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It was the code we used for phone. I didn’t know where Paisley was, but the last thing I needed was for her to hear any of this over the radio.
“10-4, standby,” Remi replied, seconds before my phone buzzed. “What’s up?”
“Is Paisley around right now?”
“Yeah, but she’s on phones today.”
Relief coursed through me. But answering incoming calls didn’t mean she wasn’t also listening to the radio, whether her job for the day was that or dispatching. If I knew Paisley—and I liked to think I did, whether she’d agree or not—that meant she was. Paisley didn’t do anything halfway. Listening to the main channel meant knowing what else was going on around the city, and that’d save time if she got a related call.
“Can you run a name for me, but be discreet about it?” I asked, waiting for Remi to agree before reading Tyler’s info off his license.
There was a pause as Remi typed, the only sound besides the ringing in my ears the sound of her keys clacking through the phone. And then she gave me a quick rundown of Tyler’s current warrant situation—none outstanding—and then she let me know his license and insurance were valid.
“What’s with the hush-hushiness?” Remi asked in a quiet tone. Then she let out a little gasp, and I realized she musthave remembered the woman sitting ten feet away from her had the same last name as the man she’d just run. “Wait.Are they related?”
“Yep. Don’t let it distract her from work. I’ll talk to her about it when I get back to the station.”
“My lips are paperclipped,” Remi chirped, getting off the phone and back to the radio.
I stood there between our two vehicles for a long moment, just staring into the fields that stretched out as far as the eye could see. What were the odds? Of all the— Well, there weren’t many of us on duty today. The odds weren’t terrible.
But the outcome? That sure could be if I didn’t play my cards right.
“Here’s ya go,” I said as I returned to Tyler’s window and hand him his stuff.
He took it, a sheepish smile on his face. “Thank you, sir.”
He looked older, more worn down. But that spark of fire he and his older sister seemed to share was still there, just beneath the surface of his hazel eyes. He hadn’t inherited those green eyes she’d supposedly gotten from their momma, but that spark? The one that could go from warm and genuine, pulling you in with its charm, to blazing mad and full of spite the next? I knew firsthand they shared that. I’d seen the transition on both of them—aimed my way, in fact—and it wasn’t fun.
“I got a little carried away back there,” Tyler said, his tone thick with apology.
But was it genuine?
“It’s my fault,” Candy added. “I kept telling him to hurry up. You know how it is when you’ve been driving forever, and you’re close to the end, right?”
Tyler patted her thigh. “Nah, this is on me. I should’ve been watchin’ my speed.”
He looked up at me as he finished speaking, and I met his gaze, waiting for the moment recognition would spark. Waiting for him to recognize me, remember the part I’d played in that terrible night. And if you asked Paisley, it was my fault he’d been locked up on and off ever since.
But... it didn’t happen. He just kept staring at me like I was any other officer and this was any other town. Like I wasn’t the one who’d detained him, told the truth about his actions, and ruined his whole dang life.
When he blinked expectantly, I shook my head.
Any other officer would’ve been doing something other than than staring at him like he had a watermelon where his head should be. I needed to get it together.
I cleared my throat. “I’d say you got a lot carried away, and not watchin’ your speed is no excuse for goin’ twenty-three over.”
Tyler’s eyes bulged. “Twenty-three? Shoot, man, I’m sorry. We were jammin’ out to this eighties playlist she made for me, and like she said, we’re just so close to town the excitment kinda took over.”
“Questionable taste in music aside, I won’t have you comin’ into my town treatin’ speed limits like suggestions.”
He nodded. “Right, yeah. I won’t. I promise.”
How could he not recognize me?
The rush of memories from that night had been playing through my mind on a loop from the second I’d approached his window, and he didn’t even realize who’d just pulled him over?
It didn’t seem fair. He was the source of the one and only time in my career—first as a military police officer and then as a sworn member of the COPD—that I’d hated my job. Hated who I was and everything I stood for. Because when Paisley had stressed how much you could learn about a person based on what they did for a living, she’d been right.
