Once a Hero. Lisa Childs

She actually wasn’t that certain she’d made the right choice in joining. Terlecki wouldn’t let anyone but him answer her queries, and he never answered the most important question. Then again, she couldn’t ask him outright if he’d framed her brother to pad his arrest record. He was too smart to make any incriminating admissions.

      She was also worried about Jason. While the class met only one night a week, he hated being separated from her. Dropping the six-year-old at school every morning had become an ordeal. He claimed to be sick, and since he did have asthma and allergies, she was never certain if he was telling the truth. Her stomach tightened now with guilt over leaving him with his first-grade teacher. While the older woman had assured her that he was always fine the moment Erin left, she was concerned.

      “Did you hear me?” Herb asked, his voice sharp with impatience.

      “I’m sorry, sir,” Erin said, face heating. “What were you saying?”

      Her lack of attention apparently forgiven, he grinned. “I’m going to give you your own column to report on what happens while you’re in the academy.”

      Her own column? If she truly were the ambitious reporter Kent thought her, she would be thrilled. Instead, nervous tension coursed through her. Could she handle a column, in addition to her regular coverage of the police beat and taking care of her nephew?

      “Thank you, sir,” she finally murmured, “I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

      “Just keep writing like this,” he said, slapping his hand on the copy of her last article. He chuckled with glee. “I love it.”

      “I HATE IT.”

      The chief chuckled as he settled onto the chair behind his desk. “I think the feeling’s mutual.”

      “I said I hate it,” Kent clarified as he paced the small space between the chief’s desk and the paneled office walls. “I hate the article, not her.”

      But it wasn’t just an article anymore—she had been given her own column: Powell on Patrol, which was to be like a weekly journal of her adventures in the Citizen’s Police Academy.

      “I suspect her boss and my friend the mayor had something to do with this,” the chief admitted. He and the mayor were hardly friends, more like barely civil enemies.

      Kent suspected their animosity had something to do with the chief’s wife, since the mayor had pretty much dropped any civility since her death a year ago. “Joel Standish does own the Chronicle and control Herb Stein.”

      “Yeah, but I don’t think they’re twisting her arm to write this stuff. She really seems to hate you.” The chief slapped the paper against his desk. “I’d hate her, too, if I were you.” Anger flushed the older man’s face.

      Kent laughed at his even-mannered boss expressing such a sentiment. Maybe Kent didn’t have the loving family his roommate had, but the department was his family, and there was no one more loyal than a fellow officer. “That’s you.”

      “C’mon, you have to hate her,” Frank Archer insisted. “Look at how she twisted your words.”

      Kent took the proffered paper from his boss’s outstretched hand. “I read it.” He didn’t even glance at the column as he recited from memory, “‘Public information officer Sergeant Terlecki admits his cushy job at the Lakewood Police Department is a made-up position.’”

      “She did twist your words, right?” The chief leaned forward. “Because I remember you saying something pretty similar when I offered you the job.”

      “We hadn’t had a public information officer before,” Kent reminded him. The chief—and his predecessor—had always handled the press themselves. If he’d been too busy, his secretary had claimed he wasn’t available for comment.

      “But other departments that aren’t even as big as ours have public information officers to deal with the media, and we should, too,” Frank insisted. “We needed one. We needed you.”

      Kent stopped his pacing and held the man’s pale blue gaze. “You didn’t create the job because…”

      “Because you took a bullet for me?” The chief shook his head. “Son, I’d take it back if I could.”

      “The job?” He deliberately misunderstood, his lips twitching into a smile.

      “The bullet.”

      “Nobody can take the bullet out.” Not without a seventy-five percent chance of leaving him paralyzed. Those weren’t odds Kent was willing to take a risk on; as Billy had said, he wasn’t lucky.

      “Have you checked with a surgeon recently?” Chief Archer asked. “There are new medical advances all the time. You could go to the University of Michigan or the Mayo—”

      “I’m fine, really,” he assured his boss, whom he also thought of as a friend. Despite Kent’s insistence, he knew that Frank Archer would always feel guilty that Kent had gotten hurt while protecting him.

      “You’re bored out of your mind in this job,” the chief stated.

      Apparently Kent hadn’t done very well hiding his dissatisfaction. He tapped a finger against the newspaper he held. “Erin Powell keeps things interesting.”

      The chief’s pale eyes narrowed. “Not interesting enough, I suspect. I know you, Kent. I know you’d rather be back in the field.”

      “So put me back in the field,” Kent snapped, tired of hiding his feelings to spare others’ guilt.

      Betraying his inner torment, the chief closed his eyes and shook his head. “God, I wish I could, Kent, but I can’t, not without medical clearance.”

      “I’m sorry,” Kent said, as his own guilt coursed through him. He hadn’t wanted to make the chief feel worse than he already did. “I know you can’t.” With the bullet so close to his spine, he was too much of a liability.

      Even without surgery, there was a risk of paralysis from scar tissue pressing on nerves or the bullet moving and irrevocably damaging his spinal cord. It wouldn’t be fair to his fellow officers—the ones he might need to back up—or to the civilians he might need to protect if he was on the job. Erin had been exactly right the other night when she’d claimed that his badge was just for show.

      The chief sighed, then forced a smile. “At least Erin Powell keeps you from being bored senseless in your cushy job.”

      “That she does.” Kent gripped the paper tighter and glanced down at the picture of her next to the byline of her new column. While he didn’t betray it to his boss, anger gripped him. He wanted to wring her pretty little neck. She had deliberately twisted every damn word he’d spoken to her the other night.

      “You should tell her,” the chief advised.

      “How I came by my nickname?” Kent shook his head. “No, we agreed to keep that from the public.”

      “Back then. Three years ago. Keeping it secret was your first decision as public information officer.” The chief’s eyes filled with pride. “You were on your way to surgery at the time.”

      The surgery hadn’t removed the bullet, though the doctors still claimed they had saved his life. But Kent couldn’t do his job anymore, so he had no life. At least not the life he used to have—the one he wanted.

      “It was a good decision,” Kent insisted. Keeping the attempt on the chief’s life quiet had been a good decision, but maybe he should have had the bullet taken out, and risked paralysis.

      “You really don’t want the public to make you a hero,” the chief mused, shaking his head.

      “Not when someone else has to be the villain.”

      “But the woman shot you!” The older man’s voice shook with emotion.

      “She was trying to