Sloan pulled the door handle and stepped out into the sweltering heat. Before both of her feet were even on the pavement, Haynes lunged. He grabbed her by the shoulder of her T-shirt and yanked her forward, slamming her chest first against the hot metal roof of her car, kicking her legs apart with his heavy boots.
“Hands behind your back!” he screamed, holstering his weapon and ripping a pair of handcuffs from his belt. Sloan didn’t fight him physically. She let him wrench her arms behind her back, feeling the cold steel bite painfully into her wrists as the cuffs ratcheted tight.
“Travis, this is a mistake.” Davies pleaded, rushing forward now. The young rookie looked terrified, staring at the gold shield sitting on the hood of the car. He reached out and picked it up, tilting it, watching the holographic watermark shift across the surface of the identification card. “Travis, this is real. Look at the watermark. It’s a real Bureau ID.”
“Shut up, Davies.” Haynes panted, shoving Sloan hard against the car to make sure the cuffs were tight. He leaned in close to her ear, his breath hot and reeking of stale coffee. “You’re going to prison. You hear me? Impersonating a federal officer. I’m going to ruin your life.”
Sloan turned her head, resting her cheek against the scorching roof of her car. She looked directly at Haynes, her expression utterly without fear. The trap had already been sprung. Haynes simply didn’t realize yet that he was the one standing inside it.
“Officer Haynes,” Sloan said, her voice carrying steadily over the wind. “Look down the highway.” Haynes scoffed, but his eyes instinctively drifted toward the horizon. About three miles down the flat, straight stretch of Route 66, the heat haze was shimmering violently.
Bursting through that shimmer like a swarm of angry hornets came the flashing strobe lights of six black unmarked SUVs screaming toward them at well over one hundred miles an hour. The low rumbling growl of high-performance engines arrived before the vehicles themselves, a vibration that traveled up through the asphalt and into the soles of Haynes’s boots.
He squinted against the blinding Arizona sun, his hand still gripping the back of Sloan’s shirt. The haze broke apart. Six matte black SUVs tore down the two-lane highway in a tight synchronized formation, grills eating up the distance at a terrifying speed. Hidden LED strobes pulsed behind their windshields with blinding red and blue intensity.
The piercing wail of federal sirens ripped through the quiet desert, a sound so loud and aggressive it seemed to rattle the teeth in Haynes’s skull. “What the hell?” Haynes muttered, his grip on Sloan loosening just a fraction. “Davies, did you call dispatch? Who is that?”
“I didn’t touch the radio, Travis.” Rookie Officer Liam Davies yelled back, his voice cracking with panic. He was backing away from the car, his hands rising instinctively toward his chest. He looked from the incoming convoy to the gold FBI shield still resting on the hood of Sloan’s sedan, and the full dreadful reality of the situation finally slammed into him.
“Travis, let her go. Let her go right now.” “Shut up.” Haynes shouted, but the bravado was already bleeding out of his voice, replaced by a creeping cold dread that spread through his chest like ice water. The convoy did not slow down for a polite stop.
The lead vehicles executed a rolling block, a maneuver built for trapping high-value targets in open terrain. Two SUVs swerved hard into the oncoming lane, skidding onto the far shoulder, and sealing off any escape route ahead. Two more slammed their brakes directly behind Haynes’s county cruiser, boxing it in completely.
The final two vehicles angled in aggressively, their heavy brush guards stopping mere inches from the driver’s side of Sloan’s sedan. A suffocating wave of dust and loose gravel rolled over the scene, coating both Haynes and Sloan in a fine layer of brown grit.
Before the cloud could even begin to settle, every door on every vehicle flew open at once. “Federal agents, drop your weapon. Drop it now.” More than a dozen heavily armed men and women poured out onto the highway. These were not local patrol officers in pressed uniforms.
They wore heavy plate carriers stamped with bold yellow letters FBI, DEA, and US Marshal, and they carried short-barreled rifles and shotguns. Every single barrel swung toward the center of Haynes’s chest in the same instant, a wall of steel aimed at one trembling man standing alone on an empty desert road.
Haynes’s hand hovered near his own holster, and for one terrible heartbeat, nobody moved. The only sound was the wind, the ticking of hot engines, and the ragged, panicked breath rattling out of Officer Travis Haynes. “Hands in the air. Step away from the agent. Do it now.”
The command boomed from the PA system mounted on the lead SUV. Stepping out from behind the reinforced driver’s door was Special Agent in Charge Robert Callahan. Callahan was a twenty-year veteran of the Bureau, broad-shouldered, silver-haired, a man who ran the Phoenix Field Office with an iron fist and almost no patience for local corruption.
He didn’t carry a rifle. His hand simply rested on the pistol at his hip. His eyes locked onto Haynes with a furious, unblinking stare that carried more weight than any weapon on the highway. Haynes was paralyzed. His mind scrambled desperately for a version of reality where he was still the one in charge.
He let go of Sloan’s shirt and took a half step back, his hands hovering awkwardly near his duty belt. “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Hold on.” Haynes shouted, trying to project authority over the deafening wail of federal sirens. “I’m county sheriff’s department. I have a suspect in custody for forged credentials. Stand down.”
Callahan didn’t slow his pace as he marched into the center of the dust-choked scene. “You have exactly three seconds to unbuckle that gun belt and step away from my agent or my people put you down, officer. One.” “She’s a fake!” Haynes screamed, his voice breaking into a high, panicked pitch. “She swerved! She resisted! Two.”
The unmistakable, terrifying sound of a dozen rifles chambering rounds echoed across the highway in unison, a metallic clack, clack that cut through the noise like a blade dropping. Haynes looked to his left. A US Marshal, a massive, bearded man named Wyatt Gibson, had his sight aimed squarely at the center of Haynes’s forehead.