"Tell them the line dropped on an equipment check and wipe the queue," Harlan snarled, taking three fast, predatory strides back toward the corridor door.
"They aren't asking for an equipment check," Mara whispered, her words crackling over the wire. "The flag says an emergency priority credential was punched into the hardline at five-eighteen PM. Agent Vance's PIN. The federal switchboard logged an abrupt carrier disconnect while the circuit was active. Sheriff... the automated protocol already tripped. When a field auditor's override line drops during an open incident transmission, the regional desk doesn't wait for a supervisor's teletype. The computer system automatically routes a distress alert to the nearest state police barracks."
Harlan stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. His broad shoulders hitched upward as he drew in a slow, jagged breath. For the first time since he had fed my badge into the shredder, the cold, bureaucratic certainty on his face cracked open.
Before he could key the radio again, the heavy overhead rolling door at the far end of the sally port rattled violently. The electric motor groaned, dragging the ribbed steel slats upward in their rusted wall tracks. Cold mountain air swept down the concrete ramp, carrying the harsh smell of unburned diesel and damp gravel into the corridor.
A tall, lean man in grease-stained canvas overalls stepped through the gap beneath the rising door, ducking his head under the yellow rubber weatherstrip. It was Pete, the wrecker operator. He was wiping motor oil from his palms with a red cotton rag, his brow furrowed beneath the brim of a frayed county road commission cap.
"Harlan," Pete called out, his boots crunching on the grit as he stepped into the light of the wire-caged bulbs. "We got a problem with the switchback run."
Harlan spun around, his hand dropping instinctively toward his holster before he caught himself. "Did you hook the sedan or not, Pete?"
"The sedan is sitting on the winch deck, hooked and chained," Pete said, stopping five feet short of the evidence cage. He glanced sideways through the chain-link mesh, his pale eyes widening as they took in my presence, the blood dripping from my scraped knuckles, and the six wooden crates stacked behind me on the pallets. He looked back at Harlan, his jaw slackening. "What the hell is going on in here, Sheriff? Who is she?"
"She's an unauthorized trespasser who caused a disturbance during an impound inventory," Harlan said, his voice flat, trying to reassemble his authority like an iron shield. "Get back in the cab, haul that car up past the ridge, and drop it off the shoulder like we planned. The flatbed is already on county time."
Pete didn't move. He lowered the red rag, his gaze darting between Harlan's unbuttoned jacket and the heavy iron gate. "I can't run that flatbed up to Devil's Gorge, Harlan. I just stepped out of the rig to drop the safety hooks, and two marked State Police cruisers blew past the junction on Highway 9. They didn't have their sirens on, but they were running code, eighty miles an hour toward the county cut-off. They turned off their roof bars as soon as they hit the timberline."
"They're running a speed trap on the lower pass," Harlan lied, but his voice lacked conviction, the words coming out too fast.
"State troopers don't run silent speed traps on an unplowed mountain pass twenty minutes before dark," Pete retorted, backing up half a step toward the open bay. "And that ain't all. There's a thirty-foot refrigerated freight truck sitting at the bottom of our approach lane right now. Texas commercial plates. The driver is sitting on his air brakes, flashing his high beams three times every thirty seconds. That’s the private carrier Albright told you was coming. If those troopers are pulling into the yard while an unmanifested interstate rig is idling behind my wrecker, I'm caught in the middle of a federal perimeter."
"Pete," I called out, stepping closer to the mesh and keeping my voice calm, deliberate, and clear.
Pete flinched, looking at me through the wire.
"My name is Claire Vance," I said, holding the folded sheets of paper up against the chain link where the overhead bulb illuminated the black type and the purple ink. "I am a Special Auditor with the Department of Justice. The car hooked to the back of your wrecker belongs to the federal motor pool out of Denver. Sheriff Harlan didn't call you to clean up a collision. He called you to stage a fatal wreck because the man who runs the regional office, Marcus Albright, is using this station to steal sixty million dollars in seized bearer bonds."
"Shut your mouth, Vance!" Harlan roared, drawing his wooden baton and striking the chain-link gate with all his strength. The iron wire shrieked under the blow, the vibration stinging my fingers where they rested against the mesh, but I didn't step back.