Page 10 of Tasting Fire
Unfortunately, the good citizens of Steele Ridge didn’t have a damn thing to do with decisions about the SWAT team. “Maggie in?”
Shari’s mouth tipped down even farther. “I know she had something to do with this. I’ve been giving her the silent treatment all day, but I couldn’t ignore it when she went stomping by me into her office. So yeah, she’s back there. And if she wasn’t the sheriff, I’d give her a piece of my mind.”
He just smiled because Shari might be angry, but she wasn’t a fool. Very few people tangled with Mandrell Margaret Kingston and lived to tell the tale. “Don’t go getting all upset on my account. This ain’t no thing for a stepper.”
“Go on back then.”
When he opened the door to Maggie’s office, she was sitting in her chair, looking out the windows that gave her a bird’s-eye view of Steele Ridge. She didn’t miss a damn thing going on in this town, in this county or, hell, in all of Western North Carolina. So she’d known this was coming down for a while.
Her back tensed the second he’d stepped into her office. “Well,” he drawled, “I think I’d rather have a proctologist shove his finger up my ass than get bent over the way I did earlier.”
Maggie’s chair whirled around, her hands fists on the surface of her desk. “I tried to talk to you beforehand.”
“This decision wasn’t made yesterday.” He meandered around her office, moving her diploma a few inches to the right, angling a law enforcement award to the left, just to fuck with her. “That much is obvious if Emmy was already in town. I also know you and Jonah had a hand in it.”
“Look, the captain wanted input, but the ultimate decision was hers. Emmy didn’t accept until yesterday. We all had a sit-down to discuss the goals for the SWAT team and how it will interact with my department. So no, I haven’t been keeping this from you on purpose.”
“That position was supposed to be mine.”
“Dammit, Cash, you aren’t ready.”
He turned slowly, narrowing his gaze on his sister. “Excuse me?”
Maggie shoved away from the desk and strode around it to lean against it with her arms crossed. “You’ve been a paramedic for less than two years.”
Maybe so, but he’d been a firefighter and EMT since his early twenties, and then he’d spent over six months going through the UCLA Paramedic Program, one of the top programs in the country. He’d taken a sabbatical to do it, which meant he’d kept his benefits, but hadn’t drawn a salary. And LA was fucking expensive. He wouldn’t have been able to swing it if not for Grif’s generous offer of a bedroom in his slick Westwood apartment. “I’m the best medic this county has.”
“I won’t argue with you there,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re ready to not only lead but train this team. Emmy did a fellowship in tactical medicine at Johns Hopkins and she served as a volunteer on the Maryland State Police Tactical Medical Unit for two years. Between that and her time in the ER, she’s seen more action there than some smaller SWAT teams see in a lifetime. Gang wars where kids with multiple GSWs are tossed out of cars at the ER doors, tweaked-out bastards sampling the spoils of their own meth labs, warrant serves on organized crime bosses. We would’ve been stupid not to recruit her.”
“So Jonahwasin on this somehow. That’s the last fucking time I share my beer with him.” And how the hell was he going to handle working with Emmy? Maybe not on a daily basis, but the TMT would be training at least once a week if Emmy was half as good as Maggie seemed to think she was. Could he stay purely professional? Knowing she was engaged should make it easier.Shouldwas the critical word there.
How realistic was that when his insides had seemed to develop a chronic case of acid reflux since he heard about her engagement?
Get over it, Kingston. She’s moved on, and so should you.
Hell, she’d moved on five minutes after he offered her his heart. His everything.
But his everything hadn’t been enough for her, then or now.
“She won’t stay,” he said.
“What? Why would you say that? She just accepted not only the TMT position but also a staff job in St. Elizabeth’s emergency room.”
Maybe so, but that didn’t mean she was really committed.
Cash hadn’t been able to stop himself from doing a little digging on Emmy’s love life. Her fiancé was a big muckety-muck at Baltimore General. No guy like that would sacrifice his career path so Emmy could move back to her podunk hometown. “Oliver Amory.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Shit. Now, he had to admit he knew the guy was Emmy’s fiancé. Cash swallowed his embarrassment and said, “He’s the chief of staff at Baltimore General and the guy Emmy is apparently marrying. No way in hell he’s moving to Steele Ridge, North Carolina, no matter how much money Jonah throws at our health care, law enforcement, and God only knows what else.”
“How do you know that?”
He tilted his head at her.
“Fine, I get that gossip is its own industry in this town,” she snapped.
“An upcoming wedding doesn’t give me any confidence Emmy has plans to hang around here.” And the first time she got a chance to go somewhere bigger, somewhere better, she would be out of here like a shot.
He knew that from experience.
