A white sedan had slowed on the opposite lane, then stopped. The driver—a woman in her sixties, silver-haired, wearing a church hat on a Thursday for reasons known only to herself—had a phone raised at window height. She was recording.
A pickup truck had stopped behind the sedan. The driver, a man in a contractor's vest, was already out of the cab with his own phone up.
Calhoun noticed them. He walked toward the road's edge. "Move along. This is an active scene."
The woman in the church hat did not move along. She lowered her window the rest of the way. "My nephew had his truck taken on this road," she said. "Two years ago. Cash in it, too. Never saw either one again."
Calhoun stopped walking. "Ma'am, I need you to move your vehicle."
"I'm on a public road," she said, "and I'm not breaking any law." She kept recording.
A second vehicle had stopped behind the pickup, then a third, until the road that had been empty twenty minutes ago now had a small stationary audience on its opposite shoulder. Every one of them had a phone, and none of them were moving.
Calhoun walked back to Sharp. "Finish up. And someone get those civilians back."
Okafor moved toward the road. Priya did not. She stayed where she was, near the rear of the Ghost, and watched Sharp pull the last of the interior paneling from the driver's door.
The car had been opened, searched, and partly dismantled. The module was destroyed. The case had been broken open. The two women stood at the roadside, one in cuffs, both composed, both watching Calhoun with the particular patience of people who are not waiting for rescue; they are waiting for process.
Calhoun came back to Nadia. He stood close—closer than professional distance—in that deliberate way that is not quite a physical action, but is meant to be felt as one. "You want to tell me who you really are?"
"My identification is in your sergeant's hand," Nadia said.
"Your ID says you're a federal employee. It doesn't say much else."