"He’s been dodging county vehicle inspections since last autumn. That timber truck shouldn't even have tags. He slipped that envelope between my seat cushions when I reached for his logbook."
I pressed my palm against the door glass from inside the cab. "My registration was in the glovebox, Lyle. You reached across my dashboard to pull it out.
Your boot marks are still scuffed along my floor mat where you kicked my heat box to get to it."" Keep your hands on that wheel, Arthur!" Vance shouted, wheeling toward my cab."
Deputy Vance," Miller barked, the sudden volume cutting like a whip crack across the shoulder. "Face front. Hands on the cruiser."
The authority was not an invitation. Trooper Calloway closed the remaining three feet, his left hand coming down hard and firm on Vance’s right shoulder, pivoting the deputy away from my truck. Vance resisted for half a heartbeat, his spine stiffening, his jaw clamped shut so hard the tendons stood out along his throat.
Then, with a dry, rattling breath that sounded like gravel grinding together, he leaned forward and slapped both palms onto the warm white hood of his patrol car. Calloway didn't hesitate. With practiced, mechanical precision, he reached around Vance’s right hip, unsnapped the deputy’s service Glock, pulled the weapon clear of the holster, and cleared the chamber with a single smooth pull of the slide.
The loose brass cartridge flipped into the ditch grass, followed immediately by the magazine, which Calloway dropped into his own cargo pocket." Vest pocket," Miller instructed, stepping into the narrow gap beside the fender. Miller reached down with his gloved fingers, caught the tab of the tactical zipper beneath Vance’s brass nameplate, and pulled it down.
The sound of the nylon teeth separating was loud against the idling diesel engines. Miller reached inside, his knuckles brushing against the dark Kevlar weave, and withdrew the thick bundle of twenty-dollar bills. They were folded down the center, bent into the exact shape of Vance’s thumb."
Count them," Jesse said from the road edge. "Start with the top leaf." Miller turned toward the headlights of his Charger, laying the bills across the flat aluminum surface of his citation binder.
He clicked on a heavy-duty penlight, angling the white beam directly across the green face of the top bill." Serial number ending in five-two-nine-Delta," Miller read aloud, his voice steady as a surveyor's line. Jesse glanced down at the carbon copy clipped to his scaling board.
"Confirmed. Athens Forestry petty voucher number four-eight-one, issued to Arthur Vance at sixteen-hundred hours for cistern maintenance." Miller shifted the first bill aside with his thumb.
"Second bill, ending in five-three-zero-Delta."" Confirmed," Jesse answered immediately. "Sequential run from the Athens First National branch."
Miller moved through five more bills, reading each serial aloud into the damp night air. Every single one matched the carbon log in Jesse's hand. Beside the hood, Vance didn't turn his head, but his neck was mottled with dark red blotches, his fingers curled into white-knuckled claws against the painted sheet metal of his cruiser."
That's forty bills total," Miller said, finishing the stack. "Eight hundred dollars in marked state-account funds."" Eight hundred?"
Vance snapped, his head jerking up despite Calloway’s hand on his shoulder. "That’s a lie! There was only five hundred in that envelope!
I counted twenty-five bills!" The silence that hit the shoulder was absolute. Even the crickets down in the culvert seemed to quit their rasping.
Vance had spoken before his brain could catch the trap, the words spilling out of his sheer outrage at being shorted or set up. He froze, his mouth hanging half-open, realizing what he had just surrendered into the open air and the active dash microphones of two state patrol units. Miller looked up from the cash, his expression as cold and unreadable as carved granite."