He marched her toward the rear door of the patrol SUV. Before he opened it, he reached through the shattered passenger window of Victoria's sedan, ripped her cell phone off its magnetic dash mount, and jammed the power button down until the screen went dark. With a brutal wrench of his forearm, he reached under the steering column, tore out the primary ignition harness wires, and slammed the sedan’s hood shut.
"The feed was cloud-synchronized five seconds after your lights flashed, Deputy," Victoria remarked as Halloway shoved her into the hard plastic seat of the cruiser’s prisoner cage. "Tearing wires out of a four-thousand-dollar sedan only adds destruction of government-leased property to the docket."
Halloway didn't answer. He slammed the rear door shut. The heavy latch clicked into place with the sickening finality of a bank vault.
Through the thick, scratch-marked plexiglass partition separating the cage from the front seats, Victoria watched the two men. They stood in the shimmering dust for forty seconds, whispering furiously, Vance gesturing violently toward the highway, Halloway jabbing an index finger against his younger partner's chest until Vance looked away, defeated.
Both doors opened, and the deputies climbed in. The air conditioning in the front was running full blast, but the chill didn't reach the back of the cage. The plastic bench was slick with the sweat of whoever had sat there last, smelling of stale vomit, wet dirt, and ozone.
Halloway dropped the cruiser into drive. Instead of flipping the light bar back on or turning north toward the county seat and the official precinct house, he jerked the steering wheel hard to the left, cutting across the oncoming lane and turning down an unpaved service trail marked only by a rusted metal sign: *NO TRESPASSING — COUNTY WATER AUTHORITY*.
The cruiser’s suspension groaned as the tires hit deep ruts in the sun-baked clay. Dust rose behind them in an impenetrable screen, blotting out County Road Nine, blotting out her stranded car, blotting out the last civilized connection to the world she had left behind.
In the back seat, Victoria leaned her head back against the cage wall and closed her eyes.
She wasn't afraid. Fear was an emotional tax she couldn't afford to pay, not when her tactical clock was running. Instead, she began running the physical audit of her situation.
Her wrists were numb from the lack of circulation. Vance had ratcheted the left cuff directly over the radial nerve, sending tiny, stinging needles of fire shooting up into her thumb and forefinger. She rotated her wrists slowly, sliding the flat edge of her right forearm against the left cuff to create a microscopic fraction of slack.
In the waistband of her denim shorts, nestled horizontally against the small of her back just above the beltline, was a secondary tool: a plastic-coated, ceramic universal cuff key, no thicker than a toothpick. It was standard issue for deep-cover field agents operating in high-risk rural districts where local law enforcement was compromised.
She didn't reach for it. Not yet. Unlocking the cuffs inside the cruiser while two armed deputies sat three feet in front of her would be suicidal. As long as they thought she was restrained and helpless, they would treat her as cargo rather than an immediate physical threat.
The car rattled over a wooden cattle guard, the timbers booming under the weight of the SUV.
Victoria opened her eyes and looked through the side window.
The scenery had turned desolate. The open pastures had given way to dense, tangled thickets of cedar and scrub oak, pressing close against the single-lane dirt track. The limestone bluffs rose sharply to the right, towering fifty feet above the trail like ancient, scarred teeth. This was the old quarry district—land abandoned thirty years ago after the limestone ran thin and the drainage ponds filled with toxic industrial runoff.
No cell service out here. Her phone, even if Halloway hadn't turned it off, would have dropped from three bars to zero three miles back.
"Greg," Vance said from the front passenger seat. He hadn't stopped turning his head to look back at her every thirty seconds. "What are we doing? Tell me what Uncle Ray said. Exactly what he said."
"He said bring her to the shed," Halloway muttered, his hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles were chalky white. "He said he’s coming out from the lodge."