My hands shook as I dropped to my knees on the gravel, leaning my head under the steering column to trace the secondary wiring loom. Every modern pursuit cruiser delivered to Mercer County under the state highway safety grant carried a redundant black-box crash recorder—a sealed, cast-aluminum housing bolted directly to the transmission tunnel beneath the heavy steel plate of the center console. The road division never touched them; they were wired into the supplemental restraint harness and could only be queried through a specialized proprietary diagnostic port tucked behind the passenger kick-panel.
I worked the four hex screws out of the floorplate using the small folding bit set from my pocket knife. The steel was cold enough to numb my fingertips. When the third screw gave way, the panel lifted back with a dull groan of stressed sheet metal.
The auxiliary module was still there. Its heavy orange housing was caked in road grit, but the factory tamper-seal remained intact across the serial tag: Unit 07 Crash Event Recorder—State Grant Asset 8814.
I pulled my cell phone from my jacket, plugged the universal diagnostic adapter cable into the module’s serial slot, and tapped the data-transfer utility. The screen flashed blue, the processor cycling through eighty seconds of handshake protocols before the progress bar began to crawl across the display.
A set of headlights swept across the high tin roof of the maintenance shed.
I froze, pressing my back flat against the passenger seat as the glare washed over the frost-crusted rear window of Unit Seven. Through the side mirror, I watched a white county pickup truck rumble through the main yard gate, its tires grinding slow and deliberate over the crushed limestone. The driver didn't turn on his rooftop work beacon. The truck coasted to a halt thirty yards away, near the oil reclamation drums, its engine idling with the unmistakable, uneven clatter of Sergeant Briggs’s personal diesel rig.
The driver’s door swung open. A man stepped out into the chilly dusk, but it wasn't Frank Briggs.
It was Marcus Cole.
He was twenty-two, wearing an oversized field jacket with the collar turned up against the breeze, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked smaller without his patrol cap, his pale shoulders hunched as he scanned the rows of wrecked sedans. In his right hand, half-concealed beneath the fabric of his sleeve, he carried a long-handled iron wrecking bar from the station’s emergency tool locker.
"Vance?" Marcus called out, his voice thin and cracking against the wind. "Ethan, if you’re in here, don't be stupid. Frank’s on his way back from the county attorney’s office right now. The state warrants are being signed for the house."
I stayed motionless on the cruiser’s floorboards, my phone pressed against my chest. The screen was still glowing faint amber: 68% transferred.
Marcus took four hesitant steps toward Unit Seven, the steel pry-bar dragging lightly through the gravel with a dry, rhythmic hiss. "They found the girl’s car in the creek bed, Ethan. Her family’s at the hospital in Clarksburg. Frank says if you take the plea on the reckless discharge log, the union attorney will get it knocked down to an off-duty vehicular incident. Two years minimum at the camp. That’s what he told my uncle."
My jaw locked so tight my molars ached. Marcus wasn't a monster; he was a terrified boy who had driven a marked patrol unit through a guardrail while half-blind on bourbon, and his family’s county connections were currently wrapping an innocent man’s life around the steering wheel to keep Marcus out of a state penitentiary cell.
"Marcus," I said quietly, remaining seated inside the dark cabin but letting my voice carry through the cracked vent window.
He jumped, his boots skidding in the gravel as he swung the iron bar up toward his chest. "Ethan? Where are you?"