Pike thumbed down the volume. "Could be a stolen radio."
"Dorian," Van said quietly. "The plate return on the screen was clear."
Pike turned his head just enough to silence him. Van's hand moved toward the small notebook in his vest, then stopped.
Camille could have countermanded herself. One sentence would bring county deputies across the city line within minutes. But Pike still had a weapon inches from her ribs, Van was frightened, and families were watching from the gas pumps. She would not turn a false stop into a cross-agency gunfight.
Pike tightened the cuffs until metal cut through her gloves. "Officer Van, note that the suspect claimed law enforcement status after being detained."
"She claimed it before," Van said.
Pike rose and waved toward the cruiser. "Call Sloan Towing. Priority impound. We're booking her for vehicle theft, obstruction, and impersonating an officer."
Van looked once at the glowing terminal, then wrote something in his notebook. Pike hauled Camille upright by the injured arm and marched the county sheriff toward the back of a city patrol car.
The rear door opened onto a plastic seat already hot from the sun. Pike pushed Camille inside without protecting her head. Her helmet struck the doorframe, and the impact flashed white across her vision.
"Medical attention," she said. "I have a thermal injury on my right forearm, and you just hit my head."
Pike closed the door.
Through the partition, Camille watched Van remain beside the Harley. He had opened his notebook again. Pike approached him, spoke too quietly for her to hear, then took the book from his hand and flipped through it. Van reached for it, but Pike held it against his own chest until the younger officer stepped back.
Camille forced herself to breathe slowly. Panic made witnesses remember fragments; training made them remember sequence. She fixed each detail in order: contradictory commands, clear plate return, county transmission, Pike lowering the radio volume, Van's correction, Sloan Towing.
That habit had begun long before voters placed a sheriff's star beside her name. She had spent 14 years working road patrol, teaching recruits that memory was not evidence until it was preserved and tested. At home, the same habit irritated Jordan, who said her mother could turn a grocery receipt into a case file.
The thought of her daughter sharpened the ache behind Camille's eyes. Jordan had stood in their garage that morning, tightening the strap on Camille's helmet while pretending not to worry about the dark clouds gathering west of Asheford County. At 19, she had inherited Camille's stubbornness and none of her patience for institutional excuses.
"You could take the SUV like a normal sheriff," Jordan had said.
"A normal sheriff doesn't promise a motorcycle safety class and arrive in a government truck."
Camille had spent the morning showing new riders how to brake through a curve without staring at the obstacle they feared. Afterward, she had taken Harbor Ridge Boulevard toward the county emergency operations center. Severe storms were expected by evening, and municipal chiefs were waiting for her to approve the mutual aid deployment plan.
Now, her county radio rested in Pike's hand outside the cruiser.
Van finally returned. Before getting behind the wheel, he opened Camille's door and reached across her carefully enough to avoid the burned arm. He fastened the seat belt, then checked the cuffs.
"They're too tight," she said.