Bags: Open them now. Nicole looked around. Why? What did we I said open them. 26 kids watched.
Nobody said a word. The officers dumped their backpacks on the bus floor. Textbooks, notebooks, a pack of gum, Nicole’s diary. They flipped through it right there in front of everyone. Found nothing, said nothing.
Just walked off the bus like it never happened. Nicole cried the whole way home. Audrey didn’t cry. She sat there watching the officers get back in their cruiser and memorize the badge numbers. That night, Eleanor sat on the edge of their bed.
Nicole was still shaking. Mama, why did they do that? Eleanor pulled both girls close. Because they could and because nobody stopped them. That’s not fair.
No, baby, it’s not. Eleanor wiped Nicole’s face. So, what are you going to do about it? That question split their lives in two directions. Nicole decided she would become the one who judges, the one sitting above the courtroom, looking down, making sure nobody nobody got away with what those officers did on that bus.
She tore through college, top of her class at Emory Law, clerked for a federal judge who told her on her first day, “You remind me of myself, except you’re smarter and you’re angry about the right things. ” She was appointed to the federal bench at 29, youngest in Georgia. When she put on that robe for the first time, she called Eleanor. Mama, I did it. I know, baby. I’ve been watching.
Audrey went the other way. She didn’t want to judge. She wanted to hunt. She applied to the FBI straight out of college. Got rejected twice.
Applied a third time with a personal statement that opened with the bus story, badge numbers included. They accepted her. She was assigned to the civil rights division, internal affairs. Her specialty investigating police corruption, racial profiling, excessive force, the exact kind of cops who boarded that school bus. Her supervisor once asked her, “Shaw, you ever get tired of going after cops? ” Audrey didn’t even look up from her file.
Do they get tired of giving me reasons? In 8 years, she had built cases against 11 officers across four states. Nine convictions, two pending. She was the agent other agents called when a case involved a badge and a lie. And she had one habit that nobody questioned.
A silver chain around her neck, thin, simple, looked like any pendant a woman might wear. But inside the charm was a GPS panic transmitter. Standard issue for undercover agents operating in high-risk environments. One press, an FBI dispatch, received her exact coordinates, updated every 30 seconds. Audrey never took it off.
Not at home, not on vacation, not even in the shower. You’re paranoid, Nicole told her once. I investigate cops for a living, Audrey said. Paranoid is the job description. Nicole laughed.
She didn’t laugh about it later. Now, a Saturday morning in July, Eleanor had been diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer 3 months ago. Chemotherapy every two weeks at Grady Memorial, the same hospital where she’d spent her whole career taking care of other people. Nicole called Audrey on Thursday night. I’m driving down Saturday.