They brought Walter Briggs forward under the canopy, out of the rain, because Hall wanted him heard clearly. Two agents flanked him, one holding his elbow, the other carrying the black duffel by its strap with care. Briggs was smaller without his office counter between him and the world. His shoes squeaked on the wet concrete.
"Set the bag down," Hall said. "Open it."
An agent crouched, gloved hands working the zipper. Inside, packed tight, were stacks of cash bound with paper bands, each stack squared off like bricks. Beneath the money, wrapped in gray cloth, lay a row of encrypted radios, their charging lights dark, their serial plates filed but not quite clean. A second agent photographed everything before a single item was lifted out.
"Inventory in place," Reyes said to the agent with the camera. "Count later, under seal. Photograph now."
Briggs watched his money get documented and something in him broke loose, the frantic arithmetic of a man recalculating his future and hating every total he reached.
"This was not the arrangement," he said.
"Nobody asked you yet," Reyes said.
"He did." Briggs jerked his chin toward Halvorsen, who stood by the patrol car with an agent on either side, his rain jacket dripping, his hands empty and visible. "He called me. Twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes before any of this. He said the lot would be clear. He said nobody was watching."
The words landed in the wet air and stayed there.
Halvorsen shook his head once, sharply. "Walter, stop talking."
"Why?" Briggs demanded, his voice rising. "Why should I stop? You said nobody was watching! Those were your words. You told me to move the shipment early, before the morning trucks, because your people had the road and the cameras were handled. You promised me a window."
"I never promised—"
"You promised!" Briggs shouted, and the agents tightened their grip as he surged toward the patrol car before they checked him. "I have run this place for nine years without a federal vehicle on my lot. Then you call me at dawn, you tell me to hurry, and I walk out my own back door into a wall of agents holding my bag. You set me up to carry this alone."
"That is enough," Hall said, not loudly, but Briggs stopped as if a hand had closed around the back of his neck. Hall stepped closer, rain ticking off the brim of nothing, running down his trimmed beard in thin lines. "Say it again, slowly. When did he call you?"
Briggs swallowed. His eyes flicked to Reyes, to the cameras, to the ring of vehicles, as if counting witnesses.
"Twenty minutes before the stop," he said. "Maybe twenty-two. My phone is in the office, on the desk. Check the log. He said the agent problem was being handled at the pumps. He said those words. The agent problem. I did not know what he meant until I saw you in cuffs."
At the patrol car, Halvorsen found his voice. "He is lying to save himself. He would say anything. You cannot build anything on that man."
Hall turned his head slowly. "We are not building on him, Officer. We are listening to him. There is a difference, and you will learn it over the next several days."
Reyes moved to the office door and spoke to the agent inside. A moment later the agent returned with a phone in an evidence bag, holding it up so the screen showed through the plastic. The call log was already open. Reyes read the time aloud, then the duration, then looked at Halvorsen.
"The call happened," she said. "Eleven minutes of it, ending twenty minutes before you lit up Agent Hall's sedan. That is not a man inventing a story under pressure. That is a timestamp."
Briggs let out a breath that sounded almost like relief — the relief of a man who has decided that if he is going down, he is not going down alone. "Ask him about the radios," he said. "Ask him who paid for them. Ask him where the medical crates went in August. I kept books, you know. Men like me always keep books, because men like him always plan to deny everything."
"Where are the books?" Hall asked.
Briggs hesitated, and for the first time since his capture he smiled without any humor in it. "Somewhere your technicians will enjoy," he said. "Under the floor of the cold room. I will draw you a map when my lawyer tells me the deal is real."
Hall studied him, then nodded once to Reyes. "Separate them. Briggs goes in the second transport, alone, no conversation within earshot of Halvorsen. And get that phone log preserved before anyone's battery dies or anyone's courage changes."
As they led Briggs away, he twisted once more toward the patrol car and called out, clear enough for every microphone on the lot to catch it.
"You said nobody was watching, Greg. Look around."
Chapter 18: Two Prepaid Phones