“Well, crap,” Cody said. “She probably went home. I guess I’d better head on home and try to cheer her up some.”

“Give her a few minutes,” Candice advised. “She’ll come around when she sees what an advantage it is for both of you. Why don’t you stop off and see Charlie on the way home, and tell him to go ahead with reserving you a spot?”

“It can wait till tomorrow,” Cody shook his head. “Not having actually done it might help patching things up with Jan. She seemed pretty upset.”

“Yeah, good thinking,” John said. “You’ve always been able to handle her better than anyone else. You want me to drive you home?”

“No, hell, I’ll walk. It’ll give her a little time to cool off, maybe. Once she’s settled down a little I can probably talk sense into her.”

It was a longer walk home than to the police station earlier, and the day now didn’t seem anywhere near as nice. One of the things that had impressed him with Janice is that they rarely had any disagreements, let alone fights. Oh, the odd misunderstanding here and there, but they had always been able to talk it out. Just running off like that was very uncharacteristic of her, and it worried him.

It worried him more when he turned the corner onto Grove and found that the pickup wasn’t sitting in the driveway. Where had she gone? Right at the moment turning down the offer for the ride home didn’t seem like such a great idea, not that he had any idea where he might look for her except at home, and where his folks were working.

There wasn’t much he could do but head inside and call his mother at the store. “She’s not here,” he reported. “I can’t think where she might have gone.”

“I could go drive the van around and look for her,” Candice offered, “but I have no idea where I’d look.”

“Me, either,” Cody sighed, realizing that this could be more trouble than it had first seemed. “The only thing I can think of is to stay here. She about has to turn up here sooner or later.”

“As much as I’d like to suggest something that’s a little more proactive, that’s about the best idea I can think of,” she replied.

So there was nothing for Cody to do but sit around the house and wait for Janice, getting increasingly worried as time went on. A couple times he gave some thought to booting up the computer and checking out what he could about the Southeastern Michigan Public Service Academy, but he couldn’t make himself do it. If this was too big a problem with Janice, it might have to go by the wayside for now, huge money savings or not.

Four o’clock came and went, then five; not too long after that his parents came home. They hadn’t seen any sign of Janice or the pickup, and in this case no news was not necessarily good news. “I’m starting to get a little worried,” Candice said when she learned that there was no sign of Janice.

“I don’t think she’d do anything crazy,” Cody said hopefully.

“Maybe she went somewhere to be by herself and think,” John suggested.

“Not likely,” Cody sighed. “She doesn’t do things like that.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Another increasingly nervous twenty minutes went by before they saw the pickup pull into the driveway. Cody charged out of the house and yelled, “Janice! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Cody,” she smiled. “I was just doing what you wanted me to do.”

“What was that?”

“Show some initiative,” huge grin came from her. “You keep after me to do that, so for once I did.”

By now, John and Candice were out on the back porch as well. “So what did you do?” Cody asked.

“Look,” she said as she walked toward them, “it was pretty clear to me that you were going to do it. Isn’t that right?”

“Really, it’s too good a deal to turn my back on,” Cody said, “but if it’s that important to you, I can let it go if I have to.”

“You’re right,” she said, climbing the steps and throwing a big hug around him. “It is too good a deal to turn down and I knew I shouldn’t stop you. But it would drive me nuts to have to sit around an apartment down there while you’re gone all the time. So I decided that I needed to have something to do.”

“You figured out something?” Candice asked. “I thought there might be something at a college or something.”

“I went over to see Charlie Wexler,” she smiled. “It turns out that being a police academy isn’t all that the Southeastern Michigan Public Service Academy does. They have an EMT-1 class that runs the same dates as the police academy, and he got me signed up for it.”

“EMT?” Cody shook his head. “I never thought of that!”

“It’s been on my mind ever since Randy suggested it over at the dojo the other night. When I got to thinking more about it I was real sorry that I’d already missed the local class here this winter, but it was probably just as well I did because that might have slowed down our getting done with our high school classes on schedule. You said that there’s nothing wrong with an attorney also being a police officer, so I figured that there’s nothing wrong with being a nurse who’s also an EMT, especially if the school is going to pay for it, too.”

“Mr. Clark said something about that,” Cody shook his head. “Hell, I should have thought of that, rather than going off half-cocked. Good thinking, Janice! I mean, real good thinking!”

“Oh, you’d have thought of it,” she smiled again. “I trust you to do things like that, Cody. It’s just, well, you were a little preoccupied and I thought that for once you might appreciate my doing something for myself.”

“Well, I guess I’d better call Charlie in the morning and tell him to go ahead and have them save me a place,” he laughed. “I sure wouldn’t want you to be down there by yourself.”

“I already told him to go ahead and do it,” she told him. “Did you honestly think I was going to go down there without you?”

Cody and Janice didn’t get the chance to talk privately until they went to bed that evening. By now, they were far away from it just being holding hands. They were cuddled up closely together, whispering in each other’s ears.

“Jan, I have to say again how proud I am of you,” he told her. “You were right, I’ve been hoping you’d learn to show some initiative and assertiveness, and you sure did.”

“I felt like I had to do it, Cody. You knew I was not happy with the original idea, and we could have talked it around until you lost the chance. I really didn’t want that to happen. I’d have gone down there with you even if I’d had to sit in an apartment and stare at the four walls, but this is better. Damn it, Cody, I love you and I don’t want to be without you.”

“I love you too, Jan. It would have been real hard to be down there without you, and I didn’t want that to happen.”

“I couldn’t let that happen. Not for a minute. Cody, maybe you don’t understand. I’m not supposed to know this, but Carole Hunt said one time that I’m pretty much your slave, and she was right, Cody. I am your slave to do with as you want to, and I always will be.”

“Where did you hear that? I mean, about Carole saying that you’re my slave?”

“I overheard your mom talking with your dad about it when they thought I was asleep. It was way back last winter when we were working with Carole a lot. I never thought of it much like that, but you know, she was right. I’m yours, Cody, and I’ve been yours since the minute you saved me. It’s always going to be that way.”

“I knew you were pretty devoted to me,” he shook his head, “but I never thought of it like that.”

“I know you don’t,” she giggled. “It was a little hard for me to come to grips with until I realized that Carole was right. But you know what else Carole told your mom?”

“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“I can’t tell it exactly, but she said it’s kind of like a dog team. A team dog just has to run and do what it’s told. The musher, though, they have to keep the team fed and watered, make the decisions about where to run, lead the team, and like that, and mostly to keep the team happy and content.”

“Well, yeah,” Cody agreed. “I ran dogs a little when I was younger, but I got away from it. She’s right on that, though.”

“Cody, it’s been very hard for me to learn to make decisions for myself, but I can do it when I have to. I’m content to let you make them most of the time unless I have to do something different, like today. But, Cody?”

“Yes?”

“I’m letting you be the musher, but that means that you have to keep your team happy. Cody, I’m horny, I’ve been horny as hell for months and it’s been even worse since we went on the camping trip. Cody, your team is not very happy about it. I want you to make love to me, Cody. Partly I want you to do it to celebrate getting all this shit worked out, but mostly I want to do it because I love you and I can’t manage without you.”

“God, Jan,” he said. “I can’t think of you as my slave, but I love you too, and I don’t know how I could manage to make do without you.” He threw back the covers and got up.

“Cody?” she said. “Where are you going?”

“Just to close the door,” he snickered. “We don’t want to disturb the folks, do we?”

As it happened, John and Candice weren’t asleep, they were just lying awake, talking about the latest surprising event in their lives. This was going to change things again, they were sure.

Whatever it was they were talking about got interrupted when they heard Janice’s muffled but clearly ecstatic voice: “Oh, yes, oh, Cody, oh, God, yes, yes, yes!”

“Oh, cripe,” Candice sighed. “I never dreamed that she was going to be a screamer. If we have to listen to that every night from now till May we’re not going to get much sleep.”

“It’s not a total loss,” she heard John say as she felt herself pulled close to him. “That’s pretty inspirational, and it ought to keep life interesting the next few months.”

“You know, I don’t think I’m going to mind it,” she giggled. “The way things have been the last few months we can use a little inspiration.”

Bryson Payne was headed back from Brad Klavinski’s senior open house. It had been a little wetter than he would have liked to have seen and had run until after dark, but Brad had been a football player and deserved to have a little fun, despite how poor the last couple seasons had been. He’d kept the faith in spite of all the trouble that had come down.

Things had gotten worse since DeRidder had been forced out right after the last school board election, but after two years in Spearfish Lake Payne felt like he was secure, so he was feeling pretty good as he rolled down Central heading toward home. At least he felt pretty good until he saw the lights of the police cruiser behind him. Oh, shit, he thought. Can’t the Mickey Mouse cops in this town find better things to do than harass honest citizens?

Probably the damn cop saw a taillight out and wanted to cause trouble because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. Still, there was nothing to do but pull over.

The cop car pulled in behind him, lights flashing and high beams on, blinding him with the light in the mirrors. He saw the cop get out of the car, and the cop’s silhouette come up to his car. The cop was holding a big flashlight on him as he said. “Sir, may I see your driver’s license, proof of insurance and proof of registration?”

Again, there was nothing to do but dig the paperwork out. “All right, all right,” he said, feeling a little surly over being stopped by one of these Mickey Mouse local cops. “I wasn’t doing anything,” he protested.

“Sir,” the cop said in a voice that sort of sounded vaguely familiar, “have you been drinking?”

“I had a couple,” Payne admitted.

“Sir, would you step out of the car?”

With that big flashlight, Payne never got a look at the cop’s face, even as he was informed that if he refused a breathalyzer test it was considered a prima facie admission of a DUI. It wasn’t much longer before he was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of the police car. He still hadn’t had a good look at the officer – that damn flashlight. He heard the officer say into his portable, “City Seven inbound to the jail with a subject on DUI, reckless driving, running a red light and twenty-one over the limit. We’ll need George’s Towing for a pickup and tow to impoundment from eastbound Central short of Estes.”

Then the officer got into the car, and Payne finally got a good look at him. He seemed familiar, and then it hit him. “Archer?” he gasped.

“Yes, sir,” Cody said in a businesslike and professional manner.

“Are you really a policeman?”

“Yes, sir. I’m a Michigan certified police officer. I normally work part-time in Hawthorne, but Jan and I are home for a few weeks while we’re off from school. The chief came up a little shorthanded so he asked me to help out for a few shifts.”

“Are you doing this to me out of vengeance?” he asked angrily.

“No, sir,” Cody replied. “I didn’t know who I was stopping. I’m sworn to protect and serve, and taking a DUI off the road both protects and serves the public. That’s just doing my duty, not vengeance.” He dropped his serious demeanor and gave a grin that Payne could see in the rear view mirror. “Now, what I’ll pass informally to the school board,” Cody laughed, “that’s vengeance.”

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