For a brief second, a faint flicker of relief passed across the woman’s face—the recognition that a formal procedure, however delayed, was finally starting.
"Wait, hold on," Reyes interrupted, holding his hand up before Junior could press the button. "Cancel that radio call. I’ll handle the verification personally on my handheld once I clear the intersection."
Reyes didn't want dispatch logging a inquiry before he figured out who this woman actually was. If she was nobody, he’d look foolish; if she was somebody, he didn't want a paper trail showing he had ignored her for ten minutes. Junior hesitated, his thumb hovering over the mic, before slowly dropping his hand.
Malik watched the hesitation and felt a cold pit form in her stomach. Delaying a badge verification wasn't tactical caution; it was pure ego. She set the box of road flares down on the bumper of her cruiser and stepped closer to the scene.
"Sarge," Malik said quietly, stepping between Reyes and the barricade. "If there’s an active federal request, wouldn't dispatch already have the cross-agency file open on the CAD screen?"
"I said I’d handle it, Malik," Reyes growled, his voice tight. "Back off."
"Copy that," Malik said softly, but she didn't return to her vehicle. She stayed put, watching closely.
The woman used the pause to address Reyes again, her voice calm despite the mounting pressure. "Special Agent Renata Cole is my supervisor at the field office. If you dial the direct liaison number printed on the back of that credential case, someone will answer within thirty seconds and verify my identity, my authorization, and my presence here. That is all you need to do."
"Renata Cole," Reyes repeated, trying to sound dismissive, though the name clearly carried weight. "You guys always have a big name ready to drop."
"It’s not a name to drop," she replied smoothly. "It’s a phone number to dial."
Instead of opening the case, Reyes unzipped his tactical vest pocket and slid the leather case inside, zipping it shut. It was a deliberate, petty act—an assertion of dominance over a situation that was rapidly slipping out of his control.
"I’ll hang onto this until I get a proper answer from my command," Reyes said.
The woman didn't yell. She didn't reach for her hip. But her posture locked into a rigid, lethal stillness.
"Sergeant, that credential case and everything inside it is federal property," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "You are currently committing a federal offense by withholding it."
"I’ll return it when I’m satisfied," Reyes said coldly.
Down the street, out of sight of the checkpoint, the blue sedan sat idling at a stop sign two blocks away. The driver checked his rearview mirror, searching for a tail that wasn't supposed to be there yet—not for another four minutes, according to a schedule designed around Danforth Street being completely locked down.
The woman checked her watch again. Ninety seconds had passed since her last check.
"I need you to understand something, Sergeant," she said, her voice laced with a sudden, razor-sharp edge. "I am not asking you to trust me. I am asking you to make a thirty-second phone call. If I am lying, you can arrest me, impound my vehicle, and charge me with impersonating an officer. But if I am telling the truth, and you continue to stall this operation, you are about to cause damage that no amount of paperwork will ever fix."
Reyes opened his mouth to laugh, but the sound died in his throat. There was an unmistakable difference between someone bluffing out of fear and someone stating a catastrophic fact with total certainty.
For a fraction of a second, the veteran officer inside Reyes—the man buried beneath years of toxic pride and street-level arrogance—recognized the danger. But his squad was watching. Admitting a mistake now meant losing face in front of the officers who backed him every day.
"Junior," Reyes ordered, gesturing toward the patrol car. "Escort her over to Unit 12. She can sit in the back until we sort this out with proper paperwork."
"Sergeant," Malik interrupted, her voice sharper this time. "We don't have legal grounds to detain her. She hasn't committed a crime, breached the yellow tape, or refused a lawful command. She asked for her property back."
"I’m asking her to wait in a secure area so she isn't standing in the middle of an active street operation," Reyes shot back, using the practiced bureaucrat-speak that always sounded clean on an incident report. "Move her."