Mitchell swallowed hard. Panic began to set in. "I... you... you were acting suspicious. You refused to identify yourself."

"I offered to show you my ID. You told me not to reach, and then you tackled me," Marcus corrected him, his tone devoid of anger, which somehow made it vastly more terrifying for Mitchell. "Take. The. Cuff. Off."

Before Mitchell could figure out how to un-dig the massive hole he had just thrown his career into, the sound of tires crunching on gravel echoed from the ridge above.

Marcus had been scheduled to meet City Commissioner Davis at 6:45 AM for a site walk-through before the heavy machinery arrived. Right on time, a sleek black city SUV pulled up next to Mitchell's improperly parked cruiser. Following closely behind the SUV was a police supervisor's vehicle—Captain Reynolds, who routinely escorted the Commissioner on these high-profile site visits.

Commissioner Davis, a sharp-eyed woman in her fifties, stepped out of the SUV holding two coffees. She looked down the hill and froze. Captain Reynolds stepped out of his vehicle a second later, his hand immediately going to his radio as he saw one of his officers kneeling on a man in the mud.

"Officer Mitchell! What is the situation?" Captain Reynolds barked, jogging quickly down the hill, his boots slipping on the dew.

Commissioner Davis followed closely behind, but as she got closer, she recognized the jacket. She recognized the boots. And then, she saw the face pressed into the dirt.

"Marcus?!" Commissioner Davis shrieked, dropping the coffees. "Oh my god! Marcus!"

She ran to him, pushing past a stunned Officer Mitchell. "Captain Reynolds, get your man off my Chief Engineer right this second!"

Captain Reynolds reached the bottom of the hill, took one look at the open blueprints, the contractor ID hanging from Marcus's neck, and the sheer terror on Officer Mitchell's face, and understood the situation entirely.