The driver did not look at the dashboard. He did not need to. His left hand, the one that had been resting on the wheel, drifted a few inches lower and out of sight. His right hand stayed where it was. His face stayed where it was. Only his eyes moved, very briefly, to Harlan's right hand on the window frame.
"It is new, sir. They rebranded last month."
"Ah. That is the trouble with rebranding. Half the cars look like they belong to someone else."
A small black SUV pulled around the north corner at the far end of the block and stopped against the curb. A second one pulled around the south corner ten seconds later. Neither used a siren. Neither used a light.
Two men in plain dark jackets stepped out of the first vehicle and began walking toward the sedan along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, not hurrying, not looking at the car. From the south, a man and a woman in matching jackets did the same. Lieutenant Marsha Vance had positioned her people exactly the way Harlan had asked her to.
The driver's eyes flicked once toward the north end of the block, then once toward the south. The pale gray went very still.
"Patrick," Harlan said softly, "I want you to keep both of your hands where I can see them."
The driver looked at him. "Step away from the car, sir," he said quietly. "Now."
Harlan did not step away. He did not move at all. He kept his hand on the frame of the open window and his eyes on the pale gray eyes of the man in the driver's seat. And he spoke in the same conversational voice he had been using since he walked out of the building:
"Patrick, there are eight officers within fifty feet of this car. Two of them are behind you. Two of them are in front of you. Four of them are across the street. If you reach for whatever is under that dashboard, you will not finish the motion. I am telling you this not because I am threatening you; I am telling you this because I would prefer that you live through the next sixty seconds. I would prefer that a court hear what you have to say. I would prefer that the people who sent you here be the ones who answer for what they planned to do this morning. Do you understand me?"
The driver did not answer. His chest had begun to move very slowly, in the controlled way of a man who was counting his breaths to keep his hands still.
From the corner of his eye, Harlan saw the two officers from the north end of the block step off the curb and begin to cross the street at an unhurried diagonal. From the south, the other two had done the same. The sedan was, without anyone having raised a voice, surrounded.