The ride to the station took six minutes. Voss drove with one wrist draped over the steering wheel, humming along to a country station. Every so often he glanced at me in the rearview mirror and smiled.
The young deputy sat in the passenger seat holding my purse in his lap. His name tag said MILLER. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. He kept stealing looks at me over his shoulder. He looked like he wanted to say something and didn’t dare.
“Run her name when we get in,” Voss told him. “And find out what she was doing in my county.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Probably casing the pharmacy,” Voss said to nobody in particular. “Pruitt’s got opioids in there. I’ve seen her type.”
My type.
I looked out the window at the dry fields and the kudzu-covered pines, and I counted my breaths. Four seconds in, four seconds out. My grandmother taught me that in a church pew when I was six, when a white man at a Waffle House called my granddaddy a word I’m not going to write down.
“You keep your breath,” she told me, “and you keep your mind. They can’t take either one unless you hand it to them.”
The Pell County Sheriff’s Office was a low tan brick building next to the courthouse square, with a flagpole out front and a faded sign: “Serving Pell County with Pride Since 1871.” Voss pulled around back to the sally port and hauled me out of the car by the arm.
Inside, the air smelled like burnt coffee and floor wax. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A clerk with reading glasses on a beaded chain sat behind the booking desk. Two deputies stood near the holding cells. A third sat at a computer.
All of them looked at me, then quickly looked away.
“Put her in the chair,” Voss said. “I’ll be in my office.”
As Miller walked me to the booking chair, one of the other deputies leaned toward him and whispered something I wasn’t supposed to hear.
“He’s picked up people for a lot less than this.”
Miller didn’t answer.
Voss swaggered into his office and slammed the door. Through the glass, I watched him drop into his leather chair, put his boots up on the desk, and pick up his phone.
Then my government phone buzzed again inside the purse in Miller’s hands.
Miller looked down at the purse. He hesitated. Then, following procedure, he unzipped it to inventory the contents and find my ID.
He took out my wallet and opened it.
Then he took out the black leather credential case tucked behind it.
I watched his fingers stop moving.
It was a gold seal with an eagle, and beneath it the words United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia, with my photograph and name: The Honorable Amara J. Whitlock, United States District Judge.
The color drained from his face. He read it once, then again.
“Judge Amara Whitlock?” he whispered. “United States District Court?”
Specialty: Legal & Financial Drama
Michael Carter covers stories where money, power, and personal history collide. His writing often explores courtroom battles, business conflicts, and the subtle strategies people use when pushed into a corner. He focuses on grounded, realistic storytelling with attention to detail and believable motivations.