Troubleshooter by Gregg Hurwitz Page B

on."
    Zimmer reluctantly clicked a button. The CD rasped into motion inside the laptop, throwing the footage from Dray's patrol car back onto the opposing wall. The vehicle cam, mounted in the center rearview, activated automatically when the overheads turned on, providing a panoramic windshield shot.
    A bumpy view as she pulled to the side of the desolate highway, Den riding trapped in the spotlight in front of her. Dray had been able to make the ID only because Tim had ordered Den to toss his helmet at the last stop--a stroke of luck soon to go bad.
    Dray keyed a few bursts on the siren to make sure Den got the point, and then her voice came loud over the PA: "Pull over! Motor off! Hands up!"
    Her nervous breathing was audible as she sat for a moment, gathering her adrenaline for the approach. A vicious barking exploded over the PA system. Dray kept a recording of a German shepherd in her car to deter arrest resistance when she patrolled alone. She pretended to soothe the dog, then the car rocked a bit, and they heard the sound of a door opening, Dray's boot setting down on gravel.
    Dread sat like a medicine ball in Tim's gut.
    Dray finally stepped into view in the spotlight's fringe, all muscle and belly, gripping her Beretta with both hands. As her pregnancy had advanced, Tim had objected to her working a squad car alone, but her arguments had already been sharpened against her reluctant captain. Her station was short on manpower and long on casework, and Dray was short on patience for special treatment and long on obduracy.
    Her olive green baseball cap sported a molded bill and a Ventura County Sheriff's badge. Blond hair shot out in clean strokes behind her ears. She lumbered toward the bike. "That's it. Keep those hands up. Step off the bike."
    The engines scarcely gave warning before four bikes materialized from the darkness, two from each direction, pulling tight around Den. The nomads' security travel formation, as Tim had learned last night, was geared for precisely this contingency. The bikers angled their mirrors away so the spotlight wouldn't blind them. Den alone squinted into his rearview, braving the glare to keep the bore of the handlebar shotgun sighted.
    Dray stopped, caught halfway between Den and her vehicle. Tim registered her fear in the slight crouch of her posture. The knowledge of how she felt and what was coming made his breathing quicken to match hers. He'd been in precisely the same position an hour before she was. Bear raised a hand halfway to his eyes as if unsure whether he wanted to cover them.
    The other bikers wore helmets, but Tim could tentatively identify Chief, Tom-Tom, and Goat from their builds and postures. The fourth, too slender to be Kaner, wrestled off his helmet, revealing a familiar sallow face framed by ragged hair. The elastic eye-patch strap indented his hair on either side. He shifted, and the armband came into view, as well as the gaudy pinkie ring. The striker. Either they'd picked him up en route to Moorpark or he'd hung back out of view during the nomads' encounter with Tim.
    The striker's words barely reached the camera mike: "You'd better back off, bitch."
    "Get back to the car, Andrea," Tim said sharply under his breath, drawing a few glances from around the table.
    "Hands up. All of you. You, too." Dray eased back a few steps, her shoulders to the camera. Tim found himself, dumbly, hoping for her safe retreat.
    The crackle of gravel was barely audible as an additional bike rolled up, out of the camera's view. Kaner?
    Dray's head snapped back, offering a clean profile over her right shoulder. She tracked the phantom bike forward as it passed her car, then her present position. Judging from the angle of her head, the bike stopped on the shoulder to the right of the others, just out of the camera's scope. She kept her eyes on the phantom bike, her gun on the cluster of men in front of her.
    Her tone was authoritative; probably Tim alone could tell it lacked her usual