A vein moved at Calhoun's temple. He turned to Okafor. "Search the vehicle."
Nadia said, calmly and without raising her voice, "That is an unlawful search. We are not consenting. I want that stated clearly for any active recordings."
Calhoun looked at Priya Holden. He looked at her body camera. "Kill that."
Priya's hand moved toward the camera. She hesitated—a hesitation that lasted less than two seconds, and that Calhoun did not appear to notice. Her thumb found the camera's power button. She pressed it. The red light went off. The camera appeared to go dark.
What Calhoun did not see, because he had already turned away, was Priya's left hand moving to the small secondary device clipped to her inner vest panel—a personal dash unit, department-issued for field supervisors, that she had been authorized to carry since her promotion to senior officer three months ago. She activated it with a single thumb press. The upload indicator blinked once, green.
She said nothing. She moved to the rear of the vehicle as instructed and watched.
The search began.
Okafor moved through the front seats, glove compartment, center console, sun visors. He found the vehicle's original title documents in a small leather cardholder containing nothing but business cards—all blank-faced, all the same off-white color with a single line of text that he didn't read carefully. He set the cardholder on the roof of the car.
Sergeant Devlin Sharp arrived in a third vehicle at seventeen minutes into the stop. He was Calhoun's preferred officer for certain kinds of work: the work that required someone who could tear through a space without hesitation and make the destruction look like diligence. He was built compactly, sharp-featured, with the particular energy of a person who mistakes speed for thoroughness. He went immediately to the rear compartment.
It was Sharp who found the module.
It was integrated into the underside of the rear seat panel. Not hidden in a way that screamed contraband, but fitted, recessed—the kind of installation that required expertise. It had a small antenna line that ran to a micro-port in the rear interior wall and a power draw from the vehicle's secondary battery. Sharp had to know what he was looking at to find it, which meant either he'd been told what to look for, or he'd found enough of these to recognize the shape.
He called Calhoun over.
Calhoun crouched. He looked at the module. He looked at Nadia. "Want to tell me what this is?"