"Two minutes," he muttered to himself.
My toe hooked the edge of the card. I dragged it backward an inch at a time through the silt, feeling the plastic drag against the gravel. The edge caught on a wet root. I pressed down hard, digging the rubber tread into the mud, and snapped the root free.
The card slid directly against the heel of my left boot.
Reaching down behind my back with my cuffed hands, I bent my spine double, my fingers sinking into the freezing muck. My fingernails scraped against the plastic edge. I caught the corner, worked my thumb up the slick laminate, and felt the raised square of duct tape on the reverse side.
I ripped the tape away against the sharp edge of the guardrail cable.
The small, flat universal key dropped into the palm of my right hand.
Across the road, the air brakes on the second hauler let out an enormous, deafening hiss as the man in bibs dropped the mechanical landing gear into the roadway. The iron legs struck the asphalt with a dull, ringing shock that vibrated straight through the bridge foundations.
Garrett turned his head toward the sound. "Drop the second leg! Hurry it up! I hear the escort sirens crossing the lower culvert!"
In the dark behind the cruiser’s quarter panel, I slipped the key into the small keyway of the left cuff. The barrel stuck on grit. I ground the steel post with my thumb, forcing the dirt out, and twisted it hard to the left.
The ratchet released with a faint, greasy click.
I kept my left hand behind my back, holding the open cuff loosely against my wrist so the chain wouldn't rattle. I slid the key into the right mechanism and turned it. Both cuffs swung free in my fingers.
Ahead on the winding mountain road, the first sweep of blue and white emergency strobes flashed through the wet pine canopy. The convoy had reached the upper grade.
I didn't lunge for Garrett. He was armed, braced, and three feet from a running patrol car.
Instead, I stayed low in the ditch, my boots silent in the wet leaves, moving directly toward the open rear window of his cruiser. The key to stopping the convoy wasn't my sidearm or Garrett's badge.
It was the unencrypted relay box still humming on his console, and the microphone hanging from the plastic clip on the dashboard.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I kept my head below the door sill. The rear window was cracked three inches to vent the interior heat. I reached through the gap, my fingertips grazing the rubberized cable of the passenger-side cage divider. Inside, the interior speaker buzzed with low-frequency squelch.
Across the road, the man in the work bibs finished cranking the landing gear of the second hauler down into the aggregate. The iron pad ground against the asphalt with a dull shudder. He stood up, wiping grease across his canvas thigh, and turned toward the front of the bridge.
"Both sets down, Garrett," he shouted over the wind. "Tires are off the deck. The center arch is plugged solid. Even if the escort slams their crash bumpers into the rear axles, they'll just buckle their own radiators."
Garrett didn't move from his position by the cruiser's right front fender. His attention remained fixed on the lower switchbacks below the gorge, where the pulsing flashes of blue light were growing brighter through the bare maple branches.
"Get your truck off the apron," Garrett commanded, not looking back. "Take the maintenance trail behind the aggregate silos. If the trailing gun truck tries to back out, drop the timber gate at the lower cattle guard. Vance wants the limousines penned inside the cut before the state post realizes the transponder feed is dead."
The man in bibs turned and broke into a heavy jog toward the western tree line, disappearing into the black shadows of the quarry access road.
I waited until the sound of his boots faded behind the rush of the river. Then I slid my left arm fully through the window gap, reaching down behind the heavy mesh screen.
My service weapon was in the locking console box, but the glove compartment door was hanging open two inches, held only by an unlatched catch. Inside lay the black leather folder Garrett had tossed aside. My badge was pinned to the front, but what mattered was the clip-bound dispatch ledger tucked behind the identification card.
My hand stretched across the vinyl seat back, my ribs pressing painfully against the lower window frame. My fingernails caught the corner of the leather folder. I dragged it back toward the divider mesh, centimeter by centimeter, until the stiff cover cleared the metal upright.