I personally hear clicking all the time from my pads in floating caliper design just moving back and forth in the clip.
If you return back to that intersection, if safe, I am pretty sure you will find some if not all of your brake pad there.
I don't disagree with your assumption, but I don't have enough hard data to move to a conclusion.
Glad you are safe/OK, and it is a good time to keep some brake pads and a spreader in the rear.
Else, good time to upgrade rear calipers to a fixed monoblock
