Doyle snorted softly. "Just don't let the paperwork get sloppy. You know how he gets when the DA kicks one back."
"My paperwork is airtight," O'Grady said. "Always is."
Cynthia looked out through the scratched partition at the city sliding past in streaks of neon and rain. Oakland at night was not a single place. It was a series of lit windows and dark doorways, a bus shelter with a woman waiting under a broken light, a corner store with its shutters half down, a man walking a dog that pulled hard at its leash. She had driven these streets as a visitor, as a federal official, as a woman who wanted an hour alone with her thoughts. Now she was being driven through them as a prisoner, and the difference was not in the streets. The difference was in who was allowed to decide what a person was.
She thought about the rental car, already towed or about to be towed, sitting in an impound lot with its cameras still watching. She thought about the small encrypted panic fob woven into the lining of her blazer, a flat, unremarkable disc that felt like nothing more than a stiff seam when a careless hand patted it down. She thought about the secure server in Quantico, where every second of the stop was already stored under a rolling cryptographic seal, time-stamped, GPS-tagged, impossible to edit without leaving a mark. O'Grady thought he had the night in his hands. He did not know that the night was already writing itself down somewhere he could not reach.
The cruiser turned off the highway and dropped down a ramp into the underground garage of the 42nd District Precinct. The change in sound was immediate. The rain faded to a dull patter above concrete, replaced by the echo of tires on painted floors, the hum of fluorescent tubes, the distant clank of a metal door. O'Grady parked in a bay marked for patrol units, killed the engine, and got out with the heavy, satisfied movement of a man arriving home after a good shift.
He opened the rear door and reached in for Cynthia's arm. His grip was not the firm, guiding hold taught in training. It was a haul, a yank that pulled her sideways out of the seat and set her stumbling on the slick concrete. Her shoulders ached from the unnatural angle of the tight cuffs, and for a moment the pain was sharp enough to make her breath catch. She did not cry out. She planted her feet, found her balance, and stood.
"Watch the step," Doyle said, without irony, as if he were being helpful.