The door slammed shut.
Through the window she watched them. Harlan was on his radio calling it in. Voice proud. Chest puffed out. Pratchett leaned against her car, arms folded, still wearing that same grin. Like two hunters posing over a trophy kill.
Camille sat there. Hands cuffed behind her back. Shoulders aching. Wrists throbbing against cold steel. Through the cage she could see her own car. The car she had paid for herself. Parked on the street she had lived on for three years. In the neighborhood she had every right to call home.
And none of it mattered. Not tonight. Tonight she was just another Black woman in the back of a police cruiser. Another name in a system that had already made up its mind about her.
She closed her eyes. Took one long, slow breath. And started memorizing everything. Every single word. Every action. Every lie. Every violation of the oath they had sworn to protect.
Because Camille Davis wasn’t just anyone. And what those two officers had just done—every single second of it—was going to come back to haunt them in ways they could not possibly imagine.
The cruiser pulled into the precinct parking lot at exactly 9:42 that night. She knew the time because the dashboard clock was the only thing she could see through the cage.
Harlan killed the engine. Pratchett got out first, yanked open her door, and grabbed her arm. Not gently. Not professionally. Like he was hauling a bag off a truck.
“Move.”
Her legs were stiff. Her wrists numb from the cuffs. She stumbled on the curb and Pratchett yanked her upright without breaking stride.
“Watch your step, sweetheart. Wouldn’t want you hurting yourself before we even get inside.”
Harlan laughed from behind.
“She’s probably not used to walking without stolen goods weighing her down.”
They pushed through the front doors and the smell hit her first. Burnt coffee and industrial floor cleaner. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, turning everything a sick, washed-out shade of yellow. Officers sat at desks scattered across the open floor. Some glanced up when Camille was marched past in handcuffs. Most didn’t bother looking twice. Nobody said a word. Nobody questioned why a woman in a blazer and pressed slacks was being walked through the building like a convicted felon.
Pratchett walked her to the booking counter. A young clerk—couldn’t have been older than twenty-five—looked at Camille, then at Pratchett, then back at Camille. Something shifted in his face. He opened his mouth like he wanted to ask a question. Then thought better of it.
“Felony possession with intent to distribute,” Pratchett announced, sliding the evidence bag across the counter like a trophy he had earned. “Found it right under her seat. Textbook.”
The clerk held the bag under the light. Turned it over slowly. Looked at Camille standing in cuffs with mascara starting to smudge under her eyes. His fingers hesitated above the keyboard for a long moment.
“Process her,” Harlan said flatly. “What are you waiting for?”
The clerk swallowed hard and started typing.
Camille stood there, hands cuffed behind her back, under lights so bright they stung her eyes. Every officer in that room could see her. A woman in professional clothes standing at a booking counter in handcuffs. Not one of them looked twice. Not one raised a question. Not one had the spine to say what everyone should have been thinking.
Mugshot time.
Harlan grabbed her shoulder and steered her toward the camera station. A height chart mounted on the wall. A metal stool. A camera on a tripod. She’d seen setups like this many times throughout her career. But always from the other side of the lens. Never standing in front of it. Never with her own face about to become evidence.
“Stand straight. Face forward.”
The flash went off. White. Blinding. Like a punch made of light.
“Turn left.”
Flash.
“Turn right.”
Flash.
Each one felt like a slap she wasn’t allowed to return.
Fingerprints.
Pratchett pressed each finger into the ink pad so hard the tips turned white beneath the black. Then rolled them across the card like kneading dough. Slow. Rough. Making absolutely sure she felt every single second of it.
“You’re hurting me,” she said quietly.
“You’ll live. People like you are tougher than you look. All that running from the law builds real character.”
Two officers at a nearby desk heard every word. One snorted into his coffee. The other kept his eyes locked on his screen and said nothing. Neither spoke up. Neither moved.
Camille said nothing. She kept breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The way she had trained herself through situations she could not control.
But this wasn’t a training exercise. This wasn’t a case study on a screen at the academy. This was her own life. Her own wrists bleeding from the cuffs. Her own fingers stained black with ink. Her own face now filed permanently in their system as a criminal.
They walked her down a narrow hallway and put her in an interrogation room. Gray cinder-block walls. A metal table bolted to the floor. Two chairs on one side. One on the other. The vent rattled, but the room was freezing. The kind of cold that seeps through your clothes, past your muscles, straight into your bones, and refuses to leave.
Harlan sat across from her. Pratchett stood by the door, thick arms crossed, blocking the only way out.
“Here’s how this goes,” Harlan began, leaned back, casual, like catching up over beers. “Tell us where you got the stuff. Who you sell to. And how long you’ve been running product through Meadow Ridge. Do that, maybe the DA goes easier on you.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” He smiled like she’d told a joke. “Know what a good lawyer costs? Sure you can swing that?”
“I want a lawyer.”
“We’ll get there. First, off the record. Just a friendly conversation.”
“There is no off the record. I want a lawyer. That is my constitutional right, and this conversation ends until I have legal counsel present in this room.”
Harlan stared at her. Long. Hard. His smile dissolved completely. Something darker crossed his face. The frustration of a man who was used to watching people crumble in that chair. And she was not crumbling. Not bending. Not even a little.
He leaned forward until his elbows hit the table.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Think a few phrases off some TV show let you play games with me in my own house?”
She didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
“Twelve years in this precinct. Twelve. I’ve watched a hundred women just like you sit in that exact chair and tell me the exact same story. It’s not mine. I want a lawyer. You planted it. Know where every last one of them ended up?”
He let the question hang in the stale air.
“Prison. Every single one.”
The door swung open. A new figure stepped through. Older. Heavier. Silver bars pinned to his collar. Captain Ray Felton. He walked in like he owned every inch of the room. Because inside these walls, he did.
He glanced at Camille for two seconds. Didn’t acknowledge her. Turned to Harlan.
“This the one from Meadow Ridge?”
“Yes, sir. Possession with intent. Right under the seat.”
Felton nodded slowly. Then he walked to Pratchett. Put a firm hand on his shoulder. Squeezed it like a proud father.
“Good work, boys. Keep that neighborhood clean.”
Clean.
That single word filled the room like poison gas. Every person there understood what it meant. And who it was aimed at.
Felton looked at Camille one last time. The way someone inspects a stain before scrubbing it out.