"I have jurisdiction anywhere a felony occurs in my presence," I replied. "And you just committed aggravated assault on a federal officer."
He stared at me for three long, agonizing seconds, his pupils dilated against the glare of his own high beams. The woods around us were entirely silent except for the low rumble of his rusted muffler and the dry wind dragging through the top of the ponderosa pines.
Then his hand did something I didn't anticipate. He didn't drop the gun, and he didn't holster it. He suddenly swept the barrel down, caught the heavy frame with both hands, and brought the butt down hard against the exterior door handle of my station wagon.
The plastic handle cracked with a sharp, sickening snap, the linkage inside the door panel popping loose and dropping down into the hollow hollow of the steel frame.
Before I could clear my holster, Mercer spun on the gravel, lunged into the driver's seat of the unmarked cruiser, and slammed the door. The starter motor whined once, the tires threw a shower of sharp granite against my headlights, and the sedan backed blindly into the secondary trail, its red auxiliary light spinning frantically against the dark branches as it vanished toward the ridge.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
She didn't argue or freeze. Her fingers were shaking, but she grabbed her dropped backpack by its nylon strap, swung around the front bumper, and slid across the passenger seat. She pulled the lock down with a sharp mechanical thud. Through the windshield, her eyes remained fixed on me, wide and watchful, the way kids look when the adults around them stop pretending the world has guardrails.
I turned back to the driver's door. Mercer's strike had sheared the pot-metal pivot clean off the interior latch assembly. The exterior plastic lever hung by a single retaining clip, exposing the inner cavity where the threaded rod had dropped into the dead space beneath the window channel. I slid my pocket knife from my trousers, wedged the flat blade beneath the remaining linkage, and pried upward until the catch released with a metallic snap.
I leaned inside, touched the transponder bracket behind the rearview mirror, and broke the silent tamper seal.
The console display didn't offer a polite dispatch chime. A direct line to the regional command desk in Spokane activated with three dry, electronic pulses.
"Task Force Seven, Spokane Command," a voice came through the hands-free speaker, clear and dry, completely separated from the cold dark outside my window. "Identify."
"Brooks. Badge 4108," I said, keeping my eyes scanning the ridge line where Mercer's dust was still settling. "I have a Priority Four event on the Colville timber spur, two miles west of the county line. Subject is operating an uncataloged black-and-white Crown Victoria with jury-rigged auxiliary lighting. No agency numbers. Armed with an older-model wheel gun, possibly a Smith or Ruger service piece. He just cracked my outer door latch and cleared out heading north toward the old haul road."
The line stayed quiet for two seconds while the dispatcher keyed the identifier. "Marshal Brooks, your vehicle tracking ping has been live for four minutes. We logged your visor telemetry. Stand by for Duty Supervisor Miller."
A click cut the line, replaced immediately by the gravelly voice of Mark Miller, the assistant special agent in charge who had signed my leave papers forty-eight hours ago.
"David," Miller said without preamble. "Your transponder flagged an assault code. Are you intact?"
"I'm intact. Lily is in the cab. Unharmed," I said. "The driver called himself Mercer. Wore an altered county wool-blend shirt with a private security badge patch sewn over an old deputy thread line. He had a dummy camera shell strapped to his chest. When I flashed my credentials into the lens, he didn't de-escalate. He saw the star, thumbed back a hammer, and tried to herd us into the drainage culvert before he realized the dash unit was recording."
"Mercer," Miller repeated slowly. Paper rustled against a desk mic on the Spokane end. "Give me thirty seconds. Colville dispatch is running local auxiliary rosters now."
I didn't wait in the cab. I reached under the driver's seat, unlocked the steel lockbox bolted to the floorboard, and pulled out my service weapon. I checked the chamber, seated the magazine firmly, and stepped back out onto the gravel shoulder. The mountain air was dropping toward freezing, the wind carrying the sharp, bitter scent of damp pine needles and wet clay.
I walked five paces down into the ditch where Lily had pointed earlier.
The culvert was a corrugated steel cylinder, four feet across, running beneath the roadbed to carry the autumn runoff into the canyon creek. Stretched across the mouth of the pipe was a heavy galvanized chain, secured with a commercial grade brass padlock. It wasn't county property. The lock body was clean, free of road grime, stamped with the mark of a private gravel outfit that had gone bankrupt three years ago.
Caught on the lower link of that chain, fluttering in the cold draft pulling through the pipe, was a strip of fluorescent plastic.
I knelt, keeping my boots planted on the solid slope, and pulled the scrap free. It wasn't trash. It was an adhesive state vehicle inspection decal, sliced off a windshield with a razor blade. The registration digits were partially visible under the clear coat: a state timber transport permit registered to Stevens County, expired six days ago.
Mercer hadn't chosen this dead-end spur because he was lost or running an amateur shakedown. He had chosen it because the culvert was blocked, the trail was blocked, and anyone he pushed off the asphalt was trapped against the rock face with nowhere to turn around.
"David," Miller's voice crackled through the wagon's open door.