The woman at the barricade ignored all of them. She raised her left arm and looked down at her wristwatch.
"Something more important than this conversation?" Reyes mocked.
"Yes," she said quietly. She looked up from her watch directly into Reyes's eyes. "You have about four minutes before this becomes a much bigger problem than a badge you don't want to believe is real."
The statement landed heavily, but Reyes chose to treat it like the punchline to a grand joke. He wiped a tear from his eye, shaking his head exaggeratedly.
"Four minutes! Oh man, four minutes!" Reyes laughed, looking back at his squad for approval. "And what happens in four minutes, ma'am? Do the Men in Black drop down from helicopters?"
The woman didn't answer. Deep inside her jacket, her phone vibrated once. A short, sharp buzz. She felt it, glanced down for less than a second to confirm the alert, and left the phone in her pocket.
Ten feet away, standing near the open trunk of Unit 14, Officer Priya Malik stopped restocking road flares. Unlike the rest of the squad, Malik wasn't laughing.
During the brief moment Reyes had held the leather case up, Malik had caught a clean, half-second glimpse of the badge under the bright morning sun. The deep blue enamel, the crisp federal seal, the crisp serial engraving along the bottom edge—it didn't look like a plastic prop or a printed novelty card. Malik had completed an advanced federal coordination seminar six months ago, and every detail of that shield matched the security slides printed in the training manual.
Malik opened her mouth to say something, but closed it immediately when Reyes shot her a stern look. Reyes hated being corrected in public, especially by a junior officer with four years on the force.
"Look," Reyes said, his voice dropping into a stern, patronizing tone as he waved the credential case around. "I’ll radio this in when I get around to it. Right now, I’ve got an actual operation to run, a perimeter to secure, and a block to keep clear. So step back behind the line before I cite you for obstruction."
The woman’s tone didn't shift. It didn't rise, nor did it betray anger.
"You are currently holding official federal credentials that you have refused to verify," she said clearly, ensuring her words carried to every officer present. "You are actively blocking a coordinating federal agent from an active perimeter, and you are doing so in front of four uniformed witnesses, one of whom is recording this interaction on his phone. I strongly suggest you think very carefully about what you choose to do in the next sixty seconds."
For the very first time, the grin faded from Reyes’s face.
Down the block, well within sight of the checkpoint, a dark blue sedan parked near the alleyway suddenly pulled away from the curb. It hadn't been scheduled to move for another six minutes. The car made a sharp right turn onto Ninth Street and vanished around the corner.
The woman’s eyes followed the sedan until it disappeared, then slowly shifted back to Reyes.
"That sedan," she said softly. "Did your dispatch clear it through this perimeter?"
"That’s none of your business," Reyes snapped, though his eyes darted nervously toward the corner where the car had vanished.
"It is my business if that vehicle is the primary target of the multi-agency operation I am currently coordinating," she said.
Reyes scoffed, trying to regain his composure. "Cars move around checkpoints all the time. Local residents, delivery drivers, people who don't care about police tape. I’ve waved off a dozen of them this morning."
"Not at 8:18 AM on this specific block," she replied flatly. "And not that specific vehicle."
Reyes cleared his throat, feeling the sudden shift in the air. The laughter among his officers had died down into an awkward silence.
He turned to the younger officer holding the phone. "Junior, call dispatch. Ask if we have any active Bureau coordination requests logged for the Danforth sector this morning."
"On it, Sarge," Junior said, quickly tucking his phone away and reaching for his shoulder mic.