Renata made no sudden movement.
Priya Holden watched from the rear of the vehicle. She had both hands at her sides. Her expression was composed in the specific way of a person who has identified a threshold and is watching someone cross it in real time.
Sharp, meanwhile, had gone back to the car. The crowbar was still in his hand. He started on the rear interior paneling—the kind of methodical destruction that is performed when someone wants to look thorough and has no idea what thorough actually requires. He pulled the trim from the C-pillar. He pried at the seat base. He worked with the focused efficiency of a man who has done this before and does not expect to be questioned about it. Wood veneer trim—the real thing, hand-fitted—cracked and splintered under the pry bar. Leather split. The cream-colored rear seat panel came away from the door in three pieces.
Renata watched this happen. Her face was still, but she reached one hand slowly, visibly toward the inner pocket of her coat.
Okafor caught the motion. "Hey!" He stepped toward her. "Hands!"
"I have a pen in my pocket," Renata said. "I would like to make a note."
"You don't get to make notes."
"I am noting the time," she said. "The current destruction of vehicle interior, the officer name and badge number of everyone present." She paused. "For the record."
"There is no record," Okafor said. "Cameras are off."
He said it with a confidence that, in another circumstance, might have been correct. It was not correct.
Priya Holden, standing four feet behind him, heard those words. The upload indicator on her secondary device, invisible under her vest panel, had gone green eight minutes earlier. The footage was already off her device and stored somewhere that was not accessible by any standing request from a precinct captain in Duval County.
She looked at the road. She looked at the treeline. She looked at the women: one in cuffs against a ruined car, one standing at the roadside with her hands visible and her face giving away nothing. She thought about a memo she'd received six months ago—an internal affairs inquiry about asset seizure discrepancies in her precinct. A memo that had been quietly retracted two weeks after it was issued. A memo that she now noticed had referenced three LLC names, which were the same three LLC names she had just read upside down on the tabs of the folder Calhoun had taken from the black case.
She thought about that memo for eleven more seconds. Then she pressed her hand flat against her vest, feeling the small shape of the secondary device. She made her decision.