“So nice of you to finally stroll on in.”
A wall clock hung behind Willie, right above her head. His eyes flickered over to it. It was coming up on seven. He was right on time.
“I just got off patrol and I’m stopping by to sign out for the night.” Rick took in her narrow gaze, the way she squinted behind the cat’s eye eyeglasses she always wore. “What? Did I do something wrong?”
“You’ve got your radio on, sugar?”
He reached down to his side, grabbing the Hamlet communicator he wore as part of his uniform. He showed it to her. “Got it right here.”
“And it’s been on all night?”
Most of the night. “Of course.”
“Really?” Her eyebrow rose so high, he saw a swath of bright blue eyeshadow inch up toward her hairline. “Then how come we’ve buzzed your radio a bunch of times over the last couple of hours and you never answered?”
Rick glanced at the side, fiddling with a setting there. “Hell, Wil, it looks like I might’ve had the volume down too low.” Or not on at all. His lips split in a sheepish grin. “I never heard the buzzes.”
That, at least, was the truth.
Willie clicked her tongue. “You know that drives the sheriff nuts, sug. If you’re carrying your radio on duty, you gotta make sure that you’re answering each and every call.”
After serving together, Sly knew that Rick was more than capable of taking care of himself. He would expect his reports after shift, but he didn’t want or need a leash on his deputy.
It was Willie’s nerves he was trying. He knew that, no matter how many sug’s she threw in to soften her nagging. And because he also knew why it was so important for her to keep tabs on the others in the department, he let it go.
“It won’t happen again, Willie. Scout’s honor.”
She snorted. “I remember you as a boy, Ricky. You might’ve gone on to be a Marine, no denying that. Before that, though, you were the furthest thing from a scout.”
“Marine’s honor, then.”
“And I know your word is good, too. Next time I buzz you—”
He lifted his radio again. “I’ll make sure to answer.”
“That’s what I like to hear, sug.”
Picking up a pile of paperwork off the massive stack, Willie shuffled through it for a moment before setting it aside. Rick waited. He knew from experience that their office’s mother hen wasn’t done with him yet.
He was right.
“You know?” Willie shook her head. The curls barely bounced, they were so hairsprayed down. “I can’t get over it. Gone all those years, seeing what the world’s got to offer a big, strong fella like you, and you come back to Hamlet first chance you get.”
He felt his back go straight, like he was at attention. “Did four years active duty, four years inactive reserves. I’m still a Marine, just a Marine who wanted to go home.”
He considered himself retired, even if the terms for actual retirement were twenty years. Rick didn’t care about a pension; he cared about getting out while he could.
And, damn it, he missed home.
Shortly before the tragedy last fall, Rick’s sudden return to Hamlet—with his fellow Marine, Sylvester Collins, at his side—had fed the town’s gossip mill for more than a year. There was the small matter of an outsider man driving his truck into the gulley, but, other than that, the townspeople all wondered why he bought a house on the outskirts of town and settled into his old routine as if almost nine years hadn’t passed since he left.
He could feel Willie’s curious stare as he turned away, clipping his radio back onto his belt. He swapped his deputy’s jacket for his old Carhartt hoodie. Patting his pocket to make sure he had the keys to his truck, he brought the keys to his patrol car back over to Wilhelmina.
He set them down on the edge of her desk. “You’ve got the log, Wil?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Sure do. It’s right here.”
She moved the portable DVD player in front of her to the other side of her desk, opening the white binder the player had been resting on. With a quick flip, she found that evening’s page and plopped a pen right in front of it.