The door to the squad room swung open, and Sheriff Thomas walked in. Thomas was a heavy, broad-chested man in his late fifties with thick grey hair and a mustache that drooped over his upper lip. He carried two white paper cups of coffee, setting one down on Marcus's desk before sliding into the chair opposite him.
"DOJ guys just left my office," Thomas said softly, taking a sip from his cup.
Marcus didn't look up from his desk. "What did they tell you?"
"They told me that your patrol car was destroyed in an accidental equipment fire involving a faulty auxiliary battery," Thomas said. "They told me that your dashcam footage was corrupted by the electrical short. And they told me that you're taking two weeks of paid administrative leave starting right now."
Marcus turned his head slowly to look at his boss. "And you believed them?"
Thomas looked down at his own coffee cup for a long moment, watching the steam rise into the cool air of the office. "Marcus, I’ve been sheriff in this county for sixteen years. I’ve seen state politics, I’ve seen federal task forces, and I’ve seen what happens to small-town cops who try to stick their noses into things that happen above their pay grade."
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his face suddenly turning very old and very tired.
"I saw your patrol car before the federal towing flatbed hauled it away," Thomas whispered. "I saw the bullet holes in the windshield, Marcus. I know what 12-gauge slug damage looks like on an axle. That wasn't a battery fire."
"Sheriff—"
"Don't tell me," Thomas interrupted, raising his hand. "Don't tell me a single word. If you tell me, then I have to write it in an official report, and if I write it in an official report, then two men in dark grey suits are going to come back to this office with a federal court order and take my badge."
He stood up, slapping his hand gently on the desk. "Go home, Marcus. Take your wife out to dinner. Go fishing down at the reservoir. Stay off the radio, stay off the news, and don't answer your door for anyone you don't know personally."
Marcus watched the sheriff walk out of the squad room, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind him.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small black business card Miller had given him. The raised silver numbers gleamed under the fluorescent lights of the office. He flipped the card over. On the back, written in faint, handwritten blue ink, was a single word and a timestamp: VERITAS - 14:18.
14:18. Two minutes past two o'clock. The exact moment he had snapped the handcuffs onto Terrence Hayes's wrists on the shoulder of Highway 85.
Marcus stood up, grabbed his jacket, and walked out the back door of the precinct into the warm Georgia night.
The small brick house Marcus owned sat at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Riverdale, surrounded by tall pine trees and neat, manicured lawns. The streetlights had just flickered on, casting long, orange shadows across the driveway as Marcus pulled his personal pickup truck into the garage.
His wife, Sarah, was sitting at the kitchen island, her laptop open in front of her. She looked up as he walked through the door, her eyes immediately fixing on the stiff way he held his left arm.
"What happened to you?" she asked, standing up so fast her chair scraped loudly against the linoleum floor. "The department called two hours ago and said you were being sent home early, but they wouldn't give me any details."
"It’s nothing," Marcus said, trying to offer a reassuring smile that felt flat and hollow on his face. "Just a minor incident during the detail today. A car pulled off onto the shoulder, some loose gravel flew up, and I pulled a muscle in my shoulder trying to move a barrier."
Sarah walked over to him, her hands hovering near his arm. She wasn't a police officer, but she had been married to one for seven years. She knew the difference between a pulled muscle and the rigid, careful posture of a man who was hiding pain.
"Marcus," she said softly, looking directly into his eyes. "You're terrible at lying to me."
"I'm not lying," he said, turning toward the refrigerator to pull out a bottle of water. "It was just a messy day. Federal details are always a headache. Everyone’s screaming, nobody’s talking to each other, and local guys end up doing all the heavy lifting."
He drank half the water in one long gulp, his mind racing through the events of the afternoon. The face of the shooter in the warehouse window. The terrifying precision of the radio jammer. The cold, calculated setup that had almost turned a routine presidential visit into a national disaster.
He couldn't tell her. Not because he didn't trust her, but because he remembered the look in Miller's eyes when he handed him the card. They know your name now.
"I’m going to take a shower," Marcus said, touching her cheek with his right hand. "Then let’s go get some dinner. Anywhere you want."
He walked down the narrow hallway toward the master bedroom, locking the door behind him. He stripped off his shirt, looking at the heavy white bandage taped securely over his left shoulder.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out, expecting to see a text from the shift lieutenant or a group message from the other deputies asking what had happened to his cruiser.
Instead, the screen displayed a single line from an unknown, encrypted number: THE SECOND RELAY IS ACTIVE. LOOK OUT YOUR FRONT WINDOW.
Marcus felt his stomach drop into a cold, dark pit. He reached into his closet, pulled his personal 9mm pistol from its safe, racked a round into the chamber, and crept silently toward the front living room window, keeping his body pressed flat against the wall.
He pulled the edge of the heavy fabric blind back by a quarter of an inch.
Parked directly across the street, under the dark canopy of an overgrown oak tree, sat an older model silver sedan. Its engine was idling silently, its dark-tinted windows reflecting the dull orange glow of the streetlight above.