The magistrate’s signature was real.

The probable cause statement beneath it was completely fabricated — a fiction, dressed in the language of law.

“Take whatever you need, Deputy,” I said, smoothly.

Cole blinked, visibly thrown.

He had braced for an explosive argument, a physical confrontation, the furious husband refusing to surrender his wounded wife’s belongings.

He got a calm nod instead, and it unsettled him far more than any shouting would have, because a man who lets you take his wife’s phone without a fight is a man who is not worried about what is on it.

Cole bagged the phone from the nightstand, and left, and he did not know the single thing that mattered: that every critical file on that device had already been automatically mirrored to a secure, off-site federal evidence server twelve hours earlier, before I had even landed.