PART 2
The evidence-room door slammed once from the inside, followed by the unmistakable crack of plastic breaking. “Deik!” Hopper pounded the steel. “Open the door!” I pulled against my cuffs. “What’s stored in there?” Hopper stared at me. For three seconds he said nothing. Then he made his choice. “Dashcam backups. Body-camera docks. Old complaint files.” My stomach tightened. “Old complaints against Lumis?” “Not just him.” A voice thundered from the hallway. “Hopper, step away from that door.” Sheriff Calvin Bost entered with two deputies behind him. Heavyset, silver-haired, and furious, he looked at me only once before focusing on Hopper. “What did you tell him?” “Nothing yet.” “Yet?” Bost stepped closer. “Give me your badge.” Hopper didn’t move. “Sheriff, Lumis arrested a man without cause, falsified the report,
and now he’s destroying evidence.” Bost’s face became strangely calm. “Give me your badge.” Hopper reached toward his chest, but instead of unclipping the badge, he pulled a tiny flash drive from inside his uniform shirt. Bost lunged. Hopper jerked away. One deputy grabbed him from behind. Hopper drove an elbow backward, broke free, and tossed the drive toward me. I caught it with both cuffed hands. “Take it!” he shouted. Bost came straight at me. I turned sideways as he grabbed for the drive. His shoulder slammed into mine, sending me against the booking desk. Pain exploded through the arm Lumis had twisted earlier. “Where is it?” Bost demanded. I closed my fist. “You really want to add assaulting a federal military attorney to tonight’s list?” “You’re in my jail!” he shouted.
“Not for long.”
The evidence-room door opened. Lumis stepped out holding a smashed external drive. “Problem handled.” Hopper actually laughed. “You idiot.” Lumis stopped. Hopper wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. “That wasn’t the only copy.” Silence hit the room. Bost slowly turned. “What did you do?” Hopper looked at me. “Six weeks ago, I contacted the FBI.” Even I hadn’t expected that. “I’ve been documenting stops—Black drivers, mostly from outside the county. Seventy-three traffic stops in fourteen months. Same phrases. Same fake odor claims. Same obstruction charges when people refused searches.” Lumis charged him. “You lying son of—” Hopper barely got his arms up before Lumis struck him. They crashed into the booking counter, knocking a chair over. I stepped between them as far as the cuffs allowed and drove my shoulder into Lumis’s chest, forcing him back. “Enough!” I shouted. Lumis swung at me. Before he could connect, the outside doors burst open. “FBI! Nobody move!” Three agents entered with weapons at low ready, followed by Air Force OSI investigators and a federal prosecutor. Bost raised his hands immediately. Lumis didn’t. His gaze went from the agents to Hopper, then to the drive clenched in my fist. “Put your hands where we can see them!” an agent ordered. Lumis finally complied.
Special Agent Mariah Kendall unlocked my cuffs herself. “Colonel Odums, we’ve been building a pattern-and-practice case based partly on Deputy Hopper’s information.” I rubbed my swollen wrists. “Then tonight gave you a lot more.” “Maybe too much more.” Hopper connected the flash drive to a secured laptop. A spreadsheet opened: names, plate numbers, race descriptions, seized cash, towing charges, arrest outcomes. Beside dozens of entries was the same notation: BOST APPROVED. My arrest already appeared on the final line. But the worst part was another folder—private text messages between Bost and Lumis discussing which drivers were “safe targets” because they lived far away and were unlikely to challenge the county. Kendall stared at the screen. “This is conspiracy evidence.” Then another agent rushed in holding a phone. “We have a problem. A message just went out from Bost’s account ten minutes ago.” Bost looked up sharply. Kendall read it aloud: “If Odums walks, burn the old files tonight.” Hopper went white. “The records annex.” I turned toward the door. “Where?” “Half a mile behind the courthouse.” Then someone outside screamed, “Fire!” Through the booking-room window, an orange glow rose over the rooftops.
PART 3
We were moving before anyone finished shouting. Agent Kendall ordered two officers to stay with Bost and Lumis while Hopper, an OSI investigator, and I ran across the rear parking lot toward the records annex. Smoke poured from a second-floor window. “Who has access?” Kendall yelled. Hopper pointed toward a deputy sprinting away from the building. “Evan Rusk! Bost’s nephew!” Rusk jumped into a county SUV. An FBI vehicle blocked the exit, forcing him to brake hard. He abandoned the SUV and ran. Hopper chased him while Kendall and I reached the annex door. It was chained from the outside. “Someone’s inside!” a woman screamed through the glass. I grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall beside the loading dock and struck the chain housing twice. The metal bent but held. An OSI investigator smashed the side window, reached through, and released the emergency bar. Smoke rolled over us. Inside, a county records clerk named Denise Warren was coughing on the floor beside stacked archive boxes. We pulled her out. “The basement,” she gasped. “He started it downstairs. Complaint files.” Sprinklers finally activated. Kendall grabbed my arm. “Colonel, you stay outside.” “Gladly.” I had no interest in becoming a firefighter to prove a point.
