Dennis shoved me down the fluorescent corridor toward the holding cell, his heavy boots squeaking against the polished floor wax. Beside me, through the wire-reinforced windows of the administration wing, I could see the flashing blue lights of the sheriff's cruisers rolling through the front security checkpoint.
I stopped pulling against the cuffs. My wrists throbbed where the steel had cut the skin, and my throat tasted like copper, but the panic in my stomach had hardened into cold, absolute focus.
Carl thought the camera loop and the stolen PIN had sealed the door shut. He thought sixty seconds in the dark with a printed badge would buy his silence and pay off his auditor friend. But the Zebra scanner was still sitting on that rolling desk, locked on Bay 7, holding the only record on the entire North Basin property that proved the shift lead had been moving narcotics into the trunk of a corporate auditor's car before my shift had even started.
If Dennis locked me in the county holding tank before I could get those numbers into the state police record, Carl would walk back to that dock, hit the scanner's purge key, and erase the only proof keeping me out of a ten-year cell.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Carl was not with them.
"Where is Carl?" I called through the intercom slot. "Mr. Lowe, where did Carl go?"
Dennis rapped his knuckle on the steel table. "Shut your mouth, Vance. You're not running this room."
Lowe stepped inside, setting the evidence pouch on the desk. The white powder settled under the glare, my printed name facing upward. Lowe looked hollow-eyed; a schedule-two breach triggered an automatic state pharmacy board inquiry by morning, and his name was on the security log.
"Miller is securing the dock," Lowe said, pulling a blue carbon form from his clipboard. "He's running the shift tally and locking down the transfer gates until morning."
"He's not securing anything," I said, leaning forward against the chain. "He's at the Bay 7 rolling desk. He's standing over my Zebra scanner right now, trying to wipe the active buffer."
Deputy Harris uncapped his pen. "Son, you're facing a class-B felony. Save the excuses for the magistrate on Monday. Spinning stories about your lead won't keep you out of lockup tonight."
"It isn't a story," I said, forcing my voice dead level. "Officer Dennis felt me twist back when we left the dock. I didn't reach for a weapon. I hit the trigger on the Zebra handheld. Mr. Lowe, what happens when a dock scanner reads an unregistered barcode?"
Lowe's hand paused over his clipboard. "The unit flags an uncommitted mismatch and dumps the packet into the terminal's cache."
"And to clear it," I pressed, "you have to enter a supervisor PIN on the screen or drop the unit into the charging cradle. If Carl pulls the battery, the internal capacitor holds that record for four minutes before the RAM dumps. That's how our terminals work."
Lowe didn't answer right away. He slid the blue carbon sheet aside and pushed a yellow document across the table toward my cuffed hands: VOLUNTARY RESIGNATION AND PROPERTY SETTLEMENT.
"Listen, Jesse," Lowe said quietly. "You’ve worked eighty-seven days without a disciplinary note. Corporate authorizes a diversion agreement for temp staff on inventory discrepancies. Sign this voluntary separation, forfeit your accrued pay, and the company logs an unverified loss without filing criminal charges. Dennis takes off the cuffs, and you walk out clean. No felony record."
The exit was right there. I only had to sign my initials, and within twenty minutes I would be on the bus home to South Fourth.
Then the digital clock on the wall clicked to 23:49.
Twelve hours and eleven minutes stood between me and the noon deadline for the union group health enrollment.
"If I sign this," I said, looking straight at Lowe, "my employment terminates at eleven-fifty tonight."
"That's standard procedure," Lowe said. "Effective immediately upon signature."
"My mother is fifty-eight," I told him. "She needs dialysis three mornings a week to stay alive. State aid dropped her when my temp pay exceeded the income cap. The only reason she has a chair next week is the union coverage I was scheduled to sign at nine tomorrow morning."
Lowe looked down at the yellow paper, his mouth setting into a hard line.
"If I sign, I walk out that gate," I said, my knuckles white against the iron ring. "But her insurance terminates before sunrise. She can't buy private coverage with eighty dollars in checking. If a dialysis patient misses three treatments, fluid floods the lungs and her heart gives out."
"Jesse," Lowe said softly, "if you go to county jail tonight, you're not signing any union card tomorrow either. The agency fires you automatically for failure to report. You lose the coverage either way. At least with this, you stay out of state prison."
"Take the paper back," I said. "I am not signing away her life to protect Carl Miller."
Dennis shook his head. "Kid's throwing his life away."
"Deputy Harris," I said, turning away from Dennis, "look at the evidence pouch on that desk. Peel back the bottom corner of Carl's thermal label."
Harris frowned, stepped forward, and used his thumbnail to lift the adhesive edge. "Requisition 884-B. Audit clearance stamp."