She stripped him of his keys, his Glock 17, and his phone. She zip-tied him to the bed frame using his own gear and gagged him. She moved up the stairs like a ghost. In the breakroom, Vance and Dixon were finishing a bottle of bourbon. Sarah didn’t burst in; she knocked.
Vance opened the door, expecting Reed. Instead, he found the business end of a Glock. Before he could shout, Sarah drove the grip of the pistol into his nose, shattering the bone. He hit the floor, clutching his face. Dixon lunged for his holster, but Sarah was faster. A front kick to his solar plexus folded him, and a follow-up knee to the temple ended the fight.
It was over in six seconds. Sarah stood over them, her breathing steady. She didn’t kill them—that would be too easy. She cuffed them to the heavy radiator pipes. She went into the office, retrieved her classified folder, and found the keys to an unmarked Ford Taurus in the lot.
She looked at Vance, who was sobbing through a broken nose. She told him, “I told you I was a Major. You should have listened.” She took their phones—the ones with the videos of the assault—and vanished into the night. She knew the local police would be looking for her, so she ditched the car in a neighboring county and hiked ten miles to a safe house.
She contacted her CO, Colonel Miller (no relation), and laid out the situation. The “official” story in the news was that a dangerous fugitive had attacked three deputies. The local Sheriff was calling for her head. Sarah stayed underground, waiting for the military’s legal team to move.
When she was eventually “captured” at a bus station in Roanoke, it was a media circus. The local DA wanted the death penalty. Sarah sat through the preliminary hearings with that same stone-cold expression. Vance and Dixon sat in the front row, wearing neck braces and looking like victims. The judge, a friend of the Sheriff, sentenced her to three years pending a full trial.
