Page 6 of Out to Get Her
She capped her drink, put the car in reverse, then peeled out of the parking lot before that old bat could get a good look at her.
ChapterThree
Samantha collapsedin her chair and stared at the stacks of paper on her desk, while Connie’s dark fingers—decked out this week in purple polish with sparkly gold jewels—clicked away on the keyboard across the room. Connie was the station’s administrative assistant and the most vital cog in their whole operation. She’d been a fixture in this office for as long as Samantha could remember, long before Samantha ever worked there herself.
Connie raised an eyebrow at Samantha, her way of asking how much extra work this most recent call would pile on her plate. She cleared her throat and asked in her deep, raspy voice, “Everything okay at Addie’s?”
“Everything but one section of her kitchen,” Samantha said with a nod. “Looks like just a fryer accident. Fire team put it out before too much damage, at least.”
Samantha said another tiny, silent prayer of thanks that she’d convinced Addienotto file that ridiculous accusation against her staff. The last thing she needed this week was a paperwork trail of the woman’s conspiracy theories. Theories Samantha would have to at least appear to follow up on if they’d been in ink or in the database. Now that she’d appealed to Addie’s decency, she could file this, leave the case open for a few days to make a show of it, and mark it closed before the end of next week since no actual crime had been committed.
The door chimed as it opened and her two coworkers breezed into the station, chuckling over something or other.
“Hey, Sam.” Dustin greeted her with his charming twenty-four-year-old grin, complete with that adorable dimple. Samantha liked him enough, in a little brother/puppy kind of way. He was cheerful, diligent, and eager to please. Good thing, since he was the only other full-time officer at the station. “How was your fire call? We could see the smoke from across town.”
“Wasn’t too bad. I had more trouble putting out Addie than the firemen had putting out that grease fire, though.”
Dustin cringed. “That doesn’t sound fun.”
“You two sound like you had fun, though.” She’d tried to leave the annoyance out of her voice but suspected it was apparent, anyway.
She normally hated PR appearances, and most days she’d gladly choose calming a conspiracy-fueled Addie over shaking hands. But it would have been helpful to get her face in the paper this week. Especially if it meant getting her sister off her back.
Samantha was already weary of all the campaign appearances her sister insisted she couldn’t say no to, and the endless string of them never seemed to be enough for her sister-turned-campaign manager. Small-town politics wasn’t a huge beast like in bigger cities, but it was still a game here. A game Samantha’s sister continuously reminded her she needed to play if she wanted to win.
And she did want to win the election.
Just not for the prestige or power that came with the title.
“Eh, it was okay. Same old, same old,” her boss, Police Chief Gary Vidrine, said as he tapped her desk on the way to his office. He was shorter than Dustin, made more apparent by the shoulder hunch of a man weeks from retirement. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“If the-same-old means cake at every one of these things, maybe I want to be Chief. Is it too late to enter the race?” Dustin winked at Samantha, so she wadded up a sticky note and threw it at him.
Chief Vidrine chuckled. “Think you can manage to get back to work after all that cake excitement?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dustin, finding his way to his own desk.
Connie handed Chief Vidrine a printout as he passed. As usual, she was completely uninterested in their conversation or any gossip that entered the office and carried on with her own work.
Chief Vidrine retreated to his office to catch up on missed calls and notes.
Samantha didn’t envy that part of his job, either. She didn’t want the phone calls, cameras, or the cake that came with being Etta’s Chief of Police. Samantha just wanted to help people.
Sure, she helped people nearly every day already, but as Chief she could make a bigger impact on the town. She could be part of the decisions that made life better forallof Etta’s citizens. Especially for the citizens who were so often overlooked or flat-out ignored.
But first, she had to win this election. And that meant beating her old nemesis: Jordan Fonseca.
Samantha frowned at the half-filed paperwork on her desk. She couldn’t beat him or win this election if she couldn’t close a simple case or manage an over-the-top restaurant owner.
An image of Erin flashed in her mind. The blue hair that matched Adeline’s apron and mimicked those bright blue eyes dancing with mischief.
Yup, that was the Erin she remembered from high school.
Erin had been a couple years behind her, but it had been a slight stretch of the truth when she’d said she knew her from dating her friend. That had been true, of course, but Erin had been on her radar long before that. And after.
Everyone knew who Erin was after The Incident, but Samantha remembered her from art class junior year. Samantha had needed the requirement to graduate, but it was clearly Erin’s passion, even though she’d been a freshman. Samantha remembered how intensely those blue eyes would focus on a canvas. How Erin would get little flecks of paint in her then-blonde hair. How she never even realized there were ten other people in the room with her.
Outside of the studio, Erin attracted attention even when she wasn’t trying to. She was a tractor beam for trouble.
