It still gave him a pause, now and again. The ingrained belief that thesystemwas bad, and he was an idiot for falling into it. But he fought back those doubts.
Brooke was proud of him, and that held weight. He supposed he was learning to be proud of himself too.
His FTO had been pretty strict about speed limits, setting an example while in his patrol car, so Royal was careful not to speed past the slow-going truck in front of him like he wanted to. But eventually, he couldn’t take it any longer, and he eased around the moving truck.
He passed, and on a sideways glance he recognized Copeland Beckett at the wheel. Beckett was a detective at Bent County, and Royal wasn’t sure what to make of him yet. As a road deputy, Royal hadn’t had much interaction with the detective bureau. A lot of people at the county respected the guy though, but Royal liked to make his own conclusions about people.
Case in point, the one thing he did know about Copeland Beckett was that the cute brunette in his passenger seat wasnotCopeland Beckett’s fiancée.
Cops, he thought bitterly—an old habit.
He looked down at his uniform and laughed. Sometimes, life really was a kick in the pants.
Chapter Two
Franny didn’t bother to unpack. She’d save that annoying chore for when she wanted something specific or when she hit a rough patch in the book and needed something to occupy her hands. Everything she absolutely required for the first few days was packed in a separate bag anyway—some clothes, toiletries, her inhaler and the like.
She did set up her workspace. She’d learned over the years that she could work anywhere, at any time, with just about any background noise, but she still liked having one organized space to go to when everything started to feel too fractured. A center.
The apartment above the Hope Town Bakery was small—one bedroom, one bathroom and then a kitchen/dining/ living room area that was really just one large room. She’d had Copeland put her writing desk and office drawers up against the far wall that was dominated by three tall, narrow windows that looked out over Main Street—the only street—in Hope Town.
She took a moment to enjoy the view. Too bad she wasn’t writing a historical. She could almost imagine herself as some mysterious woman from “back East,” looking for a fresh start in a Wild West frontier town.
Maybe she could make the book a dual timeline. Maybe her next book should be a historical Western. Maybe…
“One book a time,” she muttered to herself.
But she liked that so many ideas were already percolating. It meant she’d made the right choice.
Hope Town was an interesting place with a mysterious history. It had been a ghost town years ago, completely abandoned. Then a man named Zach Simmons, who’d been an FBI agent before he’d settled in Bent, had bought up a bunch of land and buildings and begun to revitalize the town.
The mystery was why Mr. Simmons, who owned all the land and buildings, wouldn’t allow anything in that didn’t meet his approval. Not a business, not a renter, no one.
Franny had needed to meet with Mr. Simmons with her rental application, answer a few questions. Provide references. He had been professional, kind, and friendly. But he’d been pretty…vague in answering her questions about Hope Town.
A little disappointing, because she wanted to get a better understanding of how the town had come to be. Not because she was writing nonfiction, just because she wanted…some framework for her idea that was based in truth and reality.
So she didn’t have to get all the details right exactly as they were, but she wanted to know as much as she could. She wanted everything to feel real, authentic, and she wanted to do right by the story that had been simmering in her brain for a while now.
In her book, this town would see tragedy and fear, death and mystery, and then justice, hard won, with maybe a little romance thrown in.
On that thought, she turned away from the window, grabbed her laptop, and got to work sketching out some ideas.
ROYAL DIDN’T COMPLAINabout his zone assignment. Out loud. He was the rookie. He’d get the grunt work for a while yet.
A zone that included Hope Town and a handful of ranches would result in a fat lot of nothing to do. He probably wouldn’t even be able to pull anyone over for a speeding ticket. If he got a call, it’d likely be for… Hell, he didn’t even know out here.
One thing he’d learned about the citizens of Bent County was that a lot of them—especially the ones who lived more isolated—liked to handle their own issues. They didn’t call the police for just anything.
Frustrated, he stood and moved through the room to Corporal Gardner Fairhurst, Gard to his friends—and Royal felt he’d earned thefriendslabel by now. Gard had been his FTO and had been just the kind of trainer a person had to be thankful for. Calm, patient, willing to answer any question, giving solid advice, and also had given Royal the room to develop his own confidence as an officer of the law.
And since he liked and trusted Gard, Royal voiced his frustration to him, though he made sure to be quiet about it.
“Shouldn’t I be put somewhere I might actually get some experience?”
“You will.”
“When?”
