CHAPTER 1: The Seal Broken In The Rain
Deputy Hoyt Miller jammed his flashlight into my collarbone, driving my shoulder back against the wet trunk lid of my sedan before I could reach inside my windbreaker for my badge wallet. The cold aluminum of the heavy Maglite bruised through my wool blend, and the click of his partner’s unholstered Glock told me the empty stretch of County Road 14 had already stopped being a routine traffic stop. I could not run, not with my left wrist zip-tied to the sedan’s rain gutter and the Department of Justice transport manifests locked under the spare-tire well.
"Keep your hands on the paint, fed," Hoyt muttered, his breath smelling of stale gas-station coffee and chew. He pulled my credentials from my breast pocket, barely glanced at the laminated Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General seal, and tossed the leather folio into the ditch weeds like junk mail. "Down here, county authority supersedes foreign plates until Sheriff Barnett says otherwise. And Barnett didn't clear any suits driving through our timber roads at midnight."
His younger partner, Deputy Tyrell, held a yellow crowbar from their cruiser’s tool tray. Tyrell was sweating despite the biting October drizzle, his eyes shifting nervously toward the dark tree line where pine boughs shuddered in the wind. The blue strobes from their patrol car threw violent, rhythmic pulses across the muddy shoulder, painting the gravel red and cold indigo.
"You don't want to break that latch, Deputy," I said, keeping my voice flat and even, the training taking over where adrenaline wanted to spike. "That case is government property under an active chain of custody. You crack that seal without a federal warrant, and you’re turning a misdemeanor stop into a felony obstruction charge before your shift ends."
Hoyt didn't answer with words. He wedged the hardened steel tip of the pry bar beneath the reinforced hasp of the matte-black Pelican case sitting in my open trunk. With a brutal downward heave of his boots against the bumper, the steel screeched against reinforced polymer, shearing the brass security lock with a sound like a small-caliber gunshot. The heavy pressure latches popped open, echoing down the empty valley.
Hoyt grinned, expecting the bricked cash or seized narcotics their anonymous informant had tipped them to hijack. He reached into the waterproof seal and ripped open the heavy charcoal foam.
Then the grin died.
Lying in the center cutout of the case was no contraband. Resting on the gray velvet evidence liner was a tarnished seven-point silver star: Harland County Sheriff's Office Badge 114, bearing the name D. Vance carved across the banner. Beside it lay a waterlogged service weapon in a sealed plastic sleeve and a cracked patrol-car black box tagged with a handwritten local impound label.
Tyrell took two stumbled steps backward, his boot slipping on the wet gravel, the crowbar clattering from his fingers into the ditch. "Hoyt... that's Danny’s shield. That's my brother's shield. You told me Danny took off for Florida with the impound cash."
Hoyt’s hand hovered above the badge, trembling violently under the blinding white spotlight of the cruiser. He didn't look at Tyrell. He slowly turned his head toward me, the arrogance in his jaw curdling into something far colder, something desperate and trapped.
"Where did you pull this from, Agent Cole?" Hoyt asked, his voice dropping below the engine idle, stripped of all local swagger.
"From the bottom of the old quarry runoff at Mile Marker Nine," I said, staring directly into his pale eyes. "Two hours ago. And the green security tag your partner just snapped off the handle wasn't mine. It was signed out from your county depot at six o’clock this evening."
I watched his knuckles go white on his duty belt. The rain pattered across the open case, beading on the tarnished metal of the shield that Hoyt had personally signed out as abandoned property on county paperwork six weeks ago. The dispatcher’s radio crackled from the cruiser’s open door, a distant female voice asking for their ten-twenty, but neither man reached for the handset. They both knew the voice wasn't an ordinary check-in; it was a timer.
Hoyt didn't call dispatch. Instead, he reached through the open window of his patrol car, grabbed the dash-cam mounting bracket, and twisted the lens hard toward the driver's floorboard until the plastic housing cracked. When he drew his service pistol and racked the slide, the cold iron pointed straight at the lock between my wrists.
CHAPTER 2: Hoyt Leveled His Duty Weapon While Tyrell Backed Into The Rain