“I’m asking whether there is a report.”
Derek stepped closer.
“I said face forward.”
Sam breathed slowly.
A crowd grew because crowds do.
Not because they understood.
Because something was happening.
Derek looked at the people and felt the strange confidence that an audience sometimes gave him.
He had made hundreds of stops.
He had been praised for decisiveness.
The department used words like command presence.
Derek understood command presence as never allowing uncertainty to show.
If you questioned yourself in front of citizens, they questioned you too.
So he stopped questioning himself.
“This car costs what?” he asked.
Sam frowned.
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“Sixty grand?”
“I bought it used.”
“And you live where?”
“Whitmore Heights.”
Derek laughed.
“Whitmore Heights.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a very nice area.”
“It is.”
“How does someone like you afford a house there?”
The crowd heard it.
Talia’s expression changed.
Her phone lowered a fraction.
The interaction was no longer funny in quite the same way.
Sam looked over his shoulder as far as Derek allowed.
“Someone like me?”
“Turn around.”
“Officer—”
Derek caught his arm.
“Stop resisting.”
“I am not resisting.”