The search bar on the terminal displayed a single open query: Surplus military uniforms Savannah online purchase.
Below that query was an email draft addressed to an address ending in dixoncountyga. gov, time-stamped 3:40 PM—more than an hour before I had even crossed the county line. The subject line read: Property forfeiture auction backlog – unclaimed vehicles.
Hollis wasn't running an aggressive traffic stop. He was sourcing inventory.
Before I could memorize the recipient's full user handle, Hollis spun around, catching me near the cruiser's quarter panel.
"Get away from my unit!" he roared, lunging across the gravel. He shoved his left forearm across my collarbone, pinning me against the cruiser's hot hood. His free hand ripped the glove box release inside my sedan, dumping its contents onto the passenger floorboards.
He tore through the papers until his fingers hit my dark green vinyl folder. He snatched my military active-duty identification card—the tamper-resistant Common Access Card with the Department of Defense microchip and the rank of Major clearly stamped in raised print beneath my photograph.
Beside it lay my official leave authorization form, countersigned by the garrison commander at Fort Stewart, authorizing seventy-two hours of emergency bereavement leave for the burial of Command Sergeant Major Vance.
I watched Hollis's eyes scan the gold oak leaf printed on the laminated plastic. I watched the blood drain from his cheeks.
The bluster died in his throat. The smug county-king arrogance that had carried him out of his patrol car dissolved into absolute, hollow panic. A deputy sheriff who tears a civilian's coat on an isolated shoulder might weather an internal affairs complaint with a written reprimand. A deputy who holds shears to an active-duty Army major with an open military police line on his dash faces federal felony deprivation of rights under color of law, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and an armed military provost marshal escort to federal court.
He knew what was in his hands.
And that was the exact second Brett Hollis became truly dangerous.
Instead of lowering his hands, instead of offering an apology or handing back my credentials, Hollis slipped the military ID card and my leave orders into his own tactical vest pocket. He zipped the pocket shut with a sharp, ragged pull.
He kicked the remaining maintenance receipts and insurance cards under my car's passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and turned toward the tow driver, who was unspooling the steel winch cable behind my rear bumper.
"No valid registration in the cabin," Hollis shouted over the whine of the wrecker's hydraulic winch. "No driver's license recovered. The vehicle has no legal claimant on scene."
"Deputy," I said, my voice dropping lower, cold and steady as iron. "You just committed felony evidence tampering on an active military record."
Hollis stepped toward me until the brim of his campaign hat grazed my forehead. His hand rested openly on the grip of his Glock now, the safety strap unbuttoned.
"You don't have an ID, mister," Hollis whispered, his breath shallow, his pupils dilated with desperation. "You don't have orders. You don't have a car. And if you open that mouth again before the state route junction, you won't have a father's flag to carry home."
Behind him, the heavy steel J-hooks slammed into the front control arms of my sedan, the metal screeching as the hydraulic bed began to tilt. The tires dragged against the gravel, gouging two deep trenches into the Georgia dirt, while my father's service cap tumbled off the rear deck and jammed against the rear glass.
Hollis reached through my open driver's window, grabbed my phone from the mount, and dropped it into his vest pocket along with my credentials.
I stood alone on the dark shoulder, seventy miles from base, with sixty tons of county machinery erasing my existence from the county manifest. Waiting was done. Compliance had failed. The only thing left was to follow that flatbed to the ground where Hollis planned to bury the proof.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Fourteen years of field service teaches a man how to measure terrain under pressure. The asphalt shoulder ended at the bridge over Mill Creek, narrowing into a choke point where the county contract yard occupied an acre of packed clay behind ten feet of rusted hurricane fence. Through the open gate, the flatbed sat idling on the gravel apron, its hydraulic bed still tilted at a thirty-degree angle with my sedan chained to the steel rails. Hollis’s cruiser was parked diagonally across the bay entrance, engine running, halogen spotlight trained directly on the office door.
I didn’t approach from the illuminated driveway. I skirted the drainage swale behind a row of rusted county dump trucks, keeping the diesel exhaust of the flatbed between my silhouette and the patrol unit’s mirrors.