“Get her in a holding cell,” Miller said. “I want her processed and ready for arraignment by morning.”
O'Grady grabbed Cynthia by the bicep, his fingers pressing into her arm. “Come on, Holloway. Your new home awaits.”
She was placed in a cold concrete cell smelling faintly of urine and bleach, a small room with a metal bench bolted to the wall and a single barred window high up that let in nothing but a gray, artificial light. The iron door clanged shut behind her with a sound that echoed down the corridor, and the lock turned with a heavy, metallic thunk. Cynthia sat down on the bench, the cold seeping through her slacks, and folded her hands in her lap. She did not pace. She did not shout. She did not bang on the bars. She sat still and let her mind work, the way it had worked in far more dangerous places than this cell.
For the next two hours, Cynthia sat on the metal bench, her mind working like a supercomputer, sorting and storing and connecting every detail of the night. She was not just dealing with a bad cop. She was looking at a systemic failure, a culture that had allowed a man like O'Grady to feel comfortable planting evidence on a highway and then bragging about it in a cruiser. O'Grady was confident because he was protected. Doyle was complicit because he had learned that loyalty to a partner mattered more than loyalty to the truth. The desk sergeant was indifferent because indifference was easier than asking questions. Captain Miller was results-oriented, turning a blind eye to how those results were obtained, because results kept his precinct's numbers up and his own career moving forward. If this is what they did to a woman who remained completely compliant and calm, she shuddered to think what they did to kids on the street who argued back, who did not know their rights, who did not have a secure server in Quantico preserving every second of their arrest.
She thought about her twenty-eight years again, not with nostalgia but with a renewed sense of purpose. She had started as a beat cop in Atlanta because she believed a badge could be a shield for people who had no other protection. She had risen through the Bureau because she believed institutions could be made honest, even when honesty was inconvenient. Tonight had tested that belief in the most personal way possible, and it had not broken it. It had sharpened it. She was not in this cell as a victim waiting to be rescued. She was in this cell as a witness gathering evidence, and she intended to use every piece of it.
At one fifteen in the morning, O'Grady returned to the cell door. He smacked the bars with his nightstick, the metal ringing sharply in the quiet corridor, and grinned through the bars at her.
“Wake up, Holloway,” he said. “You get your one phone call, then we're going to have a little chat.”
He escorted her to a wall-mounted phone at the end of the corridor, his hand hovering near her elbow but not quite touching her now, as if he were already bored with the performance. “Make it quick, and make it a lawyer,” he said. “You're going to need one.”
Cynthia picked up the receiver. The plastic was cool and slightly sticky, and the dial tone buzzed in her ear. She dialed a Washington, D.C. area code, her fingers steady on the keypad, and the number bypassed standard switchboards and connected directly to a secure line in the home of James Carter, the Deputy Director of the FBI. It rang twice. The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet corridor, and O'Grady leaned against a wall ten feet away, smirking, clearly enjoying the sight of a woman he believed was calling a lawyer who could not possibly save her.
“Carter,” a gravelly voice answered, thick with sleep but instantly alert underneath it.
“Jim, it's Cynthia,” Cynthia said, keeping her voice low, her eyes fixed on O'Grady.
There was a fraction of a second of silence as Carter's brain shifted from sleep to high alert, the silence of a man who recognized a voice he did not expect to hear at one in the morning and who understood immediately that something was wrong.
“Director, where are you?” Carter asked, his voice sharpening. “Your security detail has been tearing the city apart for three hours.”
“I'm at the 42nd District Precinct in Oakland,” Cynthia said, still keeping her voice low, still watching O'Grady smirk from his place against the wall. “I've been arrested.”
“Arrested?” Carter said. “Under what charge?”
“Possession with intent to distribute,” Cynthia said. “The arresting officer planted the narcotics in my rental car.”
Silence on the line. Then, a cold, terrifying fury entered Carter's voice, the fury of a man who had worked beside Cynthia for years and who knew exactly what she was capable of enduring and exactly what she would not tolerate.
“Do you want me to send a tactical team through the front door?” Carter asked.
“No,” Cynthia said, and a sharp smile touched the corners of her mouth for the first time that night, a smile O'Grady could not see from where he stood. “I want to see how deep this rot goes. Send a discreet team to extract the dash and cabin footage from my rental car. It was impounded by the 42nd. Then, I need you to fly to Oakland immediately. You're going to act as my attorney.”