“Vance’s department claims the cruiser’s camera had an electrical malfunction,” Caleb replied, his voice terrifyingly calm. “The gas station owner turned over his security footage to Vance’s deputies thirty minutes after the shooting. An hour later, the station had a ‘grease fire’ in the back room that destroyed the digital video recorder.”
Miller spat on the concrete floor. “Local prosecutor?”
“In Vance’s pocket. They’re filing charges against Ethan for felony assault on a peace officer from his hospital bed.” Caleb looked up, his eyes cold as arctic ice. “The legal system here isn’t broken, boys. It’s working exactly the way Vance designed it. So we aren’t going to use the legal system.”
Jackson pulled a ruggedized military laptop from his canvas bag and set it on a wooden crate. “We pulled the county law enforcement network overnight. Sheriff Vance Vance isn’t just a dirty cop. He runs the local narcotics pipeline coming off Interstate 70. His deputies act as enforcers. He’s got three dummy accounts in the Cayman Islands holding just over four million dollars.”
“We aren’t here for his money,” Caleb said.
“No,” Jackson agreed, tapping the screen. “But his money is how we tear his house down. I’ve already mirrored his private phone, his department servers, and his personal residence security feeds. He thinks he’s invisible.”
Caleb walked over to a steel workbench against the back wall. He pulled away a faded blue tarp, revealing five locked pelican cases he had buried beneath the floorboards seventeen years ago. He unlocked the heavy latches one by one.
Inside lay suppressed SIG Sauer sidearms, short-barreled carbines, night-vision optics, encrypted comms units, and tactical breaching charges—greased, maintained, and pristine.
“We don’t kill him,” Caleb said, his voice dropping an octave. “Death is too clean. Death makes him a martyr to his corrupt union. We take his badge, we take his money, we take his freedom, and we leave him sitting in a federal cell for the rest of his life where every inmate he ever put away knows his name.”
Miller picked up a carbine, checked the bolt action with a satisfying mechanical clack, and looked at Caleb. “How do we start, Boss?”
“We start by taking away his shadows,” Caleb said.
At 2:15 AM on Friday, Sheriff Vance Vance sat in his plush leather chair inside the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department. The building was quiet, save for a single dispatcher at the front desk.
Vance poured two fingers of bourbon into a crystal glass. He was a broad-shouldered man of fifty-five, with a thick mustache and eyes that had long since forgotten how to feel empathy. To him, the town of Livingston wasn’t a community; it was his personal fiefdom. The janitor’s kid was just another piece of dirt he’d stepped on to remind the locals who ruled the county.
His cell phone buzzed on the mahogany desk.
Vance picked it up. “This better be important.”
“Check your computer, Sheriff,” a deep, electronically distorted voice said through the speaker.
Vance frowned. “Who the hell is this? Do you know who you’re talking to—”
“Check the monitor, Vance.”
The line went dead.
Vance clicked his mouse. His dual monitors flickered once, then turned bright red.
File after file began opening automatically. Bank statements from the Grand Cayman National Bank detailing monthly $50,000 deposits. High-definition video footage from the back room of the gas station—the footage Vance thought his deputies had incinerated—showing him standing over a terrified Ethan Vance, shooting him in cold blood, and laughing as he walked back to his cruiser.
Vance’s heart slammed into his ribs. His hand flew to his desk phone to call his IT chief.
The desk phone didn’t work. The dial tone was gone.
Suddenly, the overhead lights in the entire station went pitch black.
The emergency backup generator clicked on three seconds later, bathing the hallway in an eerie red glow. Vance drew his Glock 21 from his holster, his boots thudding against the carpet as he marched toward the main corridor.
“Gomez! Miller!” he yelled toward the front desk.
Silence.
When Vance stepped into the dispatch lobby, his two night-shift deputies were lying flat on their stomachs on the tile floor, zip-tied, gagged, and unconscious. Sitting calmly on the front counter was a black USB drive next to a printed letter addressed to the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado and the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Denver.
Vance’s phone buzzed in his hand again. A text message.
Look out the front window.
Vance stumbled toward the glass double doors. Standing on the sidewalk, fifty yards away under the flickering amber light of a street lamp, was a lone figure.
The man wore a dark canvas jacket and heavy boots. He wasn’t holding a weapon. He was just standing there, looking directly at Vance through the glass.
Vance squinted, trying to recognize the face. Then the blood drained entirely from his head.
It was the courthouse janitor. The gray-haired man who pushed a mop bucket past his office door every Tuesday night. The man who had bowed his head whenever Vance walked past.
Except Caleb Vance wasn’t bowing his head now.
His posture was terrifyingly rigid. His eyes held a cold, predatory intelligence that made Vance’s breath catch in his throat. Caleb lifted his right hand, tapped his wrist—a universal gesture for time’s up—and turned into the darkness of the alley.
Vance slammed his hand against the door release, bursting out onto the street. “Stop! Sheriff’s Department! Stand where you are!”
He sprinted into the alley, raising his sidearm, his heavy boots echoing off the brick walls. “I’ll put you in the ground right next to your cripple son, you old bastard!”
