Brenda had been in federal custody for eighteen hours when she was told someone had posted her bail; she sat in the holding cell, exhausted and terrified, her expensive clothes wrinkled and stained, her carefully maintained appearance destroyed, and when the guard told her she was being released, relief flooded through her.

She signed the release papers mechanically, retrieved her personal belongings, and walked out of the detention center into the harsh afternoon sunlight; a black town car ...