“Wait here,” he snapped.
Cynthia waited. She did not turn around. She watched the reflection in the wet glass of her car window, and through that reflection she watched O'Grady open her driver's side door and lean into the vehicle. He rummaged through the center console, pulling out papers and the charging cable and the folded map, tossing them aside. He tore through the glove box, scattering the rental agreement and the owner's manual onto the passenger seat. He checked under the seats, reaching his arm deep into the footwells, his rain slicker bunching around his shoulders as he bent and twisted inside the car. It was a full illegal search without a warrant, without probable cause, and without her consent, conducted in plain sight of the cameras he did not know were watching him.
Then, Cynthia saw it.
O'Grady's right hand slipped into his own heavy raincoat pocket. The movement was quick but not quick enough, and the reflection caught it clearly: his fingers closing around something small, his wrist turning slightly as he palmed it, his body shifting to block the view from the highway even though he could not block the view from inside the car. When his hand emerged, his fingers were curled around a small transparent plastic bag containing a chunky white substance. He held it for only a second, low and close to his body, and then he smoothly dropped it under the driver's seat, letting it settle on the floor mat where it would look as if it had been hidden there by the driver.
Then he immediately pretended to discover it. He straightened up, pulled his head out of the car, and held the bag up into the glare of the police cruiser's headlights, his face arranged into an expression of triumph.
“Well, well, well,” O'Grady said, his voice carrying over the rain. “What do we have here?”
Cynthia turned her head slowly. She looked at the bag in his hand, at the white chunks inside the plastic, at the way he held it pinched between his fingers as if it were evidence he had just recovered from a crime scene rather than something he had carried in his own pocket. She did not raise her voice. She did not accuse him in the moment. She let him speak first, because she wanted his version of events to be as clear and as damning as possible.
“I've never seen that before in my life,” Cynthia said.
“Sure you haven't,” O'Grady sneered, shaking the bag of what looked like crack cocaine in the headlights. “It just magically appeared under your seat. You people are all the same. Drive a nice rental, wear a nice suit, think you can move product through my sector without getting caught.”