“I feel like I should take your temperature,” Mom mumbled. “Oh, Geraldine called.”
He flipped the list over once more to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. “Yeah?”
“She heard that Kinley James took out the town sign with Fiona’s car like she was at a demo derby. Didn’t even know that girl was back in town.”
Ryder tensed at the rumor he wasn’t surprised to hear circulating. Since the mayor had stuck him on vacation, Ryder wasn’t sure he could keep Kinley from receiving a harsh punishment and hefty fine. “It was an accident,” he said.
“You sure about that?”
“Car hardly has a scratch on it.” Seemed he wasn’t the only one who remembered that graduation speech and Kinley’s true feelings about the town. “She swerved to miss Ed.”
“You believe that?” Mom’s eyebrow shot up.
“I believe Ed was involved, yes.” The other details of the accident eluded him. He might’ve extracted them out of Kinley this morning if he hadn’t stormed away from their table before she could confess. Still, Ryder’s gut told him the incident was not intentional, but convincing the town would be an undertaking.
“You and Kinley were friends once.” A hint of mischievousness lingered in that simple statement. Ryder wasn’t sure what Mom was up to, but he recognized the need to escape before he found out.
“I better get down to the hardware store. I need to catch Harold before he takes his lunch break.”
“I need another favor,” Mom called to him before he could round the house and disappear from her sight.
Ryder stopped and braced. “Yeah?”
“It’s my turn to make bars for the monthly fire department meeting. Mind dropping them off for me later? I have book club tonight.”
“Ha, I knew it. Always leading a club or something.” He flashed her a rare smile before he hurried off to his truck, list in hand. Strangely enough, Ryder had smiled more in the past two days than he had in the past two years. It felt . . .good. It felt like hope. A secret he’d best keep close to the vest. The last thing he needed was Mom, or anyone else, trying to set him up on a string of dates.
* * *
“Picked up a new hobby with all your time off, Chief?” Chase Monroe jabbed as Ryder carried a stack of treat-filled tubs toward the fire hall entrance. No surprise Mom baked enough bars to feed the entire town twice over.
“You wouldn’t eat ’em if I made ’em.” Ryder followed Chase inside, amused at how quickly word spread about his vacation.
“Over there on that table is fine,” Chase directed.
Ryder passed the couple dozen folding chairs already set in rows. It felt odd not to attend the meeting tonight, but Murph had sent him a warning text earlier. The mayor didn’t want Ryder anywhere near the crowded station tonight, in case the lawyer slipped in and tried to cause trouble.
“Anything good on the agenda tonight?” Ryder prodded.
Chase was the deputy fire chief, one of only two paid firefighting positions in Sunset Ridge. The rest were volunteers. For as much time as Chase spent at the fire hall, it only made sense he be on the payroll. “Planning a fire drill beginning of June if the fire risk stays low.”
So far, this had been a wet year. More rain than sunshine, keeping the risk for forest fires low and the onslaught of mosquitoes a little higher than people liked. Ryder followed Chase into the garage bay to a table filled with radios and a pack of batteries. “What are you burning?”
“That old shack off Jack Rabbit Creek Road. The one that sets back a ways from the highway with the caved-in roof.”
Ryder was surprised that Henry Davenport, the owner, was willing to part with the building. Though his derelict cabin lay a couple hundred yards outside of city limits, it was an eyesore for tourists. Ryder’d chased a squatter out of there last winter, and still the owner refused to do anything about the property. “What did you bribe Davenport with?”
“Apparently he’s a fan of crab.”
“Warren.” The owner of the local seafood restaurant, Warren’s Sea Shack, was a two-decade-long volunteer firefighter.
“Free weekly king crab dinner for a year.”
Ryder winced at the cost, but secretly he loved it. He’d been asked many times why he stayed in a small town. Why hadn’t he become an Alaska State Trooper, or moved to Anchorage where there was more action. But Ryder couldn’t imagine living anywhere but this charming, quirky town with its unending variety of characters.
Chase tossed batteries into a trash bin. “Heard Kinley James is back in town.”
The gossip, however, Ryder could do without. “She is.”
