Haynes snatched the leather case out of her hand. He didn’t lower his gun. He held the weapon steady in his right hand while he brought the badge up to his face with his left. He stared at it for three agonizing seconds. Then he burst into laughter.
It was a cold, cruel, barking sound that echoed off the empty desert. “Woo.” Haynes chuckled, tossing the credentials carelessly onto the hood of Sloan’s car. The heavy badge scratched the paint as it slid toward the windshield. “I got to admit, that’s high quality. What did that cost you online? Fifty bucks? A hundred?”
Sloan’s eyes narrowed. The stillness inside her evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharpened fury. “That is federal property, officer, and you have just assaulted a federal agent, detained me without probable cause, and are currently pointing a deadly weapon at a sworn officer of the Department of Justice.”
“I’m pointing a gun at a suspect resisting arrest who just presented forged law enforcement credentials.” Haynes countered smoothly, fully lost in his own fantasy. “That’s a felony, sweetheart. Now, for the last time, get out of the car.”
Sloan understood, in that instant, that she could not reason with him. Haynes was too far gone, too deeply entrenched in his own arrogance to back down. If she stepped out of the car, he would throw her to the dirt, cuff her, and likely invent a charge of resisting arrest. Or worse, his weapon could discharge accidentally in the scuffle.
She needed to tip the scales, and she needed to do it now. “All right,” Sloan said slowly. “I’m stepping out.” With her left hand, she reached for the door handle. But beneath the steering wheel, out of Haynes’s line of sight, her right hand dropped to the center console.
She didn’t reach for her own service weapon, a compact pistol locked away beneath the seat. A shootout was exactly what Haynes wanted, exactly the excuse he was hunting for. Instead, her fingers found the encrypted radio bolted to the console, the one she used to communicate directly with the Phoenix field office and the surrounding federal task forces.
By feel alone, she flipped the small protective toggle on the side of the unit. Then she pressed and held the panic button for three solid seconds. It was a silent alarm. Two hundred miles away, inside the Phoenix field office, an alert was already blaring through the operations center, broadcasting her vehicle’s exact coordinates.
Because she was currently assigned to a joint task force, the distress signal was simultaneously beamed to the dash consoles of every federal marshal, Drug Enforcement agent, and state police supervisor within fifty miles. Federal officer down or in extreme danger. Respond immediately, all available units.
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.