Not fear, not anger, certainty. The kind that came from someone who knew a truth everyone else had missed. Ryan dismissed the feeling and snapped the second cuff shut. "There." He smiled.
"Now you look like everyone else we bring in." Across the parking lot, Marcus Hill struggled against the officers holding him. "She didn't do anything." Lieutenant Scott Harper shoved him harder against the patrol car. "You want another charge?"
"I want the truth. Harper laughed. Truth? He glanced toward Travis. That's cute.
The officers chuckled. Marcus lowered his head, not in surrender, in frustration. He had spent nearly two years being treated as though poverty itself were a crime. Today was no different, except now an innocent stranger was paying the price for refusing to look away. Inside the convenience store, Linda Foster finally made a decision.
She reached beneath the counter and pulled out an old laptop connected security cameras. Her fingers shook as she searched through the recordings. There. She rewound the footage. The screen showed Marcus helping the elderly woman with her groceries, then Travis arriving, then Ryan shoving Marcus, then Nia lifting her phone.
Every second, every angle, nothing missing. Linda immediately copied the files onto a flash drive. Before she could finish, someone knocked hard against the locked front door. Bang. Bang.
Bang. She froze. Ryan's voice echoed through the glass. Linda. No answer.
We know you're in there. She slowly backed away from the entrance. Another violent knock rattled the door. You don't want to make us suspicious. Linda looked down at the flash drive in her trembling hand.
If they got inside, the evidence would disappear. Outside, Dylan Hayes walked toward Travis. We searched her phone twice. And? Nothing.
No deleted videos, no hidden folders, no cloud storage. Dylan looked genuinely confused. It's almost too clean. Travis glanced toward Nia. You really came here with nothing?
She answered calmly. I came here with exactly what I needed. Again, that confidence. It irritated him because he couldn't explain it. Most innocent people desperately tried to convince officers they had done nothing wrong.
Nia wasn't trying to convince anyone. It was as though she had stopped caring whether these officers believed her at all. Miles away, inside the lead FBI SUV, Malcolm Pierce studied the live encrypted feed streaming across the dashboard tablet. The video remained stable despite the physical struggle. Vanessa Reed's voice came through the secure radio.
The upload is still active. Malcolm nodded. How? Redundant transmitters. He smiled slightly.
Nia planned for everything. Daniel Carter joined the conversation. Status? 20 minutes. Daniel checked another monitor inside headquarters.