*“I know who she is,”* the Sheriff cut in, his tone dropping into a deadly, unhurried growl. *“And she’s thirty miles from the nearest state trooper barracks, sitting on my road, in my county. Do what I told you, Greg. Before this becomes something we can't bury.”*
The radio clicked dead.
Victoria slowly raised her eyes to meet Halloway’s.
The deputy wasn't looking at an investigator anymore. The fear in his pale eyes was curdling into something much darker, much more dangerous: the blind, cornered desperation of a man who realized that the only way to save his own skin was to commit a crime far worse than anything he had planned that morning.
Chương 5
Vance drew his weapon.
Chapter 2: The Road to the Bluffs
The black steel of Deputy Vance’s service weapon did not waver. The barrel hovered three feet from Victoria’s chest, dark and hollow, catching the raw afternoon glare.
The air on County Road Nine had gone dead. Even the locusts in the dry grass seemed to have choked on their own hum. A hundred yards to the west, heat waves distorted the asphalt into shimmering pools of false water, but the danger standing in the gravel was entirely real.
"Put it away, Bobby," Halloway said. His voice was cracked, raw around the edges. He hadn't drawn his own gun, but his heavy fingers hovered over the leather snap of his holster like spiders over a web. "You don't pull iron on an AG investigator. Put it away right now."
"You heard the old man, Greg!" Deputy Vance’s voice spiked an octave higher, jagged with panic. "She’s got us on tape! She’s got our names, our badges, the stop, everything! If she walks away from this shoulder, we are going to federal prison. Uncle Ray said bring her in. He said take her to the bluffs!"
"And what do you think happens at the bluffs, Bobby?" Victoria asked.
She did not flinch from the muzzle. Her wrists throbbed behind her back, the nickel-plated steel cutting deeper into her tendons with every twitch of her fingers, but she kept her spine ramrod straight against the hot metal of her sedan. Her eyes stayed locked on Vance’s eyes, refusing to grant him the satisfaction of looking at the weapon.
"You're twenty-five years old, Vance," she said, her tone level, measured, and unnervingly quiet. "Right now, your charges are unlawful detainment, deprivation of civil rights under color of law, and official misconduct. A good defense attorney gets you five to seven years. You do three in a medium-security facility in Cumberland, and you walk out with your life ahead of you. But you keep that muzzle pointed at an officer of the Department of Justice for another ten seconds, and you add felony assault with a deadly weapon. You take me out to an abandoned facility off the record, and you’re looking at kidnapping under federal statute. That carries a life sentence. No parole."
"Shut up!" Vance shouted, the gun trembling slightly in his grip. Sweat was pouring down his temple, running into his collar, turning the dark fabric of his uniform black. "Just shut the hell up! You don't know Uncle Ray. You don't know what runs this county!"
"I know Raymond Vance," Victoria said softly. "I know he owns two hundred acres bordering the river. I know his name is on the title of three shell corporations registered out of Delaware that just happened to purchase county surplus vehicles at twenty cents on the dollar. And I know why you two are on this road today instead of running patrol on Route 4. You’re the collection agency."
Halloway stepped between them, slapping his hand hard against Vance’s forearm, forcing the barrel down toward the dirt.
"Enough," Halloway growled, his face mottled with red blotches. He turned to Victoria, his breathing heavy, smelling of bitter coffee and panic. "Move."
"Greg—" Vance protested.
"I said move!" Halloway barked, grabbing Victoria by the elbow. He didn't slam her this time; the rough, arrogant swagger was gone, replaced by the grim, mechanical handling of a man hauling an unexploded bomb across a crowded room.
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.
Chương 6
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.