The pursuit continued through several downtown blocks. A bus driver sounded a long warning as the SUV cut too close to the rear of his vehicle, and delivery workers scattered away from the curb when it swerved toward a loading area. Elias could feel the truck's damaged rear end moving unevenly, and he knew the safest outcome would be reaching a place where he could stop rather than trying to outrun another driver indefinitely. He repeated his location to the dispatcher while Altha watched behind them.
At the edge of an old warehouse district, the SUV clipped a parked delivery vehicle and collided with a row of metal waste containers. The impact shook the street, and the pursuers' engine faltered as steam began rising from the damaged front end. Elias did not stop near them. He continued several blocks to a guarded federal office parking area where Celeste's colleagues could meet them and where officers were already being directed by dispatch.
Only when the truck was secure did his hands begin shaking. He turned toward his grandmother and asked whether she needed medical help, trying to keep his own voice steady. She looked pale, with her cream shawl torn near one shoulder, but she was alert and able to answer. He called for an ambulance anyway, unwilling to gamble with the effects of two collisions on an eighty-six-year-old woman.
Altha looked down at the papers spilled across the rear floor and gave a weary sigh. "Your grandfather would have been furious about the way those files are lying everywhere," she said. Elias stared at her for a moment, then laughed once in disbelief. The laugh broke the tension enough that his eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.
"Grandmama, those people could have killed us." She reached over and held his hand. "I know," she answered softly. "And now we know that somebody is frightened enough to hurt us rather than answer questions about a hotel. We must let the police and investigators deal with that part. You are not going to carry this danger alone."
Investigators photographed the truck, collected witness contact information, and coordinated with officers at the collision site. The SUV had been abandoned by the time police secured it, but registration records, physical evidence, and traffic-camera footage gave them leads. Elias reported the earlier storage attack and the hotel access credential, careful to distinguish what he knew from what he suspected. Celeste thanked him for making that distinction, even when his anger made it difficult.
The emergency physician who examined Altha found no immediate serious injury, but advised rest and follow-up care. She accepted the instructions after bargaining unsuccessfully for permission to skip the waiting period. Elias emerged from his own examination with a bruised shoulder and a sore jaw, neither of which frightened him as much as the memory of the truck jolting with his grandmother inside. When they returned to Celeste's office, he asked for protective arrangements for every witness who had spoken that day.