A corrupt Sheriff shot my 17-year-old son, permanently destroying both his kneecaps. "Shouldn't have looked at me wrong, boy," the cop laughed, protected by his union. I rushed into the ER in my cheap janitor uniform. My son wept, "Dad, I'll never walk again." I didn't scream or cry. The arrogant Sheriff thought he had just ruined a powerless janitor's family. I pulled out my phone and called my old team. That was the moment his nightmare began. / Chapter 4 / 20

Chapter 4 - The EvidenceThe timestamp on the bottom right corner of the screen read: 21:12:04 p.m.

The camera mounted on Sheriff Barnes's cruiser showed my son's blue pickup truck pulling cleanly to the curb on a quiet stretch of Route 9. Tyler's turn signal was flashing yellow against the dark trees.

Barnes's cruiser pulled up behind him. Barnes stepped out of his vehicle, holding a twelve-gauge tactical shotgun in his right hand. He didn't walk up to the driver's window to ask for license and registration.

He walked straight to the driver's door, ripped it open, and grabbed Tyler by the shirt collar, dragging my seventeen-year-old son violently out onto the wet asphalt.

"Get on the ground, you little trash!" Barnes's voice echoed loudly through the cruiser's external microphone.

"Sir! What did I do? I was just driving home!" Tyler cried, his hands raised palms-up in complete surrender, clearly visible in the bright halogen headlights of the police vehicle. He was wearing grey sweatpants and a high school basketball hoodie.

Barnes didn't answer. He kicked Tyler in the stomach, knocking him onto his back on the pavement.

Then, with absolute, deliberate coldness, Barnes aimed the 12-gauge shotgun directly at Tyler's left knee and pulled the trigger.

A loud, thunderous BOOM rattled the audio feed. Tyler screamed—a blood-curdling, agony-filled shriek that made Dax curse under his breath beside me.

Tyler rolled onto his side, clutching his shattered leg, weeping uncontrollably.

Barnes stepped forward, racked another heavy shell into the chamber, aimed at Tyler's right knee, and fired again.

BOOM.

"Shouldn't have looked at me wrong, boy," Barnes's voice came through the speakers, sharp and clear. "Let's see your pathetic janitor daddy try to mop this up."

Barnes then pulled a small, cheap silver folding knife from his own pocket, opened the blade, and threw it onto the wet asphalt beside Tyler's bleeding hands. He stepped back toward his cruiser, picked up his radio mic, and spoke in a calm, flat tone:

"Dispatch, Code 3 on Route 9. Suspect produced a edged weapon during a felony stop. Shots fired. Send medical."

The video feed stopped.

Inside the dark warehouse, the silence was suffocating.

Dax was gripping the edge of the pickup truck hood so hard the sheet metal groaned under his iron fingers. Viper sat frozen, staring at the screen with absolute fury in his eyes. Ghost slowly turned his head to look at me.

"Reaper," Ghost said, his voice dropping into a register that meant death. "Order of battle?"

I reached out, closed the laptop screen, and looked at my team.

"We don't kill him," I said. "Death is too fast. He thinks he owns this county. He thinks his union, his judges, and his money make him untouchable. We're going to strip away his power, his money, his allies, and his freedom piece by piece until he's begging for a concrete cell."