A silver Camaro pulled up and parked at the curb. Both he and Denny stopped in the middle of the driveway. What was the chief doing here?
Chief Lincoln, whom they all privately called “Abe” because he was tall and thin like President Lincoln, came around and greeted them both, asked about their progress on the house, about Milo, about Trey’s back. All of it was friendly enough, but Trey got an uneasy feeling.
“Gotta go,” Denny said, waving his phone. “Wife’s on my case.”
As Denny drove away, Trey invited the chief up on the porch for a beer.
He was pretty shocked, though, when the man accepted. Lincoln had been a mentor to him and Denny from their rookie days, but he tended to hold himself aloof on the personal level.
“There’s a reason I stopped by,” Chief Lincoln said after cracking the bottle open. He put it down without taking a sip. “Heard some things from Earl Greene, the officer in charge of the disabled-officers program over in Pleasant Shores.”
“Yeah? What?” Trey’s heart stuttered a little, not just because he hated being called a disabled officer, but because of the censure he heard in his chief’s voice. He lowered himself carefully onto the porch swing, wincing.
“He seemed to notice a negative attitude in you.”
“I barely met—”
The chief cut him off with a raised hand. “Apparently, the cooperating teacher complained. Asked if there was anyone else who could come in and work with the kids, short notice.”
Trey looked down at his knees, his fists clenching. Had he really been that obnoxious when he’d met Greene, and during that beach encounter with some long-legged beauty whose name he still didn’t know?
You should’ve asked her name, made nice. “You’re going to replace me,” he said, dreary certainty pressing down on him. Not many guys could fail at rehab. He was a real standout, all right.
“I don’t have anyone else to suggest to them, not now. And the other two departments they’re working with are waiting for full approval, so they can’t put anyone forward yet.” The chief sighed. “I want it to work for you, but you’d better shape up. I look bad to have recommended you if you don’t.”
In a corner of his mind, he recognized the opportunity for a second chance, and seized it. “Will do, sir. I’ll have a better attitude.”
The chief stared Trey down. “A lot better, because attitude was a part of what got you in the fix you’re in now. That incident shouldn’t have happened. Your head hasn’t been in the right place for months. If you hadn’t gotten injured, I would’ve put you on a desk job.”
The chief’s words weighed him down again. He’d known he was off his game but hadn’t realized it was noticeable to others. Reflexively, he reached for King, put a hand on his furry back.
“If you can’t make it work, or prove to me you’ve changed, I won’t recommend you for reinstatement to the force, even if your back does heal,” Lincoln said, standing. “Look at it as a kind of a test.” He turned and strode down to his car.
Leaving Trey to wonder how he was going to succeed at something he didn’t even want to do, in an environment where the people he’d be working with already disliked him.
CHAPTER THREE
JULIE WHITE PULLED the baking sheet of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven just as her teenage granddaughters walked in the door from school, and she congratulated herself on her perfect timing. “Who wants cookies?” she singsonged.
Her younger granddaughter, Kaitlyn, looked at her with an open sneer. Great. She’d come on too strong. Figuring out how to navigate her new home here, living in a suite at her daughter’s motel and helping with her granddaughters at their house adjacent to the motel would take some time.
Her older granddaughter, Sophia, was busy talking on her phone, but waved a greeting and snagged a cookie on her way through the kitchen. At sixteen, she was learning to drive, did well in school and had seemingly dozens of friends, including a boyfriend she didn’t take all that seriously, thank heavens. Her sunny demeanor reminded Julie of her daughter, their mother. Little to no adolescent angst, just the self-absorption you’d expect from a teenager.
Kaitlyn, the thirteen-year-old, plopped down at the kitchen table with a loud sigh. She was going through an awkward stage, worsened by her parents’ divorce and, probably, the fact that her grandparents had divorced shortly thereafter. It didn’t help that she had a popular, gorgeous sister like Sophia, even though Sophia was actually very nice to Kaitlyn. But Julie understood why Sophia’s niceness didn’t sit well with her younger sister; it smacked of charity, or pity.
Julie slid the cookies from the cookie sheet to a plate and put them on the table. “Milk?” she asked, automatically going to the fridge and opening the door.
“Don’t do dairy,” Kaitlyn mumbled around a large mouthful of cookie.
That was news to Julie, but she knew better than to question it. She just got a glass of ice water and set it down on the table. “Would you and your sister like to go over to the big beach in a few minutes?” she asked. The big beach was on the wealthier side of Pleasant Shores, and unlike the narrow, rocky beaches most common on the Chesapeake, it had a wide swath of actual white sand.
“Why?” Kaitlyn swiped a napkin across her mouth and took another cookie. “It’s only April.”
“And it’s seventy degrees. The heat wave will end soon, but you could still get a little bit of sun.”
That seemed to pique Kaitlyn’s interest; her mother wouldn’t let either girl go tanning at the salon...though Julie suspected that Sophia had finagled a way past the parental-permission-under-eighteen rule, since she looked continually healthy and golden-bronze.
“Hey, Soph,” Kaitlyn yelled. “Grandma wants to go to the beach.”
That wasn’t strictly accurate; Julie would rather have stayed home, in her cute little suite at the far end of the motel, with the latest mystery novel. But she was justifying living here, at least temporarily, by keeping an eye on her grandchildren during the notoriously dangerous after-school period: making an after-school snack, starting dinner and suggesting wholesome activities.
Besides, as her friend Mary said, she needed to get out of the house. To combat her gloom with sunshine and meet new people.
The meeting-new-people part had exactly zero appeal, but it wasn’t likely to happen today. Having Kaitlyn plodding sullenly at her side would protect her from all but the most intrepid extroverts in town. People were afraid of teen girls.
Soon enough they were walking the three blocks through Pleasant Shores’ little downtown to the beach, carrying beach towels and, in Julie’s case, a folding beach chair. Both of the girls had insisted on wearing jean shorts and T-shirts over bikinis, over her protests. It was an optimistic clothing choice since, even with the unusually warm temperatures, the breeze at the beach would be cool and the bay’s water frigid.