"Jordan, shut your mouth," Artie said, his voice flat and hard. "Where are you calling from?"
"Behind the salt dome," I said. "Artie, I have the signed state manifest—"
"Mercer called me twenty minutes ago," Artie cut in coldly. "He found the gate swinging wide and the petty cash drawer emptied out. Three hundred dollars is missing, Jordan. He reported you fleeing down Route Nine before he managed to contain you."
"That's a lie! He ambushed me the second he entered the yard!"
"It doesn't matter what you say happened in the weeds," Artie replied. "Dale Mercer is the commissioner’s nephew. Alan has thirty years of township commendations. You’re nineteen, your mother faces a tax seizure, and you’re on an impound lot outside your shift. If you stay on that blacktop with whatever paper you picked up, Alan charges you with felony burglary and evidence destruction before dawn."
"Artie, he's covering up a fatal hit-and-run," I breathed, fingers digging into the clipboard until the metal bent.
"You don't know what you saw," Artie whispered. "Drop the clipboard on the desk, walk out the back culvert, and go home. If you open your mouth to the troopers, you won't make it to a courtroom, Jordan. Alan’s cruiser dashcam already has you logged as an intruder."
The call clicked dead, leaving only the hum of the sodium lights overhead. Across the blacktop, the cruiser door slammed shut. Mercer stepped onto the gravel, pocketing the charred black box harness. He grabbed an iron tire iron from his trunk and turned directly toward the mower shed, walking with the heavy, unhurried stride of a man heading to finish a problem he had already written into the ledger.
Standing in the shadow of the salt dome with the pink manifest in my hand and the video saved to my phone, the last illusion of safety vanished. The township chain of command wasn't broken; it was operating as designed to crush me. Waiting for the morning shift would deliver me straight into handcuffs, and walking away would seal my guilt forever. If I wanted to survive the night, I had to carry the proof out of the yard myself before Mercer found the broken shed.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Mercer reversed the cruiser, blocking the cattle guard and angling his roof spotlight across the driveway toward the shack. The glaring beam sliced the blacktop in half. Breaking for the front meant stepping into eighty thousand candlepower with Mercer sitting behind a dash-mounted twelve-gauge shotgun.
My only path lay in the blind shadow behind Bay Four. While Mercer adjusted the beam, I crawled along the drainage ditch behind the salt dome. The damp clover and gravel gouged my elbows, but the tin walls hid me from the cruiser's mirrors. Reaching Bay Four’s rear gate, I found the hinges hanging by two bent bolts. I pried the corrugated panel back just enough to slip inside.
The crumpled silver Ford F-150 loomed above me, smelling of scorched transmission fluid and deployed airbag powder. I scrambled for the tailgate. The open steel toolbox sat where Mercer had left it under the sodium lamps, and beside a socket set lay the thick manila envelope. My fingers closed around the heavy paper. The two strips of hardware tape holding the slashed red evidence seal were still tacky.
Inside the envelope, my thumb struck a folded piece of yellow notebook paper wrapped around the micro-SD card's jewel case. Pulling it out into the dim light, my breath caught. Attached to the plastic case was a yellow note in Mercer’s tight cursive: Dale—I pulled the chip before state triage logged it. The impact video is on here. Keep your mouth shut until the grand jury cutoff on the twelfth, and don't touch the truck.
It was written proof of a police cover-up shielding his son. Beneath the note lay a duplicate collision triage sheet initialed by State Detective Miller: Driver-side steering wheel swab collected; partial blood transfer logged for DNA match. Mercer had stolen the packet so the prosecutor would never see the driver's biological match.
A siren wailed in the distance, a rising howl cutting across the ridges. Township backup was hitting the bypass. Mercer was standing by his cruiser at the front gate, pacing with his service weapon drawn. If he searched Bay Four and found the envelope gone, he wouldn't bother with an arrest; he would claim he encountered an armed burglar, and Artie Vance’s story about missing petty cash would provide the motive.
I pulled my phone from my pocket. The screen lit with one bar of roaming service. The weak data connection couldn't upload the video file to the county server—the progress bar sat frozen at four percent. But at the bottom of the pink Form 104-B in my fist was Trooper Bradley’s direct cell extension, scrawled in blue ballpoint when he dropped the truck off at five-fifteen.
I dialed and pressed the phone to my ear beneath the F-150’s rear wheel well. The line clicked open on the third ring.