That momentary hesitation gave me the leverage I needed. I wedged my right boot against the base of the booking desk and thrust backward with everything I had left in my legs. The sudden surge threw Miller off balance. He stumbled into Vance, tangling their feet, and both men slammed hard into the steel booking counter.
I rolled immediately to my stomach, tucking my chin, keeping my body plastered directly beneath the glowing lens of the overhead camera. I raised my linked wrists high, holding the handcuffs straight up toward the red recording diode, letting the camera capture the serial number stamped into the county steel, the blood dripping from my forehead, and the brass master key that had slipped from Miller's fingers and now lay spinning on the floor three inches from my face.
"Don't move, Chief," I said, my voice hoarse, echoing flat against the cinderblock walls. "You step past this desk with that key, and you're committing a physical assault inside an active federal surveillance buffer. The Spokane field office doesn't just see the log. They're listening to the room audio right now through the dispatch speaker."
Miller froze. He pushed himself off Vance, his heavy chest heaving against his uniform shirt. The small gold badge pinned over his heart rose and fell in rapid, shallow jerks. He looked up at the tiny black glass dome of the ceiling camera, then down at the microphone grille built into the base of the terminal. A faint, rhythmic static hissed through the pinhole speaker—the open-carrier hum of a remote monitor maintaining a live connection.
Vance slowly got to his feet, rubbing his ribs where my shoulder had struck him. He looked at Miller, then looked at the brass key lying on the floor between us. For the first time that night, the certainty in the deputy's eyes cracked into raw panic.
"Chief," Vance murmured, his voice trembling as he stepped back toward the squad room door. "My radio... my squad radio just clicked off the county repeater. It switched itself over to Tac-Four. That’s the state emergency mutual-aid frequency. Somebody at district dispatch just took remote control of our local tower."
Miller didn't answer right away. He stood rigid in the harsh fluorescent glare, his knuckles white where he gripped his duty belt. His mind was calculating the miles, the road conditions, the winding turns of Route 9 between here and the interstate highway. He knew the geography better than anyone. He knew that even if a state patrol cruiser ran with lights and sirens wide open from the Colville barracks, it would take twenty-two minutes to reach the station steps.
Twenty-two minutes was an eternity in an empty booking room with locked doors. But it was not enough time to erase a high-definition recording that was already stored on an external government server three hundred miles away.
"You think you're smart, Miller," I whispered, still keeping my wrists locked within the camera's sightline. "You thought pulling over an unmarked sedan on a gravel county spur was an easy shakedown. You saw out-of-state plates, an old duffel bag, and a broken watch. You figured you could dump the watch, pocket the personal effects, log me as an unidentified trespasser, and let your brother-in-law's trucks roll across the Canadian border before anyone realized an auditor had arrived."
Miller slowly wiped a streak of sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. His gaze drifted from the camera down to the floor, fixing on the broken watch lying near the edge of the intake scale. The shattered crystal caught the fluorescent light, reflecting a sharp, fractured web of white glare.
"You don't know this county," Miller said, his tone dropping from fury to a low, bitter resignation that sounded far more dangerous. "You sit in an office in Spokane looking at spreadsheets and shipping bills. You don't know what keeps the heat on in these hills. You think taking down three logging contractors makes you a hero? It puts two hundred families on the county relief rolls by November."
"Selling unregistered commercial timber to an overseas front company doesn't feed those families, Miller," I said, pulling myself up into a seated position against the base of the counter, keeping my back straight, refusing to cower on their floor. "It puts cash into your personal safe behind the dispatch desk. And that ledger in your desk drawer is about to be seized by the United States Marshals."
The station went completely quiet except for the low hum of the fluorescent tubes and the faint hiss of the open audio wire.
Deputy Harris took two slow steps backward, completely separating himself from Miller and Vance. He unclipped his radio from his shoulder strap, laid it quietly on the filing cabinet, and sat down on a folding chair in the far corner of the room, folding his hands in his lap. He was out of it. He was choosing his side before the sirens reached the bottom of the valley.
Miller saw it. He looked at Harris, his lips thinning into a tight, pale line of betrayal, but he knew he could not force the young deputy's hand now. The chain of command had snapped the moment the screen turned amber.
Outside, far in the distance beyond the damp pines that surrounded the municipal lot, the faint, rising wail of an electronic siren cut through the midnight fog. It was not a single siren. It was two, moving fast along the winding pavement of Route 9, their frequencies rising and falling as they cleared the timberline ridges.