Running meant Miller and Cole would pin the missing records on my disappearance, closing the books on Blackwood County for good." I’m not crawling through any culvert," I said, shoving his keys back into his chest. "And I’m not running across the state line like a thief."
Cole stared at me, trembling. "Clara, you don't understand. If you stay in this bay, you don't survive until dawn.""
I understand every word in this ledger," I told him, stepping toward the heavy plywood door. "The County Sheriff’s winter road briefing opens at five o'clock at the central dispatch annex in town. The magistrate and the state highway supervisors are sitting in that room right now waiting for the morning weather report.
You aren't giving me your car to run away in, Greg. You’re putting me in the front seat of Cruiser 404, you’re driving straight through that gate, and you’re walking me into that briefing room with this ledger in your hand." Cole looked through the wired glass.
Out by the burner, Miller tossed the melted plastic shell of the tape into the white heat, turning toward the office with a heavy steel pry bar in his hand." If I do that," Cole whispered, his voice cracking, "I lose my badge. I lose my family.""
You lost your badge the night you covered for a murder," I said, my hand closing over the iron door handle. "Now decide whether you spend the rest of your life running with Kyle Miller, or walk into dispatch and tell the truth."
CHAPTER 3: The Briefing Room Under Lock
The heavy plywood office door banged open against the drywall, splintering the casing as Kyle Miller shoved his way inside. The thirty-inch hex-head pry bar hung from his right fist, grease and soot smearing the front of his nylon armor carrier. He took one look at my unchained wrist, then at Greg Cole backed against the parts shelving with his service belt unclipped, and his jaw set into a flat, murderous line.
"You soft bastard," Miller said, his boots tracking black sludge across the linoleum. "You let an hourly girl talk you out of your pension."
"She has the inspection ledger, Kyle," Cole said, his hands coming up with his palms open, fingers trembling against his belt buckle. "She has the signed timber manifests from October. She has the certified receipt you stole out of the substation drop box. It’s over. There are three copies of the steering log filed in Elkins, and she knows where the physical parts are."
Miller didn't glance at the blue spiral notebook tucked under my arm. He brought the pry bar up in a short, tight arc, lunging directly across the desk toward my collarbone. He wasn't trying to scare me into compliance; he was trying to break my shoulder and put me on the concrete before I could scream.
I dropped my head, driving my shoulder hard into the corner of Jesse’s heavy oak roll-cab. The iron bar missed my ear by two inches, slamming into the metal drawer face with a deafening ring that dented the steel and showered the floor with brass cotter pins. The rebound jarred Miller’s grip just long enough for Cole to move.
Cole didn't draw his pistol. He threw all two hundred and ten pounds of his frame across Miller’s shoulders, wrapping both arms around Miller’s neck and driving him forward into the master workbench. Jesse’s welded pipe frame held solid against the floor studs, but the impact tore the breath out of Miller’s lungs in a wet, ragged gasp. The pry bar clattered against the concrete.
"Get the cuffs off my rear pouch, Clara!" Cole yelled, his boots sliding through the spilled mineral spirits as Miller bucked violently beneath him, throwing elbows into Cole’s ribs. "Get the second set!"
I didn't fumble. I grabbed the nickel-plated Smith & Wesson cuffs off the back of Cole’s tactical belt, ratcheted the single pawl open, and drove the swinging jaw around Miller’s right wrist. Together, Cole and I hauled Miller’s arm down toward the heavy three-inch iron leg of Jesse’s bench—the exact post where Miller had chained me twenty minutes earlier. I drove the ratchet shut until the third tooth bit deep, then grabbed the spare cuff dangling from the leg and locked his left wrist behind his back, chaining both arms around the solid structural pipe.
Miller thrashing against the steel rattled every wrench in the drawer above him, but the pipe was quarter-inch rolled iron sunk four inches into cured foundation concrete. He couldn't reach his holster, he couldn't reach his radio microphone, and his knees were pinned against the frozen floor.