"I'd rather continue," Danielle said.
"All right. But you'll give a separate statement about the detention. And you'll have your wrists looked at again. An investigation isn't strengthened by an agent pretending she wasn't hurt."
Danielle managed a tired smile. "Understood."
Torres had brought new information. The government fleet-card provider had complied with the preservation request, transmitting an independent set of transaction records and the account-access history. The records confirmed that seventeen suspect overrides had been processed using a recurring local identifier associated with patrol unit 74-Alpha. Some entries also included an administrative approval code linked to an account maintained under the station's regional contractor.
The code mattered because it was not supposed to authorize actual pumping by itself. It existed to reconcile disputed government charges against dispenser meter data. Someone had found a way to combine those two functions, creating a record that treated commercial tanker withdrawals as approved government purchases. The technical examiners would determine the precise mechanism in the lab; for now the independent logs showed a repeated pattern of false allocation.
"The total on the historical sample is higher than we thought," Torres said. "At least eleven thousand gallons are in question over eight months. That's more than forty thousand dollars billed against federal accounts, before penalties, taxes, and any related contract fraud. We're tracing the exact loss."
Danielle glanced toward the convoy. Several Army drivers were waiting beside their trucks, drinking coffee from paper cups. Their assigned vehicles had not received the fuel reflected in the false reports. A few of those drivers had spent evenings being told to explain why their fuel allowances were exhausted. The abstract figures on Torres's screen carried those small humiliations inside them.
"What about the tanker?" Danielle asked.
Torres displayed a roadway camera still. The truck in the image carried a partial logo and a plate number that matched the three characters from Leah's recording. It belonged to North Ridge Commercial Transport, a small hauling company based across the state line. The registered operator was Owen Pritchard, fifty-three, a driver with a clean safety record and a recent financial lien against his equipment.
"He isn't the registered owner of the fuel," Torres said. "He bills for transportation. The destination is listed as a storage yard leased by Mercer Fleet Services. One of Mercer's officers is Shaw's brother-in-law."
Danielle leaned back. "That gives us a possible financial link. Has anybody spoken to the driver?"
"Our team is trying to locate him. We don't want to confront him on the highway without cause. We have a records request to his dispatcher and we're working with a federal prosecutor on further process."
"And the storage yard?"
"Surveillance team is already documenting vehicle traffic. No approach yet."
Danielle looked again at the ledger. The dates fell into a rhythm: late Tuesdays and Fridays, occasional Sundays, with a handful of exceptions. The amounts varied, but the transaction periods clustered when the pumps were quiet and regular military movement was unlikely. Shaw had been the district captain for three years. Voss had transferred into the patrol sector ten months ago. The first confirmed questionable charges began two months after his assignment.