Page 7 of The Fall Back Plan
I’m only a mile from my place when red and blue lights flash behind me. I shoot a glance in the rearview mirror and curse. That is, in fact, a police car, and it is, in fact, pulling me over. For going five over the speed limit? What a joke.
I signal and pull to the narrow shoulder, reaching for my license and temporary registration. The permanent one hasn’t come in from the state, and I’ve still got an Illinois ID.
When I catch sight of the officer in my sideview mirror, I groan before schooling my face into bored indifference. Of course it’s Lucas Cole. Why wouldn’t it be?
I enjoy the height my lift kit gives me when he reaches my door and has to look up, shining his flashlight inside before he steps back in surprise.
I roll down my window. “Sheriff Cole,” I drawl. I’d worked hard to smooth out my Appalachian accent in college and got it pretty close to neutral by the time I started at Blue Slate, but I could summon it at will. “Surely you have people you can send out for country road patrol. Or do you doeverythingin your department?” It comes out with droppedg’s, longesounds rolled more into longa’s, and a “surely” that sounds like “shorely.”
“Jolie,” he says, nodding. “Got called out and happened to be returning when I saw you driving.”
“Honestly, Sheriff, you’re about the last person I’d expect to stop someone going five over.”
“Guess you think you know why I stopped you. License and registration, please.”
I blink at him. “Are you joking?”
“No. License and registration, please.”
I hand them over, my face telling him exactly how stupid I think this is.
“Illinois?” he says, his eyebrows going up.
“I have thirty days to get a North Carolina license.”
He looks up at me, and I wonder if that’s part of the problem; he’s used to towering over people, and it ticks him off to look up to me, of all people. “How long you been back?”
I give him a cool smile. “Not thirty days.”
He nods and walks back to his cruiser, settling into the driver’s seat and doing who knows what. Does he have a computer in there? Does he have to call dispatch to run my license?
I settle into my seat and wait, my hands curled around the steering wheel.
When he returns, he hands back my registration but not my license, even though I know for a fact my record is clean.
“Can you step down from the vehicle?” he asks. But it’s not really asking. He says it in a calm voice, but he’s used to being obeyed. I can tell. Maybe it’s in the way he says it with total certainty that I’ll comply.
But why should I? “No thanks. Write me the ticket so I can get home.”
“That wasn’t the option I offered you.” His voice is the same level of calm.
I lean out to meet his eyes and give him a hard stare. “You think I’m drunk? I’m not. You’d smell it on me. I don’t even drink.”
He furrows his forehead. “A bar owner who doesn’t drink?”
I lift my chin slightly. I don’t have to explain myself to him any further.
“Are you driving home from the bar?”
“Mybusiness? Yes, I am.”
“So you’re returning from a bar at 1:00 in the morning in a vehicle with registration tags that aren’t easy to see.” He steps back to make room. “As I was saying, please step out of the truck.”
The one thing Lucas Cole did for me in high school was burn up every last bit of patience I may have ever had for fools and people who waste my time. He’s both, and he knows it. I cut the engine and swing my door wide so fast that he has to hop backward to avoid getting hit.
I just look at him, giving him the same “go to hell” stare he’d give me when I tried to help him with geometry proofs. I will be making no apologies.
I climb down from the cab and land on my feet, light and easy, even in my heels on the dirt road, steady as can be. I cross my arms and wait for whatever foolishness he comes up with next.
