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I screeched my cruiser to a halt, holding my coffee away from my uniform with a wince as Lincoln Granger ran in front of the vehicle like he had a death wish. Scowling at him through the windshield, I pressed the button on my radio to let dispatch know I’d been flagged down.
“She’s at it again, Adam,” the older man said, knowing full well he shouldn’t call me by my first name while I was on the job, even if hehadknown me since I was born. “She’s at it again, and this time, she’s in the Jar fixin’ to make a real big mess of it.”
I didn’t need to ask who he was talking about or what she was doing inside the Mason Jar. I’d been fending off calls about Paisley Stevens for months now. Or, really, dispatch had been. Sometimes, they were able to placate the caller enough that we wouldn’t have to be sent out, but the rest of the time? Let’s just say the entire Charlotte Oaks Police Department—all eight of us who were on patrol full time—were well aware of Paisley’s antics.
But usually, we’d get the call after she blew out of the business with one of her strategies in place, and we’d head over to smooth things over as customers or patrons started to riot.
Like last week, when I’d responded to the so-called criminal damage report from the library after Paisley took it upon herself to re-do the layout of the whole dang place. No one knew how to work the fancy computers she’d used her own money to bring in so Charlotte Oaks could ditch the card catalog and move into the 21st century. You’d think she’d burned the whole place to the ground for how up-in-arms they were.
Thankfully, Aubree had been on one of her twice-weekly trips to the library at the time. She’d helped me explain that the new system made a whole lot more sense than the way it’d been set up after the Great Library Flood of 1999. Then, we’d reminded them that the books were shelved in quite a hurry back then due to bookworms like Aubree practically beating their doors down, and it was a layout that was never meant to be permanent.
The rioting readers had agreed with that, but they still didn’t like change. Sense or no sense, they’d gotten used to the cookbooks being smack dab in the middle of Sci-fi and Fantasy fiction, and they’d accepted that the nonfiction history books were shelved right along with historical fiction. Since the latter seemed to confuse a whole lot of elderly folks in this town who should know fact from fiction as far as history went, it was a problem that’d probably needed solving, if you asked me.
In fact, everything Paisley had done that’d gotten her into trouble with my hometown had been equally smart and necessary, so I was instantly on edge over being flagged down to handle whatever it was this time.
“Adam, I’m tellin’ ya,” Lincoln pleaded, his ruddy cheeks glistening with sweat as he leaned closer, “ya gotta stop that girl before she changes this whole town—and not for the better. She’s a serial changer; that’s what she is. And she’s gotta be stopped.”
The owner of the hardware store was then joined by his wife, Anna, and she nodded grimly. “We saw her headin’ into theSquirrel this mornin’ when we were on our way out, so we made it a point to go back to see what kinda damage she’d done. And you know what we heard?”
“What’s that?” I asked flatly.
“That she was headed to the diner next, and sure enough, she’s in there right now layin’ out some plan for big changes. There ain’t nothin’ in that Jar that needs to change, Adam Wilson, and everyone knows it.”
“Everyone but her, anyway,” Lincoln added.
I sipped my coffee, then spoke into the radio again. “213-Ocean to base,” I said into my radio, not taking my eyes off the hardware store owners still standing at my window.
“Base to 213-Ocean,” came Hope’s reply from the station.
“Show me 10-7 at the Mason Jar for a...” I trailed off a second, trying to figure out what exactly to call this situation with Paisley.
“Disturbance,” Lincoln filled in with a meaningful lift of his powder-white brows.
“Disturbance,” I ground out, fighting the urge to scowl again.
“10-4,” Hope replied in acknowledgment, her keyboard clacking away in the background.
I gestured to the sidewalk so I could pull up to the curb without hitting the older couple, and they hurried out of the street. I’d expected them to follow me inside when I made it to the door, but nope. They were already gone.
Cowards.
Squaring my shoulders, I strode in, bracing myself for the showdown I’d been lucky enough to avoid up until now. But the second I laid eyes on my subject, my stomach twisted, and my mood darkened.
Getting the townspeople to drop charges against this woman had been for the greater good in the past, but this? Confrontingher in a diner full of people after being called in for a disturbance?
This wouldnotgo well.
“Pais?” I said as I approached, keeping my face in the professional mask I wore on every other call.
Except this wasn’t like every other call and I knew it, because I was also fighting the urge to check her out. She wore one of those darn pencil skirts today, and as usual, the sight of her in it made me wish that particular item of clothing had never been invented. Not when it reminded me of how I’d felt the first day I’d seen her wearing one or the events that followed that ruined it all.
Paisley turned at the sound of my voice, and I swore it felt like those green eyes of hers had the power to stab me right in the gut. “Officer. Takin’ a lunch break?”
“No, ma’am.” I was equally aware of every other pair of eyes in the diner as they ping-ponged between us as I approached her. Slowly, of course, and it was probably a mistake that I didn’t have my palms up like I was coming up on a dangerous animal.
“Well, if you’re here to talk to Gilly, you’ll have to take a number. We’re in a meetin’ right now.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I hedged, shifting from foot to foot as I gave her a pointed look. Maybe if she understood that there’d been a complaint, she’d back off and leave in a huff instead of making this messy. But when her brows only pinched in confusion, I took a deep breath and went on. “We got a report that there was a disturbance in the form of a five-foot-tall female wearin’ a fancy business suit. In fact,” I held up my finger, pressing the button on my radio with my other hand. “213-Ocean to base, show me out with the subject for the disturbance call. Subject appears to be unarmed.”
