is now the team leader of ACU, and his direct superior is Director Sterling.

Lyon's authority allows him to mobilize special operations teams, call in patrol officers, and even connect directly with the FBI.

Bob was just a newly reinstated third-level patrol officer, working with a rookie partner. His connections in the department were limited to knowing Sergeant Danfoss's vacation schedule or being able to help Leon borrow a box of bullets from the evidence room.

"Never mind." Bob waved his hand self-deprecatingly. "What can I do to help you, you're just an ACU team leader? I just talk the talk."

"Something has definitely happened," Lyon said.

Bob's hand froze in mid-air.

"Wait a minute." Leon took out his phone, walked a few steps to the side, and stood on the hood of the patrol car.

He called Kevin Lee first.

The dial tone went off for a few seconds, then it went to voicemail.

Kevin's voice prompt was a sample of a clip from a Japanese anime. A female voice read a nonsensical sentence in Japanese, ending with a "whoosh" sound.

Lyon hung up and called Raymond Garcia.

It rang six times this time, but no one answered, and the call automatically ended.

He took the phone away from his ear and paused his thumb on the screen.

Although Garcia, that bureaucrat, usually had a "don't cause me trouble" attitude, he would reply to all the messages Leon sent.

If someone doesn't answer the phone in the middle of the night, they're either fast asleep or their phone is on Do Not Disturb.

The third number.

Victoria Sterling.

The call connected quickly this time. There was a rustling sound on the other end, followed by Sterling's voice, clearly just woken up and still in a daze: "What time is it?"

"Around midnight."

"Speak if you have something to say."

"Mia has been captured by the Blood Gang."

"ha??"

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone.

Sterling's breathing changed; it only took him the time it took to go from dazed to alert.

"Which Blood Gang?" she asked in a low voice.

"After Marcus died, the remaining remnants were taken away by a man named Vic, whose goal was to force me to show myself."

"When did this happen? What's the current situation?"

"Tonight, someone launched a surprise attack on the outpost I mentioned to you before—a feint. Their main target wasn't the outpost; it was Mia."

Sterling remained silent for another second.

Lyon could hear her sit up, the sound of the sheets rubbing together, and then a very soft cough as she cleared her throat.

"This is a serious scandal." She lowered her voice to almost a whisper, "ACU administrative staff have been kidnapped by the mob."

"If this makes the news, our precinct will be torn to shreds by the media, and Chief Inspector Finch will use this as a bullet to shoot me in the head, do you understand?"

"So I need to resolve this before dawn."

"Approximately how many people are on the other side?"

"At least several dozen, maybe thirty or more."

"————" There was a moment of silence on Sterling's end.

"Today is ACU's rest day, and you have practically no one under you. How are you going to solve this? Can you even solve it?"

When Lyon heard this, the corner of his mouth twitched. Normally, he might have laughed, but today he simply couldn't.

Leon realized that Sterling wasn't asking "Can you solve this?" but rather "Can you survive and solve this?"

But she won't say it directly.

She never says it directly.

"Neither Garcia nor Kevin are answering my calls." Leon suppressed his emotions, his voice returning to its previous calm.

"I need someone who is still awake and can go into the station to check the video footage, and he has to keep it absolutely confidential and not let this get out of the news. You don't want this to make the news either."

"Mia didn't come to work today. We need to know which intersection she was last seen on camera, as well as the direction the kidnappers were heading and their license plate number."

"I have people who can do it, and—" Sterling said.

There was another sound of sheets rubbing together, followed by footsteps.

She must have walked somewhere in the bedroom; Leon heard her pull open a drawer, or perhaps some wooden furniture was opened, followed by a very soft click of a button.

She may have turned on another phone or some kind of internal communication device.

"I can assign you two people to help you with this," Sterling said. "Two, not from the police department."

"Your family members?"

"right."

Private army.

The word suddenly popped into Lyon's mind.

He had heard some things in his previous life: the real power of those great American families wasn't in their yachts and charity dinners, but in their land.

Estates often span thousands of acres, with private roads and fences housing retired military horses and dogs.

Even more outrageous are the tanks.

He wasn't sure how much land the Sterling family owned, nor how deeply her father was involved in the arms and oil industries.

But he was certain that Sterling had access to far more resources than just the West Precinct’s filing cabinets and meeting rooms.

The two people weren't from the police force; even if the Sterling family couldn't afford a private army, they should at least be at the level of mercenaries.

"Have them contact me directly," Lyon said.

"Just give them my contact information. They should also need my phone number. I'll communicate with them then."

"It takes several tens of minutes to drive from their location to your base."

19

Sterling paused for a moment.

"I understand." Leon placed his right hand on the hood of the patrol car, the blood on his glove seeping into a small, pale red stain in the rain. "Tell them to get it done as soon as possible—"

"Lyon," Sterling's voice suddenly interrupted him.

"Um?"

"Don't die in a place like that—I mean—uh—I mean—if you die, it'll be a very serious scandal, right?" Sterling's voice sounded conflicted, and he sighed several times before finishing his sentence.

The phone hangs up.

Leon stared at the end-of-call screen for a few seconds, then put his phone back in his pocket and turned away.

Bob was leaning against the patrol car door, tapping his fingers on the rearview mirror. He stopped when Bob saw Bob turn around.

"Chief Sterling?" Bob said.

"right."

"Judging from your expression, she's planning to send someone to support you."

Leon looked at Bob, who was tapping his fingers on the rearview mirror, and said, "Judging from your expression, she's planning to send someone to support you." His expression was quite serious, but Leon found it a little funny. Bob definitely hadn't heard Sterling's last few stammering words.

Bob only guessed a small part of it.

Leon neither explained nor exposed him; he simply said, "You just said you wanted to help."

Bob's fingers stopped.

"Um, I did say that earlier. You said something really happened," I blurted out instinctively, then thought for a moment, "You're the ACU team leader now—I'd be more suited to writing your patrol logs."

"You just said you wanted to help," Leon repeated, his tone exactly the same as before.

Bob paused for half a second with his mouth open, then closed it, his throat bobbing. He couldn't quite make out Leon's expression in the diffused light of the car headlights.

"Don't fucking scare me," Bob said. "What's wrong with you today? You're talking like a horror movie trailer. Can't you just give me a straight answer?"

"Lend me your patrol car for a moment."

Bob paused for a moment.

"car?"

"Car." Leon patted the hood.

"You need a car?"

"Yes." Leon walked around the front of the car and opened the driver's side door directly.

"You just said you wanted to help, so I'll lend you my car. You and Miller can walk back, or I can call command center to send another car to pick you up after I'm done. Anyway, you've finished reporting your mission for tonight."

Before Bob could process this turn of events, Lyon had already stepped onto the pedal.

Bob reacted much faster than he expected. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed the passenger door.

"Then I'll go with you."

Lyon turned and glanced at him.

Bob opened the passenger door, plopped in, and didn't even fasten his seatbelt.

"I'm serious," he said.

Lyon didn't say anything, started the car, the engine shook, and the dashboard lit up.

The rear door opened, Miller bent down and crawled into the back seat, closed the door, and leaned back in the back seat, his expression no different from when he was on duty.

Lyon's gaze swept past Miller in the rearview mirror before returning to Bob.

Bob fastened his seatbelt, placed his hands on his knees, and sat up straight.

"Didn't you just return to work on your first day?" Lyon said.

"Yes, the first day."

"You just muttered several times that you didn't want to go back to the hospital on your first day back at work."

"No, how did you hear that outside?"

"It's hard for me not to hear your voice."

Bob paused for a moment, but this time the silence was shorter than before. He lifted his hands off his knees, scratched the back of his head, and let out a breath.

"Fine, I've said it."

"Then why are you getting in the car with me?"

Bob rolled the car window down a crack, hunched his neck, and then rolled it back up.

"I remember Miller's hands were shaking badly when he pressed on my wound a few months ago when you saved me."

Lyon didn't reply, shifted the gear from park to drive, and moved his foot from the brake to the accelerator.

"If you hadn't come that night, I'd probably be lying in the cemetery by now, instead of sitting in the patrol car drinking cold coffee," Bob said.

"So you're planning to repay this favor today."

"It's not about repaying a favor." Bob shook his head. "I'm not that kind of person, you know. I'm just—I mean, could you slow down? You haven't told me where you're going."

Lyon had already turned onto the side road of 12th Street and was heading west.

Mia's apartment is near the intersection of 15th Street and University Avenue, about a seven or eight-minute drive from there. With the current traffic and no one around, it might take five minutes.

"I won't tell you where to drive," Leon said.

"I won't tell you two exactly what happened tonight. You were in the car, but you weren't there."

Bob opened his mouth slightly, then closed it.

He glanced in the rearview mirror; Miller was watching him from the back seat.

"Got it." Bob leaned back in his chair, his shoulders slumping slightly. "I'm just a passerby."

Bob waved his hand again.

"No, it should be 'outer perimeter.' I'm on the outer perimeter. I'll wait in the car and call for backup if things get bad. Right?"

"I heard about this when I got back to the police station. Have you done something like this before? Leave Harrison and the others to keep watch on the outside while you rush in. I'll be Harrison today."

The wheels rolled over a puddle, splashing water onto the chassis.

"Yes, but Harrison is paid the deputy team leader's salary," Lyon said. "You're paid the patrol officer's salary."

"Could you please mention a raise to Sterling for me?"

Lyon didn't respond.

Bob leaned back in his seat, staring at the windshield wipers scanning back and forth for a few seconds before speaking. This time, he lowered his voice, as if whispering to Leon, but the car was so small that Miller in the back seat could definitely hear him.

"I have something to tell you."

Lyon's eyes were still fixed on the road ahead, but his ears were listening.

"That kid," Bob gestured with his chin toward the back row, "he's changed."

"I know."

"It hasn't gotten worse, it's gotten better, much better than before."

"He used to have trembling hands, and he would get so nervous that his voice would crack if he saw a homeless man burning a trash can. Now he can check hidden sentries and sit in the patrol car on rainy nights without any panic."

"But don't you think he's starting to resemble—"

Bob paused for a moment.

"Like I used to be."

Lyon's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. His gaze shifted from the road to the rearview mirror. The car was dimly lit, and only half of Miller's face was visible in the mirror, the other half hidden in shadow.

Miller leaned back in his chair, his hands on his knees, his lips pursed, probably thinking about something.

"I was like that when I was young," Bob said.

"It's not that I was particularly amazing when I was young, but—I was serious back then too."

"I also think the police should arrest bad guys, protect good guys, and put all those drug-selling bastards on the street in jail."

"Back then, when I got home from get off work, Lily had just started elementary school. She would ask me how many bad guys I caught that day. I would tell her, three, Daddy caught three today."

"And then?" Leon asked.

The moment I asked that question, memories surged uncontrollably.

He remembered those words.

The last time he asked "And then?" in this tone was in the hospital ward more than a month ago.

The question was directed at Lily.

That morning, he was in his hospital bed, and Lily sat beside him. Her chestnut hair shone softly in the sunlight, and she wore a white fitted T-shirt. When she looked back at him, her light brown eyes were full of an unavoidable honesty.

She said that when Bob was young, he was like Leon, full of the kind of sharpness that wanted to save the world. He chased drug dealers in the rain, took bullets for his brothers, and was the sharpest knife in the precinct, always the first to rush in.

and after.

Later, he witnessed too many terrible things, too many reversals, and too many drug dealers he had risked his life to send to prison being magically brought out of court by their lawyers, standing on the court steps and giving him the middle finger.

Later on, he couldn't even remember how many times he had been shot or how many bones he had broken.

He wasn't even sure if it was the bullets that made Bob age, or the endless bail papers that made him age.

When he gets home from get off work, he doesn't turn on the TV; he just stares blankly.

He sat on the living room sofa, a can of beer in his hand, staring at the off TV for two hours straight.

We sat in the dark without turning on the lights or speaking.

That look in his eyes.

Lily said that look was exactly the same as the look Leon had when he tried to sneak away from the hospital room.

The image flashed through Leon's mind for only about a second.

A vein twitched on the back of his hand that was gripping the steering wheel.

"Later," Bob's voice continued from the passenger seat, interrupting Leon's recollection.

"You'll find out later that the people you arrest always get out of prison before you do."

"Your reports will always be rejected by some lawyer you don't know, who will find a hundred procedural loopholes."

"The victim you risked your life to protect used the money from the settlement to buy a new car the next day."

"The bullet you blocked in the rainy night will be investigated by the Ministry of the Interior as evidence of police brutality three years later."

He paused here, then suddenly laughed. The laughter was dry, as if he were mocking a younger version of himself.

"Then you'll start thinking, 'Can I go out without wearing a bulletproof vest today?'"

"Could you please go a little later if I heard gunshots today? And could you please not write such detailed entries in that patrol log?"

"Anyway, they caught him and released him, and anyway, the bullet in the rainy night ended up in my leg."

Bob turned to look at Lyon.

"Your current state is exactly the same as mine twenty years ago."

"It's not that you act like a pro; you're much more ruthless than me."

"I mean your determination to take down the entire gang, your relentless, no-holds-barred attitude."

"You think you can handle it, you think you're tough, but you're not tough for yourself, you're tough for the people around you."

"You have office workers around you, Mia, and those people in the psychedelic cat. You think that if you stand up for yourself, they'll be safer."

His voice trailed off.

"But in the end, those people will still come after the people around you. Not because they can beat you, but because they can't."

"If they can't touch you, they'll target the people around you."

"Then the people around you will get hurt, they will die, so I finally chose to become the way I am now."

7

Bob finished speaking.

The only sounds in the carriage were the low hum of the engine and the mechanical rhythm of the windshield wipers moving back and forth.

His voice was very calm, like someone who had been there telling someone who was stepping on the gas and rushing towards a cliff: "There's a cliff ahead. I've fallen off before."

Miller remained completely silent in the back seat throughout the entire journey.

He might still be listening, or he might be thinking about something else.

But Leon could see Miller's eyes in the rearview mirror; he was looking at him too.

Lyon gripped the steering wheel too tightly, and his joints started to ache.

He loosened his grip, readjusted his hold, and then spoke.

"you're right."

Bob blinked.

"You're right. They can't beat me, so they go after the people around me. They did tonight; they went after someone who's very important to me."

Bob shifted his posture, turning his body slightly half an inch toward Lyon.

"The remnants of the Blood Gang."

"The last time you were shot, it was them who did it, but that was a coincidence. You didn't have any grudge against them then, but this time it's different; I have a grudge against them now."

Bob remained silent for a moment.

"So what you just said was, rice—"

"Stop the car," Leon interrupted him.

Bob shut his mouth and glanced instinctively at the road ahead.

There was nothing ahead, just an empty intersection and a few streetlights. Rain reflected off the road, and the patrol car continued to glide forward at a steady speed. Leon's foot was on the brake, but he didn't press it firmly.

His left hand remained on the steering wheel, while his right hand tapped the outer edge of the wheel once, then again. His eyes were still fixed on the road ahead, but the image in Lyon's mind had already shifted away from this intersection.

He almost slid down the path Bob was talking about.

Because he couldn't refute anything Bob said, he almost thought he would end up like that himself.

But it's still a little short.

He gritted his teeth.

The jaw muscles bulge out a hard ridge that extends from below the jawbone all the way down to the chin.

Then he mentally opened the system panel.

When his Justice Points balance popped up, he didn't even look at the number; he went straight to the Willpower attribute and clicked the exchange button.

1600 points.

A confirmation prompt popped up in the window. Without even processing it in his mind, he simply exhaled through his nose and pressed the confirmation button in his consciousness.

Willpower: 16→20.

The moment the skill point struck, a non-physical impact shot up his spine, as if someone was pouring ice water down his spinal cord into his brain, all the way to the very center of his head—the pineal gland? The pituitary gland? Whatever it was called, that place felt like it had been suddenly ripped open by something.

His vision suddenly became clear.

Just now, the rain outside the windshield was a blurry expanse of lines, but now he could see the arc of each raindrop.

As the wipers sweep across the glass from left to right, the rubber edge of the wiper blades creates a thin film of water as it rubs against the glass. This film then breaks apart, tearing from the middle outwards.

There is a small dent in the upper left corner of the windshield caused by a stone. The edge of the dent is translucent, and you can see several radial stress cracks inside the glass.

He had never noticed these details before.

His eyes began to automatically track the trajectory of objects.

There is a flashing yellow light at the intersection ahead. It flashes once per second, stays on for 0.6 seconds, and goes out for 0.4 seconds.

There's a flattened aluminum can on the right-hand sidewalk, with the pull tab still attached.

He shifted his gaze to an old car that had been parked on the side of the road for a long time without moving. There was half a centimeter of water in the left taillight, and a dead mosquito was floating on the surface of the water, with one of its hind legs still stuck to the inner wall of the lamp housing.

Dynamic vision.

He can now directly sense the meaning of the word, and his eyes can instantly capture the movement trend of an object, and then adjust his gun-holding arm and fingers to the corresponding predicted angle in an instant.

If it's a handgun.

He knew that the Glock 17 needed to be raised at a distance of 25 meters to compensate for the angle, but he no longer needed to calculate it with his brain; he could do it simply by relying on some kind of pre-emptive perception that rose from his shoulders and wrists.

If it's a rifle.

He can now feel, even with his eyes closed, an invisible alignment point between the barrel axis and the target's movement speed when he holds the gun.

20 points of Willpower.

This number is highlighted on his properties panel.

His right hand, which had been resting on the steering wheel, slowly loosened its grip.

The image of the hospital room in his mind, Lily's eyes, light brown, and her words, "They look exactly like your eyes now," were still there, but he had already framed the image.

He won't become Bob.

It wasn't because he was tougher than Bob; it was because he wasn't just here to be a cop.

He was there to complete a mission.

His mission was to build a passage, stabilize the stronghold, and continue running the special line to the East, but now his mission was to rescue Mia; he had no right to become an old scoundrel.

We must be determined, unafraid of sacrifice, overcome all difficulties, and strive for victory.

He had recently come across this quote in the anthology, but he hadn't consciously tried to recall it. It had simply surfaced from some deep-seated state after his willpower was enhanced, as if the quote had been imprinted on his body from the very beginning, and he was just waiting for the right moment to discover that it was already there.

Lyon pressed his foot on the accelerator again, and the patrol car accelerated steadily once more, with the engine tachometer jumping to 2,000 RPM.

"Leon," Bob called out from the side.

"Um."

"Were you spacing out just now?"

Lyon turned the steering wheel around a corner with his right hand.

"Yes, I'm thinking about something."

"Have you thought it through?"

Lyon turned his gaze away from the road ahead and glanced at Bob.

"I've never been this clear before."

Leon didn't laugh, but Bob, seeing his clenched jaw muscles, laughed first.

"Fine, I won't ask anymore." Bob leaned back in his chair. "Your expression is even scarier than when I saw you being surrounded by reporters on the news last time."

S