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

Chapter 262 An Unlucky Day Off

On the way from the west side to the east side, the windshield wipers of a Chevrolet Suburban SUV were mechanically scraping against the windshield, and there was a faint smell of blood in the car.

Mia Torres lay on her side in the wide back seat with her hands tied behind her back.

Her body swayed slightly with the bumps of the carriage, and a layer of cold sweat appeared on her forehead.

Ten minutes ago, Andrei's fist slammed into her abdomen; the convulsive, churning sensation of her internal organs still hadn't subsided.

She wasn't screaming hysterically like a victim in a movie, nor was she foolishly provoking the two gangsters in front of her.

During the years Mia worked in claims review at the insurance company, she witnessed enough tragedies where things got worse because of emotional outbursts.

She was now curled up, taking small breaths to minimize the pain from the pulling, while listening intently to the sounds coming from the row in front of her.

In fact, the capture process did not go as smoothly as Vic had planned.

Vic and Andrei's original plan was not complicated. Connor, that corrupt cop, later sold out Mia's address and get off work schedule. With Vic's surveillance for a few days, their initial plan was to make their move on Mia's way home from get off work.

But Vic later rejected the plan.

Because they knew that Leon Vance was a psychopath who could go crazy at any time, and they also knew that Leon would often appear around the precinct without warning.

If someone is forcibly kidnapped on the street, even late at night, and a passerby calls the police or a patrol officer sees it, Lyon could easily launch a fierce counterattack before the officers are even prepared.

So after much deliberation, Viktor set the execution date for ACU's rest day, and because it would be too conspicuous to act during the day, he also set the time for midnight.

They hired a veteran burglar from their gang to make a copy of the key to the apartment while Mia was out during the day.

Their later plan was to sneak in at night, put a hood over Mia's head while she was sleeping, and carry her away without anyone noticing.

But they overlooked one thing.

Mia's job at ACU was an office job with irregular hours, so her biological clock was already messed up.

At midnight, she wasn't sleeping in bed at all; instead, she was in the living room with a cup of coffee, watching a boring soap opera.

Moreover, following the instructions of her paranoid boss, Leon, there was a fully loaded Glock on the coffee table.

When Vic and his men unlocked the door and crept in, Mia almost instinctively grabbed her gun and pulled the trigger.

The bullet pierced the shoulder of one of the henchmen walking at the front.

If it weren't for her poor skills causing her wrist to tilt due to recoil, that gun would have definitely blown her head off.

Chaos erupted instantly in the cramped apartment.

If Andrei hadn't lunged forward with his pistol pointed at him, punching Mia in the stomach and knocking her down like a shrimp, thus taking the gun from her, they might have really capsized in that dilapidated apartment.

After they went outside, Vic grabbed the wounded henchman by the collar and shoved him and several other thugs into another Honda sedan with fake license plates.

Vic told them to drive south along the main road, and if the ACU or patrol officers caught up through surveillance, the car would be used as bait to draw their fire.

Meanwhile, Viktor himself, along with Andrei and Mia, got into the Chevrolet Suburban, chose a side road without cameras, and discreetly disappeared into the rainy Seattle night.

The carriage was quiet, with only the sound of rain hitting the roof.

Vic gripped the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the flooded road ahead, illuminated by the headlights.

He took a deep breath and then let out a long sigh.

This was the fifth time he had sighed since getting on the bus.

Andrei, sitting in the passenger seat, finally couldn't hold back any longer.

He turned his head and glanced at Vic in the faint green light of the dial.

"What's wrong with you tonight?"

"What happened?"

"You didn't work like this before," Andrei said in a hoarse voice.

"When you used to lead us to seize territory and collect debts, you never sighed. You always told us to keep our hands steady and our hearts hard when we fired a gun."

"We've caught the guy, laid the bait, and the policewoman isn't dead. Leon's hesitant to act rashly, so he'll have to follow our rules from now on. What are you still sighing about?"

Vic didn't look at him, and rubbed his hands on the steering wheel a couple of times.

"I'm getting old, Andrei."

Andrei was taken aback.

Vic slowed down slightly, allowing the car to glide smoothly through an intersection.

"Ever since I told you outside the police station a few days ago about how Marcus helped me pay off my loan sharks and get my wife medical treatment—I've been thinking about it constantly."

Vic's gaze became somewhat unfocused, as if he were looking at a scene from many years ago through the windshield.

"I'm wondering if I took the wrong path back then."

"What did you do wrong by doing this for your wife? Those loan sharks are the real bloodsuckers."

"No." Vic shook his head. "I was thinking, should I have continued working as a dockworker, carrying boxes for twelve hours a day, earning a meager weekly wage that barely covered my rent?"

"If I hadn't borrowed that 300,000 yuan at exorbitant interest rates to raise money for her chemotherapy, if I hadn't begged Marcus after being scammed—"

Vic dug his fingers into the leather cover of the steering wheel.

"If I had taken her with me from the beginning, and we had both jumped off that bridge over Lake Washington together."

Andrei was stunned.

He looked at Vic as if he didn't recognize this older brother who had been with him for seven or eight years.

"What nonsense are you spouting? Have you gone mad? Just a few days ago you told me that revenge can't be based on reason."

"This isn't nonsense." Vic forced an ugly smile. "I've been thinking about this since that day, and it feels like none of it really matters."

"I managed to get the money, but she still lies in bed every day, undergoing chemotherapy. Her hair has all fallen out, and she cries all night long from the pain."

"She lived a few more years, and then she died."

Vik turned his head and looked at Andrei.

"For those years, I volunteered to kill for Marcus later on. I don't know how many I killed. I also drove those poor people who couldn't pay their debts to jump off buildings. I became a monster."

"And now, Marcus is dead, and to pay for his life, I'm going to kidnap a policewoman and fight a crazy cop we can't possibly beat."

Vic looked ahead again, his voice utterly weary and filled with a sense of fatalism.

"I think I already know I'm going to die, and that doesn't matter anymore, but I just don't understand what the point of all this is?"

"What did I earn? What did Marcus earn? What did my wife earn? Who really earned the money?"

"Why did things turn out this way? Who is the root cause of it all?"

"I don't understand."

Andrei's mouth was open, but he couldn't say a word.

He was a street thug who only knew how to obey orders and beat people; he couldn't understand or comprehend Vic's deep-seated self-doubt.

In the back seat, Mia overheard the conversation between the two gangsters in front and roughly understood the current situation.

She pressed her face against the leather seat and closed her eyes.

To be honest, she didn't care what kind of bullshit life reflection this old rogue named Vic was having; she was in excruciating pain right now.

Mia hoped that Lyon, that bastard boss who always managed to make a mess of things, would come rushing over in his damn Ford Explorer or whatever before she got killed by these guys.

"————" Mia remained silent for a while.

For some reason, she found her emotions suddenly welling up, and she couldn't help but feel a little wronged, her nose immediately stinging.

The sour feeling came without warning, like rain seeping into a crack, instantly filling her eyes.

She bit her lip and buried her face deeper into the seat, pretending that the bumps in the car were blurring her vision.

It was her long-awaited day off from today until she went back to work tomorrow afternoon.

She had planned to sleep until she naturally woke up, wrap herself in a blanket on the sofa, and spend the whole day watching the terrible drama she hadn't finished catching up on last week, order a pizza with double cheese, and not do anything serious.

If Lyon, that workaholic, happens to be free during the day tomorrow, maybe they can go to a newly opened Thai restaurant for a meal and watch him wince from the spiciness of the Tom Yum soup.

It's that simple.

I wish I hadn't become a policeman.

Before entering the police academy, she genuinely believed that being a police officer was an easy job. Now, it seems that this is either an information cocoon or deliberate misrepresentation by the media, claiming that police officers only need to sit in their patrol cars and eat donuts all day?

Mia never wanted a dramatic life. She didn't want gunfights, kidnappings, gang revenge, or being dragged out of her house in the middle of the night, punched in the stomach, and thrown into the back seat of a car.

She just wanted to have a normal day off.

Why did things turn out this way?

Mia squeezed her eyes shut, her eyelashes sticking together wetly.

She felt she must look terrible, with messy hair and probably tear stains on her face.

She really didn't want to die.

She was actually terrified.

Although she resented it in her heart, she didn't want Leon to die.

Leon is a great hero, a good man who fights the mob, but why do good people have to suffer like this?

She just wanted it all to end quickly, to be back on her own floor, and to hear Leon tease her in that smug tone, saying, "Can't you just stay put and not cause trouble?"

There should be many more days off in the future.

Mia swallowed the grievance that was stuck in her throat without making a sound.

On the other side, Bob was leaning back in the passenger seat, looking at Leon's profile. Just as he was about to speak to break the oppressive silence in the car, Leon's phone on the center console suddenly vibrated.

Lyon held the steering wheel with one hand and picked up his phone with the other to press the answer button.

A second before the call connected, he casually turned off the car radio in the police car.

"Speak," Leon said, his eyes fixed ahead, his tone calm.

A man's voice came from the other end of the phone.

The voice had obvious electronic noise, was enunciated very heavily, and contained no nonsense or emotional fluctuations.

"The CCTV footage from the intersection of 15th Street and University Road has been retrieved. At 12:08, a dark blue Honda Civic with a fake license plate left the alley behind the apartment building."

"The car was going very fast, and the right taillight was broken."

The man's voice announced a series of license plate numbers, "They've gotten onto Highway 9 and are heading south."

"Are you sure this is the only vehicle?"

"There are many blind spots in the video recording. At present, we can only confirm that the behavior of this Honda is the most abnormal. It did not slow down at the traffic light and ran straight through it."

"I understand, continue the investigation."

Lyon hung up the phone immediately.

He threw his phone back onto the center console and slammed his right foot down on the accelerator.

The old V8 engine of the Ford Crown Victoria let out a muffled roar, and the massive body shot forward suddenly through the rainy night streets.

Bob was suddenly pushed back and pressed firmly into his seat, instinctively grabbing the overhead safety handle.

"You found them?"

Highway 9, southbound.

Lyon gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his eyes fixed on the rain-soaked road ahead.

He pushed his LV4 special driving skills to the limit at this moment. The heavy police car was like a razor on the slippery road, weaving and changing lanes between two slow-moving night trucks. When the tires rolled over the water, they splashed up water two meters high.

A few minutes later, on Highway 9 ahead, a dark blue Honda Civic with its right taillight off came into Lyon's view.

The car was driving extremely fast, swerving left and right in the lane, clearly trying to escape.

Lyon reached out and pressed the switch for the police lights and siren.

The blinding red and blue flashes instantly tore through the darkness of the rainy night, and the sharp sirens echoed across the empty highway.

Upon hearing the siren, the Honda in front not only failed to slow down or pull over, but instead swerved sharply, spewing black smoke from its exhaust pipe, and accelerated forward at breakneck speed.

"They're going to run!" Miller, sitting in the back seat, stared at the taillights ahead, his voice tense.

Lyon frowned.

His current speed is already close to the limit of this old police car. If he were to forcefully use a PIT (Police Stop Tactic) to hit the right rear wheel of the Honda, at such a high speed and on a slippery road, the light Honda would definitely lose control and roll over on the spot.

He stared at the rear window of the Honda in front of him.

With the terrifying dynamic vision brought by the 20 points of willpower, the rain curtain in front of me was no longer an obstacle.

Through the water droplets on the rear window of the Honda, he could clearly see a man slumped in the back seat, clutching his shoulder, but there was no sign of a woman who was bound.

But Lyon still didn't dare to crash into it.

If Mia had been strapped into the trunk or under the back seat—places where he couldn't see her—a rollover at that speed would have been enough to kill her.

The instant Lyon released his foot from the accelerator by half an inch, a line of semi-transparent pale blue fluorescent text appeared on his retina.

[System Task Triggered: Crush the Blood Gang's Bait]

[Mission Description: The Blood Gang is attempting to use a Honda sedan carrying wounded members to distract the police, then kill the gang members inside and end this clumsy delaying tactic.]

[Mission Reward: 800 Justice Points.]

Lyon's pupils contracted slightly.

It's bait.

That makes things much easier.

Since Mia wasn't in the car—

Lyon floored the accelerator again, and the Ford police car, with a deafening roar, quickly closed the distance to the Honda.

"Bob, bow your head."

Lyon uttered four words and pressed the control button on the left side window at the same time.

The icy rain instantly poured into the carriage and hit Lyon's face.

Before Bob could even ask why, his body instinctively shrank under the passenger seat.

Miller, sitting in the back seat, also clutched his head.

Lyon's right hand firmly controlled the steering wheel, bringing the car close to Honda's left blind spot.

He drew his Glock 17 from his waist with his left hand and stuck the muzzle out of the car window.

The strong wind tugged at the cuffs of his windbreaker.

At the moment when the two cars were speeding through the rainy night at over 120 miles per hour, the world in Lyon's eyes slowed down.

The gangster in the driver's seat of the Honda turned his head in terror, trying to look in the rearview mirror.

The muscle twitching on his face from drug use, and his pupils dilated from fear, were clearly visible to Leon.

The trajectory prediction is completed in an instant; wind speed, vehicle speed, rain resistance, and relative displacement between the two vehicles are all transformed into a muscle memory-like intuition.

Without any hesitation, Lyon pulled the trigger.

"Bang!"

The gunshots were mostly drowned out by the sound of rain and the roar of engines.

The 9mm bullet precisely pierced the driver's side window of the Honda, leaving a spiderweb-like hole in the glass before penetrating directly into the driver's temple.

A cloud of blood mist exploded inside the carriage.

The driver of the Honda died instantly, his hands, which had lost control, violently yanked the steering wheel.

The dark blue Honda sedan suddenly lost control while traveling at high speed, and the front of the car crashed violently into a concrete median barrier on the right side of the road.

With a chilling metallic tearing sound, the car rolled twice in the air before crashing heavily into the muddy ground of the nearby green belt. The roof was completely dented, and the four wheels spun helplessly in the air.

Lyon slammed on the brakes, leaving two long trails of water on the road before coming to a steady stop a dozen meters in front of the Honda wreckage.