I like Duncan, but I bet he’s going to be…
Let’s say he’s not going to be pleased with me.
I shake my head, going back to the question hovering in the air like a patch of methane gas.
“Were you drinking?” the female officer demands.
“I wasn’t, as the breathalyzer and blood test you forced me to take can attest to.”
Fenella puts a hand on my arm. Yes, I should probably sound more pleasant, but I can’t bring myself to.
“What about drugs?” By squinting slightly, I can make out C. Crow on the tag on her chest.
Crow. I recognize that name too. She must be some relation of Mabel’s. Again—not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
“I think the blood test would show if I had drugs in my system,” I snap.
“Yeah, but you could have some fancy new drugs that wouldn’t show up,” she pushes, matching my attitude with one of her own.
“You think there’s fancy drugs like that?” I scoff. “Here? In this place?”
Her expression sours even more. “We can do a tox screen to confirm.”
“I’m not a liar,” I say with a tight smile. “If I had been drinking, or using drugs, I’d say so.”
“And you would most likely be staring at the inside of a jail cell,” she points out nastily.
I shrug. They can do all the tests they want, but they won’t find anything.
“How fast were you driving?” C. Crow asks, her frown reaching the furrow between her dark eyes.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what time it was, or the speed at which I was driving.”
“But it was fast.”
“I drive race cars for a living. I can handle speed.”
“Do you often race cars along the icy roads of Laandia? Because those conditions would be a lot different from any racetrack.”
I don’t say anything because she’s right.
“We had a report from an address on Second Street about a yellow Charger driving at high speeds last night,” C. Crow reports.
Fenella glances at Jonathon with a frown. “Nathalia,” he says and gets a reproachful glare from Crow.
“However fast she reported, it was exaggerated,” Fenella says in a cool voice that sounds too much like our mother for my liking. “She recognized my car. She hates me,” she says under her voice. “I got her fired.”
“Great. Good job. I wasn’t going that fast,” I tell the officers. “And Sophie—” my voice hitches. “Sophie just appeared in the middle of the road. I saw her, and I jammed on the brakes, but there was ice…”
“And you failed to control the vehicle, and the result was that you struck down Ms. Laz.”
“You make it sound worse than it is,” I say flatly.
Silence, save for the sounds of the hospital, which are many.
“It is pretty bad, Ash,” Fenella murmurs.
I look at her, and then the frowning face of PC Crow. “Do I need a lawyer?”
