Free Riverbend Road by RaeAnne Thayne

did,” he said sternly.
    â€œYes, I believe you mentioned that when you were yelling at me in front of the entire fire department.”
    For a guy with a reputation for a cool head under pressure, he had done a miserable job of handling the whole situation. He could admit that now, after the fact. He should have taken her aside and reprimanded her in private. The whole public-safety community didn’t need to watch him lose his temper.
    Too late now. It was done and he wouldn’t back down or change his mind.
    â€œDid you come here thinking you could talk me out of the suspension? If you did, don’t bother.”
    â€œYou are ridiculously stubborn, Cade Emmett. Did anybody ever tell you that?”
    â€œYou. About a thousand and sixteen times.”
    Of all his officers, he trusted her judgment most. She wasn’t afraid to call him out when he became dogmatic or unreasonable, whether during an investigation or in personnel issues. He wasn’t afraid to admit when he was wrong but he knew he wasn’t on this one.
    â€œWould you at least consider reducing the number of days I’m suspended?”
    â€œNo.”
    She narrowed her gaze at him. “This is the worst time of year for the department to be shorthanded, with all the tourists starting to trickle in before Lake Haven Days in a few weeks.”
    â€œI know that.”
    She sighed. “You’re hanging me out to dry as an example to the rest of the guys, aren’t you?”
    Yeah, that was partly true. When it counted, he needed his officers to follow the chain of command. If he ordered an officer to stand down, he needed to know the order would be heeded.
    â€œIt’s not easy having to be the one who makes the tough calls.”
    Sometimes he was really tired of being the responsible one. Between the phone call from Christy about his brother and Wynona calling him out because of her suspension, the burden had never felt so heavy.
    â€œI get it. You did what you had to do. A week just seems excessive to me.”
    â€œA week. No more, no less. You scared the hell out of me, Wyn.”
    He shouldn’t have said that last part, especially not in that rough, intense tone. She gazed at him, her eyes wide and he thought he saw something there, a little flicker of awareness, before she shifted her gaze down to her dog, who was now stretching out on the floor at his feet.
    â€œFine. Your decision. I guess we’ll all have to live with it. That wasn’t really why I stopped anyway,” she went on. “You have new neighbors across the street.”
    â€œYeah, I saw a vehicle in the driveway this morning and a moving van unloading things when I came home around lunchtime.”
    â€œDo you know anything about them?”
    He shook his head. “Not a thing, except what I saw earlier. They must have kids because I saw a couple of bikes out on the lawn when I came home—a boy and a girl, judging by the stereotypical bike colors. The pink bike was bigger. They drive a minivan with Oregon plates and listen to NPR, according to a bumper sticker.”
    She laughed. “For not knowing anything about them, you seemed to have picked up quite a bit.”
    It would probably sound too much like bragging to recite the license plate he’d memorized or the county in Oregon where the vehicle was registered last. “It’s my job to notice what’s going on in front of me.”
    She made a funny little sound in her throat that morphed into a cough. “Of course it is.”
    Did her dry tone imply there was something significant he hadn’t noticed?
    He frowned. “Why are you so interested in our new neighbors?”
    â€œIt’s also my job to notice what’s going on around me and something there is off. I don’t know what it is but it’s got my nose itching.”
    Her instincts were usually right on the money.
    Once she called him in for backup on a routine traffic