"Did you get the recording on your end, too?" Miller asked, the sound of rapid typing clattering in the background.
"I read the serial numbers of every bill into a sworn federal affidavit this morning," I said softly, watching Cole’s taillights flare as he braked to shift gears. "And the open mic on this line just caught him admitting it was an undocumented fine."
"We have it all, Walter," Miller said. "It's logged into the federal server. We're tracking his cruiser's GPS transponder now."
I lowered the phone and took a slow, deep breath of the cooling desert air. Cole's cruiser pulled out onto the asphalt, the tires kicking up a massive cloud of dust as he accelerated away, thinking he had won. I walked over to the shoulder and picked up my empty leather wallet, brushing the dirt from the creases. The money was gone, but the fear he wanted to leave behind hadn't stayed. He had just stolen federal bait, and the trap had already snapped shut.
CHAPTER 2: Cole Kept The Stolen Cash While His GPS Pinged An Abandoned Yard
I slid my empty wallet back into my jeans, the flat leather feeling like a missing tooth against my leg. The desert air was dropping twenty degrees an hour, stripping the day’s blistering heat from the asphalt and replacing it with a bone-deep chill. I climbed back into the cab of my Ford, wincing as my bad left knee popped loudly against the hinge of the heavy metal door.
"Walter, start your engine," Miller said, his voice clipped and metallic through the tiny earpiece I had kept hidden under my collar. "I need your alternator running to keep the phone battery charged. We are logging Cole’s GPS route on the federal server right now."
I twisted the ignition. The old 5. 0-liter V8 caught, coughing a cloud of blue exhaust into the wind before settling into a rough, rhythmic rumble that vibrated through the floorboards. I turned the headlights completely off, relying only on the pale glow of the moon reflecting off the alkaline dirt shoulder.
"Where is he going?" I asked, putting the truck into gear but keeping my heavy boot firmly pressed against the brake pedal.
"That’s the interesting part," Miller replied, the rapid clacking of his keyboard echoing over the secure line. "He isn't heading back to the county precinct in Ely to log his shift. He just took the gravel turnoff at Mile Marker 114. He’s heading north into the grid."
"There's nothing out there but an old state maintenance yard," I said, my grip tightening on the cracked steering wheel. "It’s been decommissioned for five years. Rusted snowplows and empty salt sheds."
"Exactly," Miller said, his tone sharpening. "He’s off his assigned patrol sector, moving in the dark, turning off his dashcam. This is what we suspected from the beginning. He’s not acting alone. If he just wanted to pocket your cash and drink it away, he’d go home. He is going to a drop point. Walter, I need you to follow him."
I released the brake. The Ford rolled forward, its tires crunching heavily over the loose gravel shoulder as I steered onto the highway, keeping my speed low and my lights blacked out. The total darkness of Route 50 swallowed my vehicle whole.
"You’re asking a seventy-two-year-old man in a rusted pickup to tail a marked police cruiser in the dead of night," I pointed out, my right hand trembling slightly as I rested it on the gearshift. The adrenaline from the traffic stop was still burning in my veins.
"I'm asking the man who spent thirty years tracking missing military ordnance across Europe to do what he does best," Miller corrected smoothly. "We have his audio confessing to the undocumented fine, and we have the GPS proving he left his route. But an administrative judge could look at that in court and say Cole was just a rogue deputy who panicked and acted alone. We need the network. We need to see who he gives that money to. Your thirty-two hundred dollars is the tracer."
I thought about those bills. I had spent eleven months under the hoods of tractors, combines, and beat-up ranch trucks, breathing diesel fumes and scraping my knuckles raw. Every hundred-dollar bill represented weeks of aching joints and skipped meals. It was meant to buy a piece of polished granite for Sarah. A permanent marker so the world would know she had existed, that she had been deeply loved. Cole hadn't just stolen cash; he had stolen my late wife's dignity. And he was about to hand it over to someone else in the dark.
"Give me the coordinates," I said, my voice hardening into a low rasp.
"Sending them to your dashboard display now," Miller said. "Do not engage, Walter. You get eyes on the transaction, you document the handoff, and you get out. We have a federal tactical team staging out of Carson City, but they are two hours away. If you get caught, I cannot pull you out in time."