The Stranger at the Door

Chapter 1

Chapter One

“You given any thought to redoing this office and really making it yours? You know, putting your own stamp on it?” Billy Jo was sitting in a padded old chair, her bare feet in flip-flops up on his desk, and he thought she wore pink nail polish on her toes. Something about the bellbottom blue jeans and light peach blouse she wore, which even hinted that she was a girl, had him wondering what was different about her as of late.

He looked around the glassed-in office, with its old desk covered in papers and files, the cabinet behind him, and the computer, and he gestured from where he lounged in the black swivel chair, which had once been the chief’s. “It’s just an office, Billy Jo, and it is mine. I don’t need anything fancy.”

She shot him a look from across the desk, where she seemed to fit so well, lounging. They had settled into a routine that was both welcome and expected, with her stopping in after work every day. “Well, at least paint it,” she said. “What are all those plaques up there on the wall? Is that a baseball back there? And those old photos, Mark, you’ve got to take those down.” She gestured to them, unsmiling. This was the snarky side of Billy Jo that came out when she had something to say.

He had to fight the urge to smile. She was so familiar. He didn’t turn around to see the black and white photos on the wall of the young chief, then a new cop, standing with the old chief he’d later replaced and the council. He’d personally never met any of them. He stood up and reached for one, seeing a smile on the face of the old chief, one he never remembered seeing, and looked over to Billy Jo, taking in her blue eyes. He was doing his damnedest to figure out where to tread with her and how this thing he couldn’t put a name to worked between them.

“Fine. I’ll box this up, but I’m not painting. You want to do it, be my guest. Since you’re just sitting there, take a look at these.” He reached for a pile of applications and resumes for the new deputy position and dumped them on the desk in front of her with a thunk. In the bullpen outside, Carmen, who wore blue jeans and a faded black T-shirt, was really pulling double duty since they were down to just the two of them. He missed having Gail to answer the phones and do all she had done to keep the station running.

“So what are these?” Billy Jo reached for the pile of papers as she dropped her feet to the ground.

He realized, as he looked at her brown hair, that it appeared the layers had been freshly cut. Something about her seemed so different, so not the girl hiding behind frumpy clothes. He walked around the desk, watching the way she thumbed through the papers, the way her brow knit when she was focused, reading and absorbing something, the way she never hesitated to jump in. She was so damn smart that her opinion on everything mattered to him more than he could have explained to anyone.

“Resumes, applications for the deputy job, someone to answer the phones and do everything Gail did. The top of the pile there was sent over by the council, and see all the ones with a red star marked on top? The council has pretty much ordered me to hire one of them. The ones on the bottom are the ones I found and came across.”

She flicked those blue eyes up to him, reading between the lines and knowing what he was thinking without him having to say another word. This was the comfortable relationship they were morphing into.

He kept walking out the open door and over to the corner by Gail’s old desk, where a few boxes were stacked for recycling. He took in Lucky, who was curled up, asleep, before he reached for a box and walked back across the bullpen. Carmen was hanging up the phone, and her chair squeaked as she stretched and started closing up files. She lifted her gaze to him, her wary dark eyes tracking him, and he found himself stopping beside her desk.

“You get today’s report finished?” he said.

She opened her laptop without a word and gestured to the screen as if she expected him to check her work. He didn’t look at her screen, not pulling his gaze from her, still holding the box and waiting, so she pulled in a breath and said, “Was about to email it to you. Theft at the pharmacy of a bunch of back-to-school supplies, some drinking in the park, public indecency, and a lot of nuisance crap that would seem to indicate an alarming rise, except it seems most troublemakers were used to the times Chief Shephard had me run the same route, so that tells me everyone had their watches set to when I would be making the rounds like clockwork, and it was only the idiots who were getting caught. Now I can’t drive anywhere without seeing something, and there isn’t enough of me going around to do anything. Then there are all the noise complaints, parties, loud music, neighbors fighting, and the bylaw crap still tossed this way, from illegal camping to people living in their cars, and where am I supposed to tell them to go?”

He could see her frustration. “Do what you can. It’s a judgement call. Send me the report, and I’ll see what I can take off your plate until I get a deputy hired in here.”

She sat up and swiveled her chair around. “Well, won’t be soon enough for me, Mark—sorry, Chief.”

There was something odd about being called Chief. He wondered if he’d ever get used to it.

“Clock out and go have some dinner,” he said. “I’m going to be here awhile yet.”

Carmen yanked her desk drawer open and pulled out her keys, and Mark walked back to his office, where Billy Jo was reading through the stack of applications. Damn, she was too perfect. He had to remind himself how easily he could sabotage the good things in his life.

“You look nice, in case I forgot to mention it,” he said as he rested the box on his desk. “You did something new with your hair.”

She suddenly stilled. Right, she didn’t take compliments at all. From the way she flicked those sharp blue eyes to him, he could tell she was uncomfortable, and he waited for her to toss something snarky his way.

“Here. You picked the ones on the bottom?” she said. Okay, so she was going to ignore the compliment. That was one way not to handle it. She pulled out two papers and held them out to him, and he reached for them, seeing two names, Mike Schneider and Georgette Hunter.

“That was quick,” he said. “Why these two and not the starred ones favored by the council?”

She neatened the pile of papers and then leaned back in the chair, balancing them on her lap. “Well, for one, it would take a fool not to see that of the council picks, most are either their friends or relatives or, as with these first two, have more experience than you, so the council is likely looking for your replacement, someone who is going to do exactly what they say, report to them, and take all their directions directly. I happen to know that after every weekly meeting you have with the councillors, a few of them criticize you, complaining and commenting that you’re going to ruin the policing on the island.”

He stared at her as he pulled the black and whites off the wall and tucked them into the box. “Excuse me?” he said. What was she hearing that he wasn’t? She didn’t even smile, and he could see she was dead serious. “Are you shitting me? Who in all hell is talking out of turn? What goes on in the council is confidential, yet now you’re telling me…”

“You’re stepping on toes, Mark.”

He straightened and could feel the alpha fighting inside him. His first instinct as he took in the seriousness staring back at him was to walk out the door and knock on the door of the head of council, Mary Jane Trundell, or maybe Hal Green or Herb Walker, so he could go toe to toe with them and find out what the f**k they thought they were doing, sharing anything about what went on in the council.

“I can tell by your face that you’re ready to go a round with one or all of them,” she said, “but that would be a mistake. I’m not sure how many are furious, but I know Herb Walker has been the most vocal, and I heard Hal Green was talking about how you don’t play ball with the Rotary Club. Several have said Mary Jane isn’t happy with you and the fact that you’re going all cowboy with your policing.” She lifted the stack and settled them on his desk as she leaned forward.

His jaw slackened as he rested both hands on the edge of the box and squeezed, then lifted his hand and dragged it over his jaw roughly. “Are you sure? They said I was a cowboy, seriously? Is that because I outright refused to allow the council to dictate to me which crimes to ignore and which to put my focus on? Did you know we currently have more than three dozen people sleeping in their cars on the island because they can’t put a roof over their head? The council has ordered me to make sure they know they can’t park anywhere overnight, which means basically kicking them off the island.

“Then we had three driving without a license. One was a young mother who couldn’t have afforded bail or the license renewal fee, and I knew that, so I let her off with a warning and told her to park and pay the fee, but the council ordered me to charge her and lock her up. If I do, she won’t get out until she goes before a judge, and then she’ll be hit with another fine she won’t be able to afford, so she’ll still be locked up, and her kids will be tossed in the social services system.

“Of the other two I stopped, one shithead had lost his license for driving two times over the legal limit, and he refused a breathalyzer, yet his lawyer had him out before the ink was dry, citing that he was on pain meds and wasn’t drinking. That was a load of crap, considering the alcohol on his breath could have knocked me over. He just so happens to be a cousin of Herb Walker.

“The other was a snotnosed teenager who took his mom’s BMW for a joy ride. The family is from Seattle, and the dad is some tech giant with a summer home here worth millions. You know that kid laughed when Carmen pulled him over? He’d almost run down an elderly woman on one of those mobility scooters. When Carmen yanked him out of the car, he screamed at her to keep her dirty half-breed hands off him and said his dad would make sure she was fired and would pay for it.”

Billy Jo said nothing. Mark had refused to back down when it came to how the council felt they could tell him to police this island: kid gloves with some and paramilitary tactics with others.

“Yeah, I heard about that too,” she said with a hint of a smile. “Wasn’t it Mary Jane whose phone was ringing with a call from the dad, who apparently contributed largely to her campaign? He threatened that he had enough clout to redirect infrastructure funding from the island to another region and halt the upgrade of the water treatment plant, meaning the tax bills of every full-time island resident would be hiked to cover the cost. That would get Mary Jane voted out, so I heard she folded like a deck of cards under the pressure. And you did what?”

“I charged the privileged little s**t,” he said, “although it didn’t do any good. The DA has already thrown it out, calling me and chewing out my ass. But I made it clear to good old dad, who showed up here, breathing down my neck, that he’s to keep his kid off the island, and if ever again we have a problem with him, a video of his racist diatribe will be all over the news.”

She lifted her brows, leaned back, and crossed her feet on his desk, and he wasn’t sure if she was amused. “You have a video?”

He reached for the baseball and the plaques and shoved them in the box. “No, but he doesn’t know that. Anyway, I ordered a body camera for Carmen, and she’ll wear it. The council will freak, mind you, when they get the bill, but I’m not having her credibility shredded because of some privileged kid who gets a free ride and thinks he can do anything he wants without consequence. Because her word won’t count against his if s**t hits the fan.” He knew he was shoving everything in the box a little harder than necessary. “As far as Hal Green, I reminded him of all the tickets he had the chief write off for him over the years and let him know I have a copy of every one of them, including his emails to the chief telling him to take care of it.”

Her expression was unreadable. “I thought you didn’t keep any of the chief’s insurance, the dirt he had on the council,” she said. “You said you didn’t want to operate that way.”

Mark shrugged, thinking of the files in the bottom drawer, the proof of how Herb Walker had dipped into the funding for the island homeless, the tickets for Hal Green, and the photos of the head of the council herself, Mary Jane, with Philip Maddox, the reason the chief was no longer the chief. “If those running things actually played by the rules, I guess you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he replied. “Didn’t say I would use them, but I’d be stupid to throw them out.”

She nodded. “Heard you eventually paid the license renewal fee for Grace Peters, too,” she said. “Word gets around that you can’t help being a good guy, Mark.”

He only grunted. Aggressive prosecution against a woman who just couldn’t afford her license didn’t sit right with him. “She’s got kids, no support, and her job barely pays her a living wage.”

Billy Jo lifted her hands. “Hey, you don’t need to justify it to me. I get it, Mark, and I’m behind you. I’m just saying that the council doesn’t like being backed into a corner, and they especially don’t like having a chief they can’t control, so you’ll need to watch your back. Now, those two, you should call them.” She gestured to the two resumes she’d pulled out, Georgette Walker and Mike Schneider. One was from Salem, the other from Olympia. “And I’m starving, so how much more do you have to do?”

He took in the box, the girl, and the resumes on his desk. “Tons, but it’ll keep.” He reached for the pile of resumes and tossed them on top of the box. “For dinner, how about steak?”

She shrugged and stood up. “You’re cooking?” She reached for her bag, and he took in the curves she was no longer hiding.

“Yeah. I’ll throw steaks on the grill, and you can go through the rest of these resumes…” He lifted the box and started out of his office, following her.

“And the box?” She gestured back to him as he flicked off the light with his elbow and whistled to Lucky, who was now up and striding to the door.

“I’ll drop it off at the chief’s,” he said. “As you pointed out, these are his things.”

She pulled open the door.

“Lock it, will you?” he said. “The keys are in my pocket.”

She hesitated only a second before reaching into his pocket, a touch he hadn’t expected, and she pulled the keys out. He strode to his Jeep and opened the back to stuff the box in, then grabbed the papers and pulled open the front door.

Billy Jo tossed him the keys, which he caught one-handed, before starting to her new Nissan Rogue. She would just follow him to his place, he knew, and he considered for a second this relationship they’d fallen into. Her place or his place didn’t matter. It was always dinner, talking, and then he or she would leave. Maybe tonight he could figure out a way to change her mind and get her to stay.