"He's at the truck," I whispered, the tiny burner phone pressed tight against my jaw.
"I have his position," Sarah replied, her voice an anchor of cold, professional clarity in the dark. "IA tech just pulled the real-time GPS telemetry from his cruiser's onboard computer. He was doing eighty-five when he made contact with your bumper, not the forty he claimed on dispatch. We have the digital mismatch locked. But Dad, you need to keep moving. The state troopers are hitting a hard roadblock on Route 9. County sheriffs parked two heavy interceptors across the lanes. They are officially claiming a hazardous materials spill."
My chest tightened. The corruption ran straight to the top of the shift. They were not just covering for a greedy deputy; the entire precinct was sealing the perimeter to give Cole the time he needed to execute a witness.
"They aren't going to let the troopers through without a physical confrontation," I murmured, sliding down a crumbling embankment of loose shale. I caught myself against a thick knot of dead sagebrush, freezing as the rocks clattered softly into the dry creek bed below.
Above me, a heavy thud echoed across the canyon. Cole had kicked the driver-side door of my truck all the way open.
"Suspect is not in the vehicle," Cole’s voice carried over the still night air, amplified by the sheer rock walls. He wasn't speaking into his radio. He was talking to someone on his personal cell phone, bypassing the recorded dispatch bands entirely.
"Sarah, can you pull his private cell records?" I asked, watching the bright white beam of his flashlight rake across the top of the embankment.
"I'm initiating the warrant protocol now, but the telecom provider needs twenty minutes to ping the active tower," she said, the furious clicking of a keyboard transmitting through the line. "I can't hear what he's saying. Get the microphone closer if you can do it without exposing yourself."
I shifted my weight, pressing my back against the freezing stone of the canyon wall. I was thirty yards below the highway shoulder, shielded by a dense cluster of limestone boulders. I slowly raised my head, peering through a narrow gap in the rocks.
Cole was standing by the open cab of my truck, his service weapon gripped tightly in his right hand. He held his smartphone to his left ear, his heavy shoulders hunched against the freezing wind.
"I don't care what the state police are demanding, Miller," Cole snarled into his phone, his voice echoing clearly down the wash. "I have the transit cash right here in my pocket. Fifteen hundred. But the old man ran. He’s in the rocks below the forty-four marker. Bring the thermal scanner from your trunk. We find him, we call it a resisting fatality, and we process the cash through the civil asset forfeiture account just like the others."
"I have that," Sarah said instantly, her breath catching. "He just named Sergeant Miller. He just admitted to holding the bait cash, and he admitted to the forfeiture laundering scheme on a live federal wire. We have the corroboration."
"We have the motive," I corrected her quietly. "We don't have the survival."
Cole shoved his phone back into his tactical vest. He swung the flashlight beam down into the dark canyon. The blinding light swept across the sagebrush, illuminating the unmistakable trail of crushed branches and disturbed dirt I had left during my slide down the embankment.
He chambered a round. The sharp, mechanical clack of the slide racking echoed like a death knell in the freezing air.
He began to descend.
"Dad, he's tracking your slide," Sarah warned, her professional detachment finally cracking under the sheer terror of the proximity. "You have to lose him."
I looked down at the deep, fractured crevices of the dry creek bed. I was bleeding, my mobility was compromised, and Cole was heavily armed with the high ground. If he caught me with the burner phone in my hand, he would immediately realize the IA wire was live. He would destroy the phone, shoot me, and the physical dashcam evidence would be buried with my body. The audio recording would prove his intent, but a corrupt local judge could easily suppress a wire intercept if the physical evidence vanished. I could not let him take the SD card.
I reached down and wedged my fingers into the reinforced heel of my work boot. I pulled out the tiny, plastic square of the dashcam SD card.
"Sarah," I whispered, making the hardest choice of the night. "I'm securing the physical footage. If he takes me down, he cannot find this card."
"Do not separate from the evidence," she ordered frantically. "It's your leverage."
"It's my liability," I countered. I felt along the jagged limestone wall beside my shoulder. I found a deep, narrow fissure, barely wider than a coin, angled downward into the solid rock. I shoved the SD card deep into the crack, using a piece of dry twig to pack it down until it was completely invisible in the dark. I committed the exact shape of the rock formation to memory.
"Card is secured," I said. "He won't find it."