Chapter 4: What the Cameras Caught
The booking record was four pages.
Sarah stood at the front desk and read every line.
She didn't skim.
She didn't react visibly to anything she read.
She turned each page the way someone turns pages when they already know what they're going to find and are simply confirming it for the record.
Ryker watched her from across the room.
He had his arms crossed.
His expression had settled into something that was trying to look like patience but wasn't.
"Is there a problem with the paperwork?" he asked.
"Reckless driving," Sarah said, without looking up.
"Added at booking.
Not mentioned during the stop.
Not mentioned during handcuffing.
Not mentioned during transport." She turned the final page.
"Deputy Miller.
Was reckless driving part of your original stop?"
Miller was standing near the door.
He looked at Ryker.
"Answer her," Ryker said.
"The stop was for lane deviation," Miller said carefully.
"Lane deviation," Sarah repeated.
"Not reckless driving."
"That's — the charges can be amended during—"
"During booking," Sarah said.
"Yes.
I know." She folded the four pages and placed them in her wallet.
"Thank you, Deputy."
She picked up her phone and walked toward the front door.
Ryker moved to cut her off.
Not aggressively — just enough to slow her down.
"General.
I want you to understand that this stop was routine.
Nobody here knew who you were.
If we had known—"
Sarah stopped walking.
She turned and looked at him with an expression that was not anger.
It was something quieter and considerably worse.
"That's the part you still don't understand," she said.
"It shouldn't have mattered who I was."
She pushed through the front door.
The afternoon light hit the parking lot hard.
Both news vans were running.
A reporter from the closer one started moving toward her immediately.
Sarah held up one hand — not unkindly — and kept walking toward the government sedan.
The rear window came down as she approached.
A man in his sixties leaned out.
Silver hair, civilian clothes, the kind of face that had spent forty years making decisions in rooms with no windows.
"General Reynolds." His voice was quiet.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Senator."
Senator Dale Whitmore of Georgia opened the door from the inside.
Sarah got in.
The sedan pulled out of the parking lot before the reporter reached the curb.
Inside the building, Ryker stood at the window and watched it go.
He recognized the plates now.
He had seen them at two fundraisers and a ribbon-cutting in the past eighteen months.
"Sheriff." Brenda's voice came from behind him.
"Your county attorney is on line two.
He says it's urgent."
Ryker didn't turn around.
"Tell him I'll call him back."
"He says he's already been contacted by the Attorney General's office and he needs to speak with you before you say anything else to anyone."
The sedan turned onto the main road and disappeared.
Ryker finally turned from the window.
May you like
His face had gone the particular color of a man who has just understood, fully and completely, that the thing he did an hour ago is not going to stay in this county.
"Put him through," he said.
