My name is Victoria Hale, and until that afternoon, I believed the most frightening part of working in law enforcement was discovering what people were capable of doing when nobody was watching.
I was wrong.
The most frightening part was discovering what two uniformed officers were willing to do when they believed nobody important was watching.
It happened on a quiet stretch of rural highway shortly after three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon.
I was driving home in my silver sedan, enjoying the rare silence that came with having no meetings, no ringing office telephone, and no urgent reports demanding my attention.
The sky was bright blue, the fields on either side of the road stretched toward distant tree lines, and the warm afternoon sunlight made the highway look almost peaceful.
I had spent the morning reviewing departmental training materials, and I was looking forward to an evening that involved nothing more complicated than dinner and a book.
My speedometer showed fifty-three miles per hour in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone.
