The Guardian Read Free Page B

trap.  She’d learned the fact well that same year returning home from New Orleans past curfew (even though she was eighteen, but living under her parents’ roof).  Luckily, her passenger was a close friend in the military.  When the second police officer stopped her speeding at 140 miles per hour, her friend explained to the ex-marine cop they were headed to the hospital in Baton Rouge.  Several correctly answered questions later, the trooper released the speeding duo but followed up with a phone call to Dawn’s cousin, who at the time was Lafayette’s district attorney and her father’s nephew.
            Dawn vowed she’d learned a lesson that night and realized she was being watched.
            It had been at least five minutes since Dawn heard the voice when the Hispanic male appeared in the rear view.  Black and bushy, shoulder length hair bounced carelessly disguising his face as he walked nonchalantly passed Dawn’s car carrying a backpack into the beeper shop.  He walked quickly like he was late for something rather important.
            As though something had forced her hands there, Dawn turned the ignition, but before she could shift to reverse, an unmarked car screeched to a halt behind her.  “Oh, my God,” she uttered, glaring in horror at a swarm of men dressed in all-black charged the front door of the beeper shop carrying guns.  Big guns.  The letters D-E-A stamped in large, yellow block letters on the back of their bullet proof vests.
            The scene played out before Dawn’s eyes like a Michael Mann movie.  This couldn’t possibly be happening.  Who had she become?  She’d be labeled a drug dealer’s bitch by the time the news broke, even though nothing had ever happened between herself and Amos.  It would ultimately be her word against theirs.  And the prosecution would surely use it to build a case against her; to weave her into it entirely.  The meeting had simply been a means to an end; in the wrong place at the wrong time.  And now she’d pay the price with her life.  Surely, she was headed to prison where she’d spend the rest of life pleading her case.
            Dawn’s car door opened from the outside.
            “What’s going on?” she asked the detective gesturing her out of the vehicle.
            Balding with black pepper hair, the detective asked firmly: “What are you doing here?”
            Another man approached. He stood in plain clothes and shorter than the balding detective. His tone was blunt and authoritative. “Arrest her.  She’ll only fuck with us.  Let’s wrap this up.”
            After this, nothing would be the same, Dawn thought as the detective secured handcuffs around her wrists and shoved her into the backseat of a cruiser.
            Minutes later, Amos was led out of the beeper shop in handcuffs along with the Hispanic male, Kendrick and Big John.  But Big John wasn’t in cuffs.  He’d been led in a different direction.
            Big John walked away a free man.
            Amos was shoved into the backseat beside Dawn.   She couldn’t speak, even though her mind was flooded with questions.  She gazed at the floor and spotted a twenty-dollar bill stuck between the floor board and the car mat.
            “Don’t you say a fucking word to those pigs.  I’ll get us out of this.  As soon as we get to the jail, I’ll call my lawyer.  We will be out by morning.”
            “My parents are going to kill me,” she mumbled.
            “Your parents will never know.”
            “How will we get back to Louisiana?  They’ll tow my car –“
            “Shut the fuck up!” the police officer yelled. “Talk again and see if I don’t stuff your black asses in the trunk!” he slammed the door, closing