Malik didn't waste time replying. She threw her door open and hit the pavement running.
Reyes was standing near the curb, laughing with Junior about a sports game, when Malik sprinted across the asphalt toward him.
"Sarge! Captain Ubaldo is on the line!" Malik shouted, her voice cutting across the street like a siren. "He’s ordering her released right now! The field office has been trying to reach this post for fifteen minutes!"
Reyes’s smile froze. The color instantly drained from his face, leaving his skin a dull, pale gray. "What... what field office?"
Before Malik could answer, a low, thunderous roar echoed down Ninth Street.
It wasn't the familiar high-pitched wail of local police sirens. It was a heavy, coordinated rumble of high-displacement engines moving fast. Three dark gray unmarked chargers whipped around the corner in tight formation, their tires screeching against the pavement, followed immediately by a massive black Suburban equipped with government plates and hidden strobe lights flashing red and blue behind the grille.
The delivery driver dropped his clipboard onto the pavement. Junior took an instinctual step backward, his hand falling to his holster before he realized what he was looking at.
The dark sedans didn't slow down until they reached the yellow tape barricade, screeched to a halt, and boxed in Reyes’s patrol cruiser from three sides.
Doors flew open in perfect unison. Four tactical agents in dark jackets bearing bold gold "FBI" lettering stepped out, their weapons held at low-ready. From the front passenger seat of the black Suburban, a tall woman in a tailored navy blazer stepped out onto the asphalt. She moved with an absolute, terrifying calm—the posture of a senior official who had handled crisis situations for decades and had long since ceased to be impressed by local police authority.
She ignored Reyes completely. Her sharp eyes swept across the checkpoint, bypassing the yellow tape, the cruisers, and the frozen officers, until they locked onto the rear window of Unit 12.
"Where is Agent Torres?" Special Agent in Charge Renata Cole demanded, her voice carrying over the idling engines like a thunderclap.
Reyes opened his mouth to speak, but for the first time in his twenty-year career, no sound came out. His throat felt completely dry, locked in sheer panic.
"Here," a quiet voice called out from inside the cruiser.
Agent Cole covered the distance to Unit 12 in four long strides. She didn't ask Reyes for key fobs or permission; she reached out, grabbed the exterior door handle, and yanked the heavy door open herself.
She crouched down by the rear seat, her sharp eyes taking in the scene instantly: the plainclothes agent, the zip-tied wrists, and the pale, trembling sergeant standing ten feet away.
"Torres," Cole said softly, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the plastic bindings. "Are you injured?"
"I’m fine, Renata," Agent Torres said calmly, holding her bound wrists out toward her supervisor. "Get these off me. We don't have time for a dramatic scene."
Cole pulled a tactical knife from her belt, sliced through the heavy zip ties with a single clean stroke, and helped Torres step out onto the street.
Torres rubbed her wrists, where red marks were visible against her skin, and looked down at her watch. "The target vehicle went dark twelve minutes ago, didn't it?"
Cole’s jaw tightened, a muscle twitching near her temple. "Signal died right around the time you stopped answering your comms line. We lost the clean handoff at Ninth and Elm."
When Reyes finally managed to find his voice, it sounded small, high-pitched, and completely stripped of authority. "Is... is somebody going to explain what’s going on here?"
Agent Cole turned around slowly to face him. The sheer weight of her gaze made the two officers standing behind Reyes involuntarily take a step back, separating themselves from their commander.