“Back right pocket.”
“May I retrieve it?”
“Yes.”
Sarah removed the wallet.
Driver’s license.
Samuel James Owens.
Whitmore Heights.
Photograph matched.
She compared it with the registration.
Exact match.
“It’s him.”
Derek barely looked.
“Could be identity theft.”
Sarah frowned.
“Derek.”
“What?”
“We have no stolen report.”
“We have suspicious circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
Derek stared at her.
The question itself became dangerous.
Sarah felt it.
She was still probationary in the cultural sense, if not formally.
Derek had the captain’s confidence.
He wrote recommendations.
He knew supervisors.
Sarah had seen younger officers who challenged senior patrolmen suddenly assigned miserable rotations.
Her courage reached the edge of her career calculation.
Then stopped.
She closed Sam’s wallet.
“This doesn’t feel right.”
Derek’s eyes hardened.
“I’ll handle it.”
Sarah looked at Sam.
He saw the apology before she mouthed it.
“I’m sorry.”
Sam nodded once.
She closed the cruiser door.