“You’re going to have to step up, Jim,” McCready suddenly said.
“Excuse me? What?”
“I’m stepping down as Chief of the Forest, and you need to step up in my place.”
Jim found that he actually laughed. That was ridiculous, and he said as much.
“Why not? You’re the heart of this place.”
“Bullshit.”
“There’s no one else that could do it.”
“There’s six other men in this department that could all do it, and that’s even if you decided you really were stepping down. Which you’re not going to.”
“Haley? He’s toned it down some, I’ll give him that much, and with Kate at his side, maybe she’ll whip some sense into him. But he’s too brash, too headstrong. He could lead – and he could force everyone to listen to him – but I don’t think he could pull off the other stuff. The PR nonsense,
