14. Cody
Cody
Later that day
“ M orning, Sally-Anne,” I greet as I step into the detachment.
With the county being too small for two separate buildings, the new marshal service is buddying up with the RCMP. Unsurprisingly, the Mounties don’t like sharing. Space. Crimes. Or staff—Sally-Anne being case in point.
I went to school with Sally-Anne Avery, and she always had a crush on me, so we tend to get the initial callouts thanks to favoritism.
“Morning, Cody.” She blinks. “I mean chief.”
“I’m still Cody.” I tap the desk in front of a picture frame placed there. “Everything okay with Mitchell?”
Her nose wrinkles. “He’s not getting into any more fights, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s partially why I’m asking,” I concur with a smile.
“That kid will be the death of me. Thank you for talking to him.”
“It’s fine. Billy Masterson’s leaving him alone?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Nodding, I pass behind her desk and head down the corridor that leads to the marshal’s offices.
The open-plan space holds five desks, two in a row twice over and then mine at the front.
If my buddies in the CAF could see me now, they’d either laugh at the perceived demotion or they’d congratulate me on finding a chunk of peace that allows me to control my combat-ready stance.
My day-shift staff are seated at their desks when I step inside the department, but it’s Martin Poitras who scuttles over to me. “Everything okay, chief? Nothing happened at the bar?”
Sensing my team of four’s interest, I hitch a shoulder. “Told them they were testing my patience. Doubt it’ll work, but it was worth a shot.”
That sends the others back to their work, but Marty mutters, “Had three more complaints.”
I scrape a hand over my hair. “Anything else?”
“General store reported some shoplifting?—”
“Local kids?”
He nods. “I took their names.”
“Send Berrien over to talk to their parents.”
“Will do.”
The day in and of itself isn’t a shitty one, but I linger on my initial meeting with Amy.
Paulie’s at the forefront of my mind. So’s Ricky.
I became a man with those assholes. We went up through the ranks together.
It’s hard not to feel like I’ve been abandoned.
No man left behind, my ass.
I’m relieved to get out of the detachment, less so when I finally take out my personal phone and see that Callan’s updated the trouble twins’ locations no less than four times.
Gritting my teeth, I set the map for their current destination and begin the drive into Saskatoon.
Callan’s right though. Little shit. I do like long drives. Sometimes, they’re all that’ll clear my head.
When my cell rings, I contemplate ignoring it. “Fuck.”
I forgot about Mike.
I accept the call as I crack my neck. “I’m on the road.”
“Fine with me. Why would I care where you are so long as you’re not putting yourself in danger?”
My initial sessions with him were fractious. His methods help, though. Even if he is annoying as fuck.
I heave a sigh. “Well?”
“You’re supposed to talk. Not me.”
“Aren’t you going to ask any questions?”
“How’s life?”
“Ted—” Before I can finish the word ‘tedious,’ I blink. Cracking my neck again, I mutter, “I’m not sure.”
“You were going to say tedious then you stopped yourself. Why? I know CBT practices are boring after a while, but there’s comfort in that.”
“No, I don’t mind that. I told you that already.”
“I’m still not sure what your logic was in taking this job with the marshals. It’s bound to add to your stress.”
“You put me in charge of my retirement,” is my bland retort.
“Yes, but putting a halt to the belle indifference doesn’t involve taking over a detachment!”
“I don’t have control over a detachment. I manage eight people, Mike, in a small town where The General Store expects us to speak to the parents of shoplifters if they catch them in the act. I’m not in a big city.”
He grunts. “So, the tedium of the job is a problem?”
“I guess it might be,” I admit. “It’s not exactly cruising at sixty-thousand feet, but it’s nice to feel like I’m helping without…” My throat grows tight.
“Breathe through it, Cody.”
I stare at the horizon up ahead. The sky’s a bright blue. The sun’s a gleaming ball of light that hurts my eyes.
“I am safe in this moment,” I chant. “And I’m getting better. Every day. In every way.”
Mike soothes, “That’s good. It’s also correct. The first time we met, you weren’t exactly self-regulating.”
“It’s easier at home, but I’m not sleeping.”
“Why not?”
“Can’t switch off.”
“Makes sense. You have a lot of new stimuli.”
“Maybe.” My mouth tightens. “I haven’t told you something.”
“Something interesting? Or something boring?”
I can’t stop my grin from forming, but it quickly dies when I think about what I need to share.
As I explain Butch Cassidy and Calamity Jane, as I tell him how I was a dumbass to write her a ‘Dear John’ and how Tee’s moved in, he heaves a sigh. “You do like to make things difficult for yourself, Cody.”
“Wish I could argue,” I mutter. “Of course, I decided to dig a deeper grave by trying to get her a job at the local school.”
“Isn’t that you being nice?”
“You’d think so, but I might as well have been offering to poison her.” I rub my temple. “I just… She doesn’t have any work right now, and I figured if she had a job, she’d stick around, but she took it the opposite way and... fuck. ”
“You have it bad.”
“I do. She’s exceptional.”
“Strong adjective.”
“If the shoe fits. She doesn’t see the world the way we do. I never know what she’s going to say next. She makes me…” I ponder a more rational response. “We have set patterns in the sky. Set routes. Set behaviors. We follow them all so that we can act autonomously?—”
“Like driving while talking to me on the phone. You couldn’t do one without the other if you weren’t comfortable with the machine.”
“Yeah.” Except, the jets I was flying were worth tens of millions of dollars… “When it comes down to it, you’re working on instinct. You’re going up against someone with similar training, a similar weapon, a similar plane—you have to come out on top. It’s kill or be killed.”
“Right. What does this have to do with Tee?”
“She throws all the rules out. I’m flying in a plane I’ve never heard of, facing a pilot from outer space, and she’s coming at me, ready to collide?—”
“And you… like that?”
“I fucking lo—” When my screen flashes, I break off and immediately pull over. “Give me a minute.”
“Your dime.”
I snort then heave an impatient sigh when I see that Tee and Zee’s location has changed. Again.
With a quick glance at the time, I realize my appointment with Mike is almost over anyway and I’m ten minutes from Saskatoon.
“She’s the reason you can’t sleep?”
“I don’t…” I pause. “Guilt?”
“Maybe. They say confession’s good for the soul.”
“You think I should tell her?”
“I don’t think lies sit well with you, Cody. You’re a pretty decent guy, even if you have shitty taste in hobbies.”
Mike doesn’t appreciate organized sports.
“I-I don’t know how to tell her without fucking everything up.”
“What’s to fuck up? You haven’t tried to be overtly friendly with her, have you?”
“I guess not.”
“Then, what’s the problem?”
“Aren’t I ruining any potential before there’s even a chance to?—”
“You want to be with her?”
“I’d like to be friends with her. Bare minimum.”
“Then why did you push her out of your life?”
“Our time’s up,” I half-chirp, relieved I don’t have to bring this up today.
Even though he’s right and it’s been playing on my mind, discussing this will make my shitty day even shittier.
“You’re a brat,” he grumbles. “Speak in a couple days.”
“Yup.”
I cut the call with alacrity and find myself two minutes away from the mall where Tee and Zee thankfully remain.
Before they can leave and I have to seek them out again, I pull into the parking garage and head for the store. Midway up an escalator, their destination changes, but I’m in luck—they stay in the mall.
Because it’s a weekday, it’s not the busiest, and I quickly find Tee in their current store. She’s plunked in a chair by the dressing room on her cell and looks to be playing a game. When I approach from behind, I see she has some kind of app that lets her write sheet music.
I clear my throat to warn her of someone’s presence, but she murmurs, “Saw you in the mirror over there. Need to work on your stealth skills, Cody.”
“Stopped worrying about that when I retired,” I drawl, amused by her greeting as I take a seat by her side.
That, of course, is when I’m greeted with the bags they’ve collected on their journey.
“You guys have been busy,” I mock, trying not to think about how my mood perked up the second I set eyes on her.
“Sure have. But we got what we need and I picked up a dress for a date I’m going on tonight.”
“You’re going on a date?!”
“The wonders of technology.” She waggles her phone. “Figured while I’m in Saskatoon, I could kill three birds with one stone.”
“Three?”
“Oh, yeah.” Another waggle of her phone. “Just composing a song for Colt’s album.”
“His album?”
Why does she speak in English, yet I never know what the hell’s coming out of her mouth? And why does that enchant the ever-loving shit out of me?
“As a thank you for letting me move in, I’m creating an album for him.”
“You said EP,” Zee hollers from one of the cubicles. At least, I assume that’s where she is. “Hi, Cody!”
“Hey, Zee,” I call back. “So, it went from an EP to an album?”
“What can I say? My muse is on red alert right now.” She peers at me from under her lashes. “So, you’re on babysitting duty?”
I sit back in my seat. “It’s no hardship.”
It certainly isn’t now.
“Is she going to need a driver full-time after Callan’s PR spectacle?”
“He talked to me about it, yes. So did Colt. And Mum. And Mrs. Abelman. So I’ll tell you what I told them. This plan is stupid.”
She surprises me by snickering.
“The best security is anonymity.”
“How well do you think your family is at keeping under the radar?” she asks, fingers tapping on her cell.
“Very good, I’d say.”
“It isn’t that I don’t agree with you because I do. Yet, I also see the smarts in controlling how she’s rolled out. Your family’s like Canadian royalty?—”
“Hardly,” I scoff.
“You can say what you want, mister, but look at this.” She shoves her phone in my face, and I gape at the screen.
“What the fuck?” I snap, snatching it as I find picture after picture of me in my marshal uniform. Not only that, but worse—of me in a jet. Zoomed in so far you can see part of the goddamn cockpit.
“Where the fuck did they get these?” I sputter.
“Photojournalists have very long cameras.”
“I don’t think it’s the camera that’s long,” I insert grimly, mostly grateful that those long lenses didn’t show my call name that’s painted onto either side of my jet.
“My point is that you guys think floating under the radar happens by attending the local school, but it doesn’t work.” She leans over and taps her screen. “They started uploading pics of Callan when he turned eighteen.”
“What?!”
As I scroll down and find my baby brother in chem class handling a petri dish and then him in the gym, I grit my teeth.
A text bubble pops up on her screen from the man in question:
Callan: Is Cody there yet?
I tap into it, ignoring her, “Hey!” then swipe out of the message app to return to the browser, where I copy the link, send it to him, then hit call.
“Have you seen these pictures?”
I can hear the shrug in his voice. “Sure. Guess that answers whether or not you were with Zee.”
“Why haven’t you scraped them off the internet?”
“Do you know how the internet works?”
“I know you can get porn taken down!”
He snorts. “Nah. It’s a fact of life. Once it’s up, it’s up. I thought you knew about them. We’re hot property no matter what Mum says.”
That shit about him not being a playboy like Cole evidently stung.
“I can guaran-damn-tee Colt doesn’t know about his online popularity,” Tee chimes in, apparently amused by this turnabout. “If he did, I don’t think he’d be happy to know he’s compared to Heathcliff, which makes no sense. Colt’s the least psychotic person I know.”
“Reassuring,” I say on a sigh.
“You were raised by a nutcase, so you can say the same thing.”
“Do you have to sound so cheerful?” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Some of these pictures are a security risk!”
“I don’t understand why the RCAF didn’t do something about the pictures of you in a jet,” she agrees.
My temper’s truly pricked. “Has this been going on for a long time?”
“Oh, you sweet summer child, since you were eighteen. Of course, back then, it wasn’t so intrusive, but there are a lot of girls who aren’t happy about this economy and the fact that Prince William is not only married with kids, but balding. You guys are hot, billionaire bachelors with full heads of hair. What do you expect?”
“Firstly, I expect not to be hounded when I’m defending our country. Secondly, Colt’s the billionaire.”
“You’re paltry millionaires. Honestly, if I had my violino piccolo, I’d play it for you in shared depression at our miserly bank balances.”
My lips kick up at the side. “I feel very little sympathy coming from you.”
“That you can read my intent means you’re not a psychopath, either.” She shrugs. “It is a fact of life. It’s why I didn’t lie to Callan about the clitoris being closer to the asshole than the pussyhole so he’d be eating ass for the rest of his life—not that I’m kink shaming. Callan, FYI, as gross as it may seem, a clean asshole can be a tasty one.”
“Oh my god.” Callan groans. “Please, why won’t this sex talk ever end?”
I scrape a hand over my face. “I can confirm she’s right.”
She eyes me, brows lifted, while Callan whines in the background.
“We’ll talk about that later, Callan.”
“Can we not?” he shrieks.
“Consider it punishment for not warning us.”
“Not warning you?” Callan sputters. “You have as much access to the world wide web as I do. You could have Googled your name like any normal famous person.”
“We’re not famous!”
“No, but our money makes us that way, and Pops, I mean Clyde, didn’t help matters. You know the papers speculated on his investments, never mind the fact that whenever he attended fancy parties, it was always with some woman younger than Tee on his arm. Then there are his ties to that foundation that has everyone’s panties in a twist.”
Hating that he’s right, my shoulders slump. It’s almost worth it, though, because Tee pats my knee.
“There, there,” she soothes. “So, security.”
“I told you we have a security team coming in to handle when Zee is in public.”
“You what?!”
Hearing my sister-in-law’s shriek tells me that her stealth skills are better than mine.
None of us heard her approach, not even Tee.
“Ah, shit.”