A quarter of a mile behind him, inside the climate-controlled cabin of a late-model police interceptor, Officer Sarah Jenkins gripped the steering wheel with tense, impatient hands at twenty-six years old, ambitious, sharp, and highly motivated, having been on the force for exactly three years and approaching her job with a rigid, almost mechanical adherence to the rulebook where the world was divided neatly into two categories: those who obeyed the law to the letter and those who needed to be corrected. Sitting in the passenger seat was her partner, Officer Mark Davies, a fifty-five-year-old seasoned veteran of the highway patrol counting the months until his pension fully vested, having seen enough traffic stops, accidents, and human folly to know that nothing was ever as simple as the rulebook suggested, so that where Jenkins saw black and white, Davies saw an endless, exhausting spectrum of gray. Both wore mirrored sunglasses shielding their eyes from the glaring afternoon sun and looked annoyed for entirely different reasons, prompting Jenkins to mutter with tight irritation that it was always the old guys on vintage bikes thinking the speed limit was a suggestion and lane lines optional. Davies sighed, shifting his weight in the uncomfortable tactical seat and looking out the windshield at the motorcycle pulling onto the shoulder ahead, noting that the rider wasn't speeding at all but doing forty-five in a sixty. Jenkins quickly countered by quoting the statute on impeding the flow of traffic without missing a beat, adding that he had drifted over the yellow line back by the mile marker, which could mean impairment or a medical issue, rendering him a hazard she needed to light up. Davies didn't argue because there was no point, knowing Jenkins had a tendency to lock onto a target and see it through once her mind was made up, though as they pulled up behind the stationary motorcycle, Davies felt a strange, inexplicable twinge in his gut as he watched the rider.
Most people displayed immediate signs of anxiety when pulled over, fidgeting, looking back over their shoulders, or scrambling in their pockets and glove compartments for documentation before the officer even approached, but the man sitting on the military-green motorcycle did none of these things, remaining still, calm, and unbothered without responding immediately to the flashing lights reflecting off his mirrors. He simply turned off the engine, kicked down the heavy steel stand, and sat there with his hands resting lightly on the tank, looking as though the flashing police lights behind him had nothing to do with him at all. Jenkins unbuckled her seatbelt with a sharp snap and remarked that he was acting like he owned the road, telling Mark to let her handle the talking because she was tired of giving warnings to stubborn grandpas refusing basic instructions. Davies slowly opened his door, stepping out onto the crunching gravel of the shoulder as the heat of the afternoon hit him instantly, radiating up from the asphalt, and advised her to take it easy since it was just a traffic stop and not a fight to go looking for. Jenkins ignored the advice, adjusted her duty belt to ensure her radio and sidearm were sitting perfectly flush, and began the walk toward the motorcycle, her boots crunching aggressively against the gravel to broadcast her authority with every step.