Page 6 of Steeped In Problems

“You’re a cop, not a barista,” he muttered. The mirror didn’t answer, so he tried again. “You were a cop.”

It landed harder that way. Past tense, like that part of his life was over and done with, and he had nothing to say about it.

There was a crash from the front, followed by laughter and the clunk of the mop bucket. Someone had spilled.Again. Kristy’s voice drifted through the thin wall, bright and unbothered.

Tanner splashed his face, dried off, and forced himself back to the present.

He was halfway to the supply room when Rhonda yelled, “Boss? We’re out of oat milk.”

He took a deep breath and straightened his back. “Coming,” he called, and this time, his voice didn’t shake at all.

After the nine o’clock rush, the shop settled into a lull. The regulars swapped war stories at the window table, and even Kristy’s voice dialed down to something less than a five-alarm. Rhonda left to run an errand on her break, and Tanner found himself wandering, hands jammed in his pockets.

The hero wall ran nearly the length of the shop. Photos, mostly in black and white, some in color, all of them in mismatched frames. Some of the faces were gone now; a couple had gone out on calls and never made it back. Most, though, were still around. If you knew where to look, you could spot Aiden O’Connell, the closest thing Clear Mountain had to a living legend, standing with his arms folded over his SAR jacket, eyes like twin spotlights. Next to him, Zach Turner, opposite in looks and disposition, always the joker, holding the leash of his K9 partner Cooper.

Third row, center, there was a photo of Tanner’s old search team. Himself, Aiden, Zach, and a scattering of others. He’d always hated the picture—his left eye half shut, jaw bruised from an ice fall, hair a mess. But every time he tried to take it down, someone (probably Rhonda) put it right back up.

He noticed the frame had tilted off-level. He reached up and straightened it, then brushed his thumb over the glass to flick away a smudge. For a second, his own reflection merged with the faces behind it. He let his hand linger, just for a second.

Most days, he told himself he didn’t miss it: the calls, the risk, the endless cold. The truth was, it was the only job where the rules had made sense.

“You look like you’re posing for the hero shot,” Kristy’s voice came from behind, soft but not sneaky.

He pulled his hand back and tried to hide the color in his cheeks. “Just keeping things tidy.”

She squinted at the picture. “Is that you in the middle?”

He shrugged. “Used to be.”

“Looks like you got in a fight with a mountain lion and lost,” she jested with a grin.

“It was an avalanche, actually. Got clipped at the base of Eagle Pass. Bounced off a pine tree, according to the incident report.”

She whistled low. “Didn’t know you were that kind of crazy.”

He felt a smile ghost across his lips. “No one ever does until it’s too late.”

Kristy leaned closer to the wall. “Who’s the guy with the mustache? He looks like he could bench-press a truck.”

“Turner,” Tanner told her before he could think better of it. “K9 handler. Nicest guy you’ll ever meet. Unless you mess with his dog. Or his wife.”

Kristy’s gaze flicked to another picture, this one of a medal ceremony and back. “I was always too scared to be in the line of fire. Closest I got was working trauma shifts at County General.”

He risked a glance at her. She seemed genuine, not fishing for sympathy or trying to one-up him. He nodded toward the next photo down the row, showing a group of officers standing on the roof of a burning house, grinning like idiots.

“That was after the Big Thompson flood,” he explained. “We pulled six people off the roof. Four dogs. And a ferret.”

She blinked. “A ferret?”

“People get attached to all sorts of things,” he mumbled with a shrug.

Kristy looked at him then, really looked, and he saw something there that surprised him. Not pity. Not even admiration. Just understanding.

“I get it. It’s hard to let go of something that was such a big part of your life.”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. She had already moved on, wiping down the tables and humming something under her breath.

Tanner turned back to the wall, running a knuckle along the edge of the frame one last time. He knew the photos by heart, but he still checked every day, as if the details might change and he would somehow find his way back.

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