From the open door of the patrol car, the cruiser’s radio emitted a sharp double squawk, the high-priority dispatch tone cutting through the dark.
"Unit Four, Unit Four, ten-twenty," the dispatcher’s voice crackled, tighter than before. "Sheriff Barnett is mobile from the substation. He advises he has lost your automatic location ping and is en route to County Road 14. Estimated arrival seven minutes. Advise status."
Hoyt moved fast. He reached through the rain, grabbed the handheld microphone from the dash clip, and keyed the talk button.
"Unit Four to dispatch," Hoyt said, his voice sickeningly smooth, the calm professional cadence of an officer managing a routine scene. "We have a ten-fifty involving an unidentified federal vehicle blocking the timber cut. Driver is non-compliant and refuses to show hands. Tell the Sheriff to approach with caution. We have him contained at Mile Marker Four."
He dropped the mic back onto the seat before the dispatcher could acknowledge. The click of the transmission ending was the sound of a trap snapping shut.
Tyrell stared at his partner as if seeing him through cracked glass. "You just told the Sheriff he's non-compliant. Barnett’s going to come over that ridge with his twelve-gauge racked."
"Barnett already knows what has to happen, you idiot," Hoyt snarled, turning on the younger man with venom. "Who do you think authorized the depot tag? Who do you think signed the property waiver on the impound lot? You think I kept Danny’s car under forty feet of water by myself? We did what had to be done to keep the county funded and the feds out of our accounts. Now take his service piece, cuff him back to that frame, and help me drag this case into the cruiser."
Tyrell didn't draw his cuffs. He stood frozen in the headlights, his eyes darting between Hoyt’s drawn gun and the tarnished badge bearing his brother's name.
"Tyrell," I said, keeping my voice low and hard, cutting through the rising panic in the boy's throat. "If you take my weapon, you become an accessory after the fact to capital murder. Look at the front bumper of Unit Four."
Tyrell’s flashlight swung toward the nose of their patrol cruiser. The white beam cut across the steel push-guard bolted to the radiator. Just above the lower mounting bracket, scraped deep into the black powder-coat, was a three-inch smear of metallic silver paint—the exact shade of Danny Vance’s submerged sedan.
Hoyt saw the flashlight stop. He saw the exact second Tyrell’s hand dropped to his side, letting the shears slip into the mud.
"You're done, Hoyt," Tyrell whispered.
Hoyt didn't argue. His face hardened into pure bone, and with a sudden, violent motion, his left hand reached down and snapped the thumb-break on the tactical holster strapped to his thigh. In the distant timber, the rising scream of Sheriff Barnett’s siren echoed against the granite ridge, and I knew that silence, procedure, or waiting for county justice would get us both killed before the next headlights crossed the ditch.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Hoyt thrashed against the cold radiator grille, spitting pine grit and blood from a split lip. "You’re dead, Cole. Both of you. Barnett isn't coming out here with a citation book. He’s got the county magistrate on his phone and two pump-guns in the rack. He’ll paint this whole turnout as an ambush."
"Shut your mouth, Hoyt," Tyrell whispered, his voice trembling with a rage that had finally burned through twenty years of small-town obedience. He ratcheted the double-locking cuffs until the ratchets clicked three times, binding Hoyt’s left wrist to the heavy welded upright of Unit Four’s brush guard. "You told me Danny died running. You let my mother clean out his bedroom while you were driving around with his blood on your bumper."
"Check his console," I instructed, wiping rain from my forehead with my sleeve. "The depot tag on my case proved Hoyt checked out the file, but Barnett wouldn't leave a murder to chance. There’s a second log. There has to be an authorization manifest for the quarry tow."
Tyrell scrambled through the driver’s door of the idling patrol car, his soaked boots tracking clay across the floor mats. He ripped open the steel ticket box bolted between the bucket seats, scattering citation pads and summons receipts across the dash. From beneath the bottom tray, he pulled a stiff manila folder secured with a heavy red rubber band—the county's confidential internal-transfer log, stamped with the Harland County Sheriff's seal.