The first thing the police officer threw onto the pavement was her seven-thousand-dollar designer handbag.
The second was a white leather panel he'd ripped from the passenger compartment of her million-dollar supercar.
But the third thing he tried to take would eventually destroy his career, expose a secret operation inside the police department, and cost several powerful men far more than they ever imagined.
“WHERE'S THE DAMN EVIDENCE?”
The officer's furious voice echoed between the tall office buildings of downtown Manhattan.
Sunlight reflected off the windows of the surrounding towers. Yellow taxis moved through the distant intersection, pedestrians slowed along the sidewalk, and a black-and-white police cruiser sat behind an extraordinary white-and-black supercar whose upward-opening passenger door stood almost vertically above the roadway.
Three uniformed white American police officers surrounded the vehicle.
The oldest stood beside the rear wheel, watching the sidewalk. The youngest was leaning into the passenger compartment, pulling at a storage panel beneath the leather seat. And the man in charge, a broad-shouldered thirty-eight-year-old sergeant with short brown hair and an angry red face, had just thrown the owner's handbag onto the ground.
It struck the pavement with a sickening sound.
A gold lipstick case rolled toward the curb.
A small makeup compact bounced beneath the supercar.
A pair of expensive sunglasses slid across the concrete.
The woman who owned the car didn't move.
She was thirty years old, exceptionally beautiful, with flawless deep chocolate-brown skin, an elegant slender figure, sculpted cheekbones, full lips, and glossy black hair styled into polished vintage finger waves close to her head.
She wore enormous black cat-eye sunglasses, an extraordinary white couture cape with sharply structured shoulders, a white cropped top exposing her waist, and a long fitted black skirt covered in thousands of sparkling sequins.
A black silk scarf framed her neck.
Elegant white gloves covered her hands.
Her outfit looked as though it belonged on the steps of an international fashion gala rather than beside a damaged luxury vehicle during a police search.
She was the founder and chief executive officer of Lattice Integrity, a technology company valued at more than twelve billion dollars.
But the three officers didn't know that.
Or at least, that was what one of them desperately wanted her to believe.
The sergeant stepped toward her.
“You think you're too rich to answer me?”
The woman tilted her head.
“I've answered every question you've asked.”
He pointed toward the supercar.