“I’m not sure I can be involved in this one,” Hockley said reluctantly. “Like you said, you’ve got a role because of your job, but DEA? I’m here for the border and the smugglers. I haven’t got the same excuse you do.”
“I’m open to suggestions even if you can’t be part of enacting them.” Jericho was surprised by how true that was. Hockley was uptight, sure, and he’d been generally ineffective since he’d arrived in Mosely, but that didn’t make him completely useless. Mosely was a complicated jumble, and Hockley was just one of many law enforcement types who’d had trouble untangling the mess. Besides, Jericho was stumped enough to accept help from any direction.
Hockley squinted again. “What’s your goal, exactly?”
“To serve and protect the people of Mosely County.” That was easy. “Probably focusing on protection right now. I want to keep people safe.”
“Safe from the militia.”
“Mostly, yeah. I mean—from talking to Sam Tennant, I’d say his goal is to keep the people of Mosely, especially his family, safe too. But he’s thinking safe from federal tyranny, not safe from—not safe from himself.” Jericho pushed his chair back from the desk. “You know what? This is just one more example of outsiders coming in and messing shit up for the locals. Those guys yesterday weren’t from around here. Sam Tennant’s a gun-nut redneck, but he’s our gun-nut redneck. Everything was fine up here until the other guys came in. So—I want to keep people safe from the outsider militia. Unless Sam’s gone completely off the rails, I expect he’s one of the people I should be protecting.”
“You don’t think he’s a willing participant? The FBI tracked the other militia members to Sam’s property—it was Kay’s intel that made that happen.”
“Maybe it kind of blew up on him. He invited some folks up for a picnic and they took advantage of his hospitality.”
“Do you actually know that, or are you guessing?”
“Guessing. I don’t know shit. So maybe that’ll be my next step—I need to figure out what the hell’s going on out there.”
“And how are you going to do that? You think you’re going to compete with whatever the hell intelligence gathering the FBI has set up?”
“Nope. I’m not going to gather intelligence. I’m just going to ask people what’s going on. I’ll start at the hardware store, maybe swing by the diner at lunchtime.” He’d probably ask Wade too, but didn’t bother mentioning that.
“And what will you do with what you find out?”
“I have no idea—it’ll depend on what people are saying.”
“Will you keep me in the loop?”
Jericho looked Hockley in the eye. “I have no idea—it’ll depend on what people are saying.”
It seemed like Hockley was about to object, but then Jericho’s door opened and Kayla poked her head around it.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“Shit, Kay, get in here! What’d they say?” Jericho was out of his own chair, ready to offer it to her, but she carefully closed the door behind her and went to Hockley instead, nestling in by his side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. So, suspicions confirmed. It was a kind of honor that they trusted Jericho enough to be open around him.
He managed to give them about five seconds of comfort-time before demanding, “What’s the situation? Are they going to try for a recall?”
Kayla grimaced. “They said they didn’t want to go through the mess of a recall; they thought it would be best if I just resigned.” She laid her head on Hockley’s chest but aimed her gaze at Jericho as she said, “They offered to accept you as acting sheriff, and honestly, Jackson’s head just about lifted off his body. He couldn’t stand the idea of you stepping into the role. That little—” She paused, clearly groping for the right word.
“Shit-sack?” Jericho offered. “That’s Garron’s professional assessment.”
“Okay, yeah. That little shit-sack is so power hungry he almost came in his pants every time they mentioned a recall and special election. He thinks he’s got it sewn up.”
There was something nasty about that mix of imagery, but Jericho tried to ignore it. “Do you think he’s right?”
“I think it would be a dangerous distraction for us to be worrying about any of this at the moment, and I told them so. I told them we need to focus on the militia, and then the shit-sack piped up, saying I couldn’t be doing much work on that since the FBI had told me my help wasn’t wanted.” Her expression was fierce. “The arrogant fucker says he’s got a good relationship with them and they’ll do what he wants, but they don’t trust me because of my father.”
There was enough truth to the second part to make them all quiet for a moment. “I don’t believe that asshole has a good relationship with anyone,” Jericho finally said.
“But he might be political enough to win an election, and that would be trouble. So the smart thing is to appease these guys. Without their support, he might not even be able to get enough signatures for a recall, let alone the votes to win an election.”
“Appease them?” Jericho asked carefully.
“They don’t want me, but they’ll accept you. You’re better than Jackson, Jay.”
“But you’re better than both of us.”
