Lee pointed to the chair. “Sit.”
Ryder gave up this battle so he could better fight the next, despite how this chair made him feel trapped with its wooden arms boxing him in. “The sign can be fixed,” Ryder said before Lee could launch into a set of instructions. “It’s splintered, but only on the back side. The rest is still intact. If we can have someone reinforce the back—”
“The sign?”
Ryder’s heart thrummed in his chest, making him realize his mistake. Lee hadn’t heard. “Someone swerved off the highway to miss a moose and bumped into the town sign,” he explained, hoping against odds that Lee might not askwho. But it wouldn’t matter. Even if only one car passed by the scene as witness, the news would spread. Dozens had slowed to gawk at the scene. Kinley’s name—or worse, Fiona’s—would eventually circle back to Lee.
Lee dropped into his chair behind the desk. “We can discuss that another time.” The grim undercurrent to Lee’s voice raised hairs on the back of Ryder’s neck.
“What’s going on?”
“You have an awful lot of vacation time saved up, isn’t that right?”
Ryder gave a couple of hesitant nods. He had more than a few days, as far as his pay stub indicated. But he was rarely afforded the luxury of taking a scheduled day off, much less a vacation day. “Sure, a few.”
“Good.”
He caught a flash of Murph passing by the office, but she didn’t look over. It wasn’t that Ryder didn’t trust his officers; any one of them would take a bullet for him. He enjoyed being involved in his town. Taking more than a stray day off meant he might miss out on something important.
Ryder sat forward in his chair, leaning his elbows on the expansive oak desk that separated them. “Mayor, you mind getting to the point?”
“If I suspend you with pay, we have to print it in the paper.”
The wordsuspendlingered in the air like a thick, suffocating fog. Ryder curled his fingers around the chair arms, ignoring their ominous creaks. An hour ago, he stood on a sidewalk between two squabbling, elderly brothers. How had reality skewed so much in so little time? “What are you talking about, Lee? Why would I be suspended?”
Lee sat back in his chair, stealing a couple of deep breaths. With his build, height, and steely gaze, Ryder could be quite intimidating when he wanted to be. He suspected Lee felt a bit of that pressure now. “Remember that foot pursuit, when you kept the Samson kid from falling off the cliff?”
“That was two weeks ago.” Ryder’s way of sayingget to the point.
“Chalmer is suing the city of Sunset Ridge.”
“Todd Chalmer? Thekidnapper?”
Lee nodded.
The incident flashed through Ryder’s mind. Reports of a tall, wiry man nabbing a four-year-old Rhett Samson from the park. Ryder finding and chasing them on foot to the cliffs at the edge of town. Chalmer wasn’t a local, because all locals knew the cliffs weren’t meant for trail walking. A couple hundred yards from the sandy shore, the illusion of a trail disappeared. Caught off guard, Chalmer let go of the kid. Both he and Rhett lost their footing. Ryder could only save one from the fall. The decision was a no-brainer.
“He’s got a lawyer now.”
“Unbelievable.”
“His lawyer claims you made the conscious decisionnotto save Chalmer from the fall that landed him in the hospital with dozens of broken bones.”
Ryder had replayed that incident over in his mind hundreds of times since it happened, wondering if there was anything he could’ve done differently to save them both. By some miracle, Chalmer survived the treacherous fall, but it would be weeks—maybe months—before he might hope to walk again. With both arms broken, he couldn’t even use crutches to get around. “You know I would’ve saved him too if—”
“I know that, Ryder. We all know that. No one in Sunset Ridge is questioning your character.No one.”
“So, why are you suspending me?”
“I’m not. I’m insisting you use up some of the vacation time you’re about to lose. You have too much saved up. Enjoy some time off and let the dust settle.”
Ah, this way no one had to knowwhyhe wasn’t on duty. Lee was doing him a favor. “How long?”
“Start with ten days. We’ll see how quickly we can shake this lawyer. Jenkins doesn’t think he has much to go on, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to stir up as much trouble as he can.”
“Tendays?”
“Talk to no one about this incident, most importantly Chalmer’s lawyer. Feel free to leave town,” Lee added. “Just keep me informed if you do go anywhere, and make sure you’re in cell range from time to time in case we need you for any questions.”
