“Crazy afternoon, Miller,” Thorne said, his voice smooth, carrying that dangerous, quiet tone corporate fixers use when they’re evaluating a threat.
“Yeah. The kid barely had a pulse, Greg.”
“Tragic. Truly.” Thorne leaned against the counter, crossing his arms. “The media is going to have a field day with this. 'Billionaire's Car Stolen by Drifter, Child Found Inside.' Mr. Vance is extremely distressed. He’s requested that we secure all digital records of the lot to hand over to our private legal team before the city police come knocking with warrants.”
“Our legal team?” I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral.
“Yes. Mr. Vance wants to ensure the narrative is... managed. No misunderstandings about how his vehicle ended up in that spot. I need you to purge the local gate logs for the last two hours. We don’t want some rookie cop leaking incomplete data to the press.”
He was testing me. He was standing in my booth, openly asking me to destroy evidence in an attempted homicide investigation.
“Sure thing, Greg,” I said without missing a beat. “I’ll wipe the local cache. Let the lawyers handle it.”
Thorne smiled, a thin, lifeless expression. “Good man, David. I know you’ve got Maya’s tuition coming up in the fall. Mr. Vance appreciates loyalty. There might be a generous bonus in your next cycle for handling this quietly.”
He gave my shoulder a firm squeeze and walked out.
The moment the door closed, my hands started shaking. I pulled a encrypted flash drive from my pocket, plugged it into the terminal, and downloaded the raw gate logs, securing them with a password. Then I followed his orders and wiped the local cache. Let him think I was a good little soldier.
I checked my watch. 2:45 PM. The police would have towed the SUV to the county impound lot by now. If that blue bag the drifter mentioned was still inside, I had to get to it before Vance’s expensive lawyers petitioned for the release of the vehicle.
I left my uniform shirt in the locker room, threw on a plain gray t-shirt, and drove my personal truck across town. I still had friends at the county precinct. When I pulled up to the impound gates, I spotted Detective Larson smoking near a chain-link fence. We had worked patrol together fifteen years ago.
“Davey,” Larson grunted, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Heard you were the hero of the hour at the mall. Kid's stable at mercy general. Barely.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said, keeping my tone casual. “Listen, Lars, in all the chaos, I dropped my plaza master-key ring in the back seat of Vance's SUV when I was pulling the kid out. Thorne will have my badge if I lose it. You mind if I just grab it before it gets processed?”
Larson waved a hand toward the secure bays. “Go quick. Crime scene tech is on his coffee break. Don't touch anything else.”
I slipped into the massive, echoing garage. The black SUV sat in the center of bay three, smelling strongly of melted plastic and stale sweat. The broken glass from the passenger window was scattered across the floor mats. I knelt beside the open door and reached under the driver's seat, my fingers brushing against dirty carpeting.
Nothing.