"That's not how any of this works, Sarge. Digital logs... somebody's going to cross-check the timestamps."
"Not if the paper copy matches what we say happened." Bruce was already uncapping a pen. "Paper's what a judge sees first. Paper's what juries trust. You worry about the rest."
Langston stood there in the flickering light, watching Bruce rewrite history with a ballpoint pen like it was the easiest thing in the world. Something about the casualness of it, the way Bruce's hand didn't even shake, made his stomach turn harder than the act itself.
"This isn't protecting us," Langston said quietly. "This is burying us deeper."
"It's protecting me," Bruce muttered, not even looking up. "And if you're smart, it protects you, too. You wrote that report, remember? Your name's on it, same as mine."
Langston didn't answer. He watched Bruce finish the false entry, sign it with a flourish like he was proud of the work, and set the logbook aside like a job well done.
While Bruce moved to check the trailer's exterior seals one more time, muttering to himself about consistency, Langston quietly reached into his jacket and pulled out a small notebook he'd started carrying two days ago—the same night he'd first watched Bruce dictate lies onto an official report. He'd told himself it was just for his own head, a way to keep his thoughts straight. Standing here now, watching Bruce alter federal records in real time, he understood it was becoming something else.
He clicked his pen and wrote fast, low light making the words uneven on the page:
10:47 p.m. Bruce altering trailer seal check log at impound lot. Changed integrity check date entry to imply prior tampering unrelated to our stop. Original entry read clean. This is false.
He underlined the time twice, like it might matter later that he'd been precise.
Bruce came back around the trailer, satisfied, wiping his hands like he'd done honest work. "There. That's our cushion." He looked over at Langston, something almost warm in his face for the first time all night: the closeness of shared guilt mistaken for camaraderie. "You did good tonight, kid. Nobody's going to touch us now."
Langston tucked the notebook back into his jacket before Bruce could see it. "Yeah," he said. "Good."