Page 3 of Need You
“What happened to your uniform?”
Colt’s shirt had dried, but the coffee had left a noticeable stain. “I collided with a cup of coffee.”
The mayor laughed. “Was that the emergency?”
Nope. His black-haired, blue-eyed, curvy-as-sin neighbor had been his emergency. She and her Tesla. “It was a busy morning.”
“Hmm,” the mayor muttered, then took another swig of his expensive water. “I wanted to talk job performance.”
“Yours or mine?” Colt asked, unable to help himself.
The mayor feigned a belly laugh. Colt knew Carter thought his comment was anything but funny.
“I want good things for this town, Colt. I want to take Glory Junction into the future ... reinvent our reputation as a small, quaint town to something more relevant. I want us to have a place at the table.”
Colt nodded, thinking to himself:What the hell does that even mean? A place at the table. What table?He supposed it was a euphemism for making Glory Junction a top tourism attraction, even though it already was. Pond wanted to pretend that commerce in the town was failing so he could take credit for turning it around.
“For far too long, Glory Junction has operated like a back-road campground when what it should be is an international destination resort. I want to make that happen.”
It had been happening long before Pond became mayor. The Four Seasons and Glory Junction’s other luxury hotels had been doing fine for years. During ski season they were booked solid. And going by Garner Adventure’s stats—and its overworked guides—summers here were quickly becoming just as popular.
“The problem, Colt,” the mayor continued, “is you’re stuck in the past.”
“How’s that?” Colt asked, trying to read what the mayor was working up to. No question Pond had an endgame. Colt just didn’t know what it was yet.
The mayor drained the rest of his water and squeezed the bottle until it made a crinkling noise. “You’re too close to the residents, which is understandable since you grew up here. But to build a brighter future we need to make the town more tourist friendly . . . more welcoming.”
Colt assumed that was code for loosening the rules for anyone with a reservation. “Why don’t you cut to the chase here, Carter? I’ve got a town to patrol.”
“Do you know how many traffic tickets you issued last year?”
Colt didn’t know the number off the top of his head, but for a town this size with as many visitors as it got, it wasn’t unprecedented. “What’s your point?” he asked, even though he knew damned well what the mayor’s point was.
“My point is a tourist charged with a hefty fine for violating the speed limit isn’t a happy tourist.”
“You do know that the city benefits financially from these fines, right?” It’s not why Colt’s officers gave tickets, but if the mayor was worried about losing revenue ...
“Not as much as the city benefits from the tax base of its businesses.”
“Are you asking me to look the other way when an out-of-towner drives sixty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone or when a drunken tourist up from the city causes a fight at Old Glory?” Because it had been known to happen. “What about the locals? Is it business as usual for them? I figure since we’re not going to protect them, we may as well look the other way when they speed or steal or trespass, too. Does that work for you?”
“Cut the sarcasm, Colt. You’re on thin ice as it is. All I’m saying is we all need to do our part, be on the same page.”
Colt didn’t want any part of Pond’s page, but he held his tongue. Managing up had never been his strongpoint, but he loved this town and continuing to pop off to the mayor wouldn’t serve anyone. People here needed someone to watch their backs and that definitely wasn’t Carter. The mayor wanted to turn Glory Junction into goddamned Disneyland. Even Colt’s family, who profited from the town’s tourism trade, didn’t want to see that. And Colt’s job was to keep everyone safe, not just the people with the biggest wallets.
“We through here?” Colt started to get up.
“Yep, we sure are.”
Colt found his way out of Pond’s office, through the long corridor of city hall, to the exit, barely able to corral his temper. The mayor was actually asking him to obstruct justice so Glory Junction could have a place at the “table.” Translation: Carter Pond wanted the world to think he’d taken Glory Junction from a modest, dusty town to a thriving ski village at the safety expense of Colt’s family, friends, and neighbors—the people he’d known his whole life.
“Someone die?”
Jolted from his thoughts, Colt looked up from the sidewalk to see his brother Josh. “What are you doing here?”
“Last I looked, I lived here,” Josh said.
“I meant city hall.” Josh, like the rest of the family, worked at Garner Adventure on Main Street, a few blocks away. And his and Hannah’s Victorian was on the other side of town.
