My name is Maya Coleman, FBI Civil Rights Division, but right now, if anyone in Westbrook, Alabama asks, I’m just a freelance journalist looking for a scoop. I pressed my eye against the viewfinder of my telephoto lens, my breathing shallow inside the sweltering, dust-choked storage shed across from the Magnolia Diner. It was 2:15 AM. Through the diner’s back window, illuminated by a single flickering neon sign, the town’s entire power structure was laying out their sins on a greasy Formica table.
Chief Raymond Wilson—a man who preached “community policing” by day and ran a brutal, racist extortion ring by night—was laughing. Beside him, the Mayor and two senior deputies were methodically counting stacks of hundred-dollar bills. This was it. The payoff. The definitive proof of the illegal seizures, the systemic targeting of Black residents, and the blood money that bought their silence after three innocent men died in police custody.
Click. The shutter of my camera was practically silent, but in the dead of the Alabama night, my heartbeat felt loud enough to give me away. I needed one more shot of Wilson’s face next to the cash.
I shifted my weight, and the rusted floorboard beneath my boot let out a sharp, agonizing shriek.
Inside the diner, four heads snapped toward the window. Wilson’s eyes locked dead onto the darkness of my shed. He pointed. One of the deputies, a mountain of a man named Miller, drew his Glock and bolted for the back door.
“Dammit,” I hissed, shoving the SD card into my pocket and leaving the heavy camera behind.
I threw my weight against the shed’s rear door, bursting into the humid, mosquito-thick alleyway. Shouts echoed behind me. Tires screeched as a cruiser’s spotlight sliced through the shadows, nearly blinding me. They were cutting off the street. If they caught me, I wouldn’t be an FBI agent to them—I’d just be another Black woman who tragically resisted arrest.
I sprinted over a chain-link fence, ripping my jacket, and hit the dirt running. I could hear Miller’s heavy boots pounding the pavement just yards away.
“Stop right there, or you’re dead!” he roared.
Ahead of me, the alley split in two directions.
I had a split second to make a choice before Miller’s flashlight found my back. The wrong move here meant disappearing forever in Westbrook, just like the others. Which path would keep me alive long enough to expose them? The rest of the story is below 👇
