“Travis. Things like this have a way of unraveling. Sooner or later. It’s best if you just give yourself up. You make a plea deal, help the D.A. make a case against Trimbeaux and Garcia for weapons dealing? That’ll go a long way. I know how these things work.”

“Notebooks. Are they in that camper of yours?”

“No. I learned a long time ago that’s the first place people look. I keep them hidden somewhere else.”

“Where?”

Shaw didn’t reply.

His edgy voice rose in volume as he said, “I’ll start shooting! Your foot, your knee.” He raised the gun.

Colter Shaw was a man who lived to rock climb, to ride his motorcycle just at or over the edge, who, on reward assignment occasionally grappled with escaped felons or murderous suspects. The idea of a catastrophic injury like a shattered knee or ankle was horrific.

“You really should think about my offer,” Shaw told him.

Travis glanced at the gun in his unsteady hand. “And you should think about mine.”

It was then that a loud electronic bleat filled the night and a voice on the loudspeaker called, “You, with the weapon, drop it now! Or you will be fired upon!”

Instinctively Travis turned, giving Shaw just enough time to lower his center of gravity and charge forward. He dropped low and gripped Travis’s left ankle, then executed a simple John Smith single-leg takedown, a classic wrestling maneuver. In a matter of seconds Travis was on his back, the breath knocked from his lungs and his gun ripped from his hand. Shaw tossed it aside fast.

Never a good idea to hold on to a weapon when the police are training theirs on you.

This wasn’t one of his father’s rules but, to Colter Shaw, it just seemed to make sense.

—

As he took back his license and concealed carry permit from the trooper and stowed them in his wallet, Shaw was listening to the man.

“So. We got a call from somebody reporting an assault on the road here, mile marker thirty-four. Somebody named Travis Lanford had attacked a Colter Shaw. What exactly is going on?”

Shaw didn’t explain that, in anticipation of the attack by Travis, he had been live streaming the drive via a body cam to his resourceful private eye, back in Washington, D.C. The minute the tire was shot out, Mack had called Tom Pepper, Shaw’s friend and retired FBI agent, who had contacts within the Ohio State Highway Patrol. He’d called in some favors and OSHP had a team sent here.

“What’s this all about, sir?” the trooper asked, less patiently this time.