“Thank you,” Liam said. He perched one hip on a corner of the desk and folded his arms. The more he looked at her, the more she reminded him of someone but he couldn’t nail it down. “What is your job description, Ms. Petroff?”

She swallowed and, he could tell, immediately regretted this betrayal of nerves. “All dispatches go through Soldotna, but I field any local calls. I keep your paperwork in order—Ms. Pratt was emphatic on the subject of tracking your overtime—and I liaise with Chief Armstrong’s admin to ensure that all areas of our detachment are covered. You will have noticed the post has no holding cell.”

Sidney Armstrong was Blewestown’s police chief. “I have.”

“Since this post was built simultaneously with Blewestown’s new police headquarters, it was thought that as a cost-saving measure that this post could utilize their cells for any detainees we might have.”

Before Liam could ask what other cost-saving measures there had been because bitter experience had taught him that there were always more, invariably to the detriment of whatever his mission was wherever he had been posted, they both heard the outer door open.

A woman was waiting for them in the front office. Medium height, medium though very curvy weight, blonde/green. “Shoot me now,” Liam said.

“Sir?”

“Hey, Liam,” the blonde said affably. “How you been?”

“Ms. Petroff?”

“Sir?”

“Does part of your job description include liaising with the press?”

“Sir, I interned four weeks with public relations, during which I wrote releases, fielded inquiries, and briefed three times.”

“Excellent. Handle this, please?” Liam returned to his office and shut the door firmly behind him.

It opened as he was sitting down at his desk. “Nice try, Liam,” the blonde said no less affably than before. “Don’t blame the kid, she tried her best.”

From behind her Petroff peered with a worried expression. “Sir, I’m sorry, but she just wouldn’t—”

He waved her off. “Don’t worry about it, Ms. Petroff. Carry on.”

She did her best not to look too relieved.

“Don’t worry, kid,” Jo said. “This guy’s a magnet for action. You’ll be seeing a lot of me.”

The door shut softly and Jo sat down across from Liam. They contemplated each other for a moment.

Jo Dunaway was a reporter for the Anchorage News and, for Liam’s sins, his wife’s college roommate at the University of Alaska and lifelong best friend. She was a very good reporter and an even better friend, and she enjoyed giving him wedgies in both of those roles. Payback was a way of life for Jo, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t close to being done with paying him back for the heartache he had caused Wy in the early stage of their relationship. He didn’t whine about it because he felt he deserved all the grief she handed out, and he never, ever made the mistake of complaining about Jo to Wy as Liam liked his head right where it was, thanks. He had to put up with Jo personally, so he did. He had to put up with her professionally, too, but he was a lot less sanguine about that.