I didn't run for the ditch. A sixty-year-old mechanic doesn't outrun a forty-year-old patrolman on open gravel.
Instead, I lunged through the blinding gray fog straight into the open driver's door of my cab.
My boot cleared the sill. I slammed the heavy steel door shut and jammed the interior manual slide-bolt into the door frame—a reinforced deadbolt I had welded onto the cab floor after my tools were hit in an unlit yard three years ago.
Miller’s shoulder hit the outside door panel a half-second later with the sound of a sledgehammer striking sheet metal.
"Open the door!" Miller screamed, his service weapon hammering against the laminated safety glass of the driver's window. "Open the damn door, Mercer! I will fire through this glass! Open it now!"
The safety glass crazed into a thousand spider-web fractures, but the heavy laminate film held.
I didn't answer him. My eyes were locked entirely on the lower dash bracket.
The modified five-inch screen was pulsing bright amber. The primary OBD cable Miller had ripped out hung dead in the footwell, but the internal secondary loop—the hardwired bypass running through the transmission tunnel—was flashing a single green diagnostic line across the bottom of the black screen:
BUFFER CAPACITY: 88% UPLINK ATTEMPT 3/5: ACKNOWLEDGMENT RECEIVED REMOTE STORAGE CONFIRMED: PUBLIC INTEGRITY DIVISION - TEXAS DPS
The file wasn't just mirroring to Austin. The automated system had triggered the secondary emergency dispatch protocol built into the state corruption task force software. A small, flashing icon in the upper right corner showed a direct, priority data-forwarding route opening to the Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Florence, eight miles up Highway 183.
Miller’s face appeared against the crazed glass, twisted with pure fury. He saw the green line. He saw the state seal rendering on the screen as the handshake finalized.
He stopped banging on the glass.
Through the spider-webbed fractures, I watched him reach down to his belt. He didn't pull his baton. He pulled the thick yellow envelope of cash out from behind his magazine pouch.
He didn't try to hide it. With a violent, deliberate motion, he shoved the yellow envelope deep into the external battery box mounted behind my cab steps, kicking the metal door shut with his boot heel.
Then he pulled his radio mic with his left hand, his face pale, his eyes locked on mine through the ruined window.
He clicked the master radio toggle, opening the unencrypted regional dispatch frequency that went out to every squad car in three counties.
"Central, Unit Twelve," Miller yelled into the mic, his voice instantly shifting into an breathless, panicked professional shout. "Shots fired at the crossover! Suspect has barricaded in the cab! Driver is non-compliant and reaching for a weapon! Requesting immediate code three backup to my location!"
The line went silent. Outside the cab, the driver of the county wrecker threw his door open and stepped down into the gravel, unholstering a black semi-automatic pistol from his waistband.
Miller didn't look at the wrecker driver. He stood in the headlight wash, took two steps back from my window, drew his service weapon with both hands, and leveled the barrel dead center on the crazed safety glass directly in front of my face.
CHAPTER 3: The Radio Line Broke Wide Open
The bore of Miller’s service pistol was a black, unblinking circle centered against the spider-webbed safety glass. Outside, the idling diesels poured gray exhaust into the stagnant hollow beneath the overpass, trapping the heat until the cabin air felt greasy and thick.