“Chief,” one of his officers, Liza Fletcher, called out. “None of this is your fault.” She gave the mayor a defiant look then faced Tanya’s parents. “Mrs. Jericho, we’re all so very sorry for what Tanya suffered. But the person responsible for that is Phil Gunther, not Chief Dawson. What you just did is wrong. And, frankly, it’s assault.” She reached for the handcuffs on her utility belt.
“Don’t.” Beau shook his head at her.
He could see the struggle going on inside her. But her respect for him as her boss won out, and she dropped her hands to her sides.
He scanned the faces of his officers. “I’m still the chief of police. And I’m ordering all of you—Collier, Fletcher, O’Brien, Ortiz—not to pursue this any further. Let it go.”
He turned back to the mayor. “Nothing to do with the Phantom investigation is anyone’s responsibility but mine. As the chief, both the successes and the failures of my department fall on me. There’s no need to take a vote on whether or not to fire me. I quit.”
Beau ignored the chaos that erupted around him and headed out the front door. As he began the long walk home, the sound of footsteps running behind him had him swearing and turning around.
Officer Chris Collier stopped a few feet away, his face red with anger. “Chief, don’t you dare give up. Don’t let that coward mayor take the easy way out just to avoid a lawsuit. The city has insurance for this type of thing. It will be okay. Come back inside and—”
“I’m not the chief anymore, Collier. It’s over.”
“No. It’s not. I guarantee that most, if not all, of the council is in there right now telling the mayor to refuse your resignation. Your other officers are arguing right along with them. We…we couldn’t tell you about the meeting. We were ordered, threatened actually, not to. But we’re not going to back off from this. You’re the best chief this town has ever had. You’ve done a ton of good and—”
Beau put his hand on Collier’s shoulder, stopping him. “I appreciate what you and the others are trying to do. But I’ve made my decision. Honestly, I was leaning toward resigning even before I found out about the meeting. Hearing the mayor’s arguments and Tanya’s mother simply helped me make up my mind. Go on, Collier. Go back inside and tell the other officers it’s over. Don’t get on the mayor’s bad side. Save your own jobs. I don’t need or want you to save mine.”
“But, sir—”
“Good-bye, Collier.” Beau turned around and started down the sidewalk again. Several moments passed before he finallyheard the sound of Collier’s footsteps receding as he headed back to the police station. Beau passed the parking lot, then the lake where it ended here in town, and headed toward the long winding gravel road up the mountain that would take him home.
Relief that no one was trying to stop him anymore had his shoulders relaxing. He didn’t want any of the people he’d worked with to get in trouble because of him. He could weather the loss of his job without any immediate difficulty. Beau wasn’t exactly wealthy. But he wasn’t hurting either. He’d made sound investments over the years and would be okay for a good long while before he’d be forced to enter the job market again.
The question was what kind of job that might be.
Ever since he was a kid, he’d wanted to be a police officer. And while he had plenty of law enforcement contacts in the state that he could tap to get a job in another town or county, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be in law enforcement anymore. Maybe today’s meeting was his wake-up call that it was time to do something else, something where the stakes weren’t life-or-death and he couldn’t hurt anyone if he made a bad decision.
Like the decision he’d made to leave that meeting.
He should have stayed. He realized that now. Not to argue on his own behalf or even to stick around for a meaningless vote, but to do what he’d intended to do when he’d headed downtown. He should have told his officers about the visit from Sierra Covington. They needed to begin an investigation into how she knew what she did and whether others, like her father’s henchmen, were also in town. He’d call and warn his officers after he got home.
The sound of tires slowly crunching on gravel had him sighing. Collier or one of the others must have decided to try again to change his mind. He kept walking as the car pulled up alongside him, creeping along to match his pace.
When he finally looked over, he didn’t recognize the vehicle. It was a banged-up black four-wheel drive Jeep Wrangler that had seen far better days.
The passenger window rolled down and a familiar face looked back at him, wearing a blue plaid shirt this time instead of a tight black T-shirt. “Hey, stranger. How do you like my Lamborghini?”
He reluctantly smiled. “I might have made some inaccurate assumptions earlier.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Don’t push it, Covington.”
“I take it things didn’t go the way you would have preferred?”
“At the secret meeting you somehow knew about?”
“Um, yes.”
He sighed.
She hesitated, then asked, “Did they fire you?”
“I didn’t give them a chance. I quit.” He continued his slow, steady walk up the steep narrow road with the Jeep keeping pace beside him.
“I thought you would have put up more of a fight.”
