Read Reflection Point: An Eternity Springs Novel for Free Online

added, “Although I’d think twice about bringing your pet chicken along.”
    Zach strode into the Eternity Springs sheriff’s office with a dozen different problems rattling through his brain. Since his last day off a week ago, he’d dealt with one firestorm after another. He had a list of follow-up issues as long as his arm, and while the good citizen in him was glad to see Eternity Springs grow, he couldn’t deny that he missed the good old slow days. Spying his dispatcher, a sixty-eight-year-old salty-tongued wonder woman named Ginger Harris, he asked, “Have we heard back from Judge Landry about that warrant?”
    “Not yet.”
    Zach sighed. “I’ll call him again.”
    Ginger held up a stack of yellow slips. “The phone has been ringing off the wall since Jeremy Paulson posted his video of a bear on his backyard trampoline online and it went viral. You have half a dozen interview requests from radio talk shows and cable news. They’ve made the connection that you won the Governor’s Award for heroism, so they’re wild to talk to you.”
    Zach groaned as he hung his hat on the rack beside his desk. “I’m too busy for nonsense like that.”
    “Mayor Townsend called with a special request that you at least give a couple interviews and mention that Eternity Springs is safe and we don’t have bears roaming the streets of the town. He’s afraid this publicity will hurt tourism.”
    Zach propped his elbows on his desk, closed his eyes, and massaged his temples with his fingertips. He knew better than to speak the heresy that from his perspective,less tourism wasn’t such a bad thing. More people in town meant more people behaving badly, which meant more work for him. This spring break season was the worst he’d seen since he’d taken the sheriff’s job in Colorado. After four years working undercover infiltrating the methamphetamine trade in Oklahoma, he’d wanted—hell, he’d needed—a nice, laid-back, boring job. He’d had it, too, until Celeste Blessing revived Eternity Springs by opening Angel’s Rest.
    Ginger set a stack of mail on his desk and asked, “Did you get any hits on the fingerprints from the burglary out at the Pulaski place?”
    “Turns out they belonged to a houseguest who they had forgotten had visited.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “Yep.”
    “Any other leads?”
    “Nope.”
    “Well, now, that’s just splendid. Maybe I should call Jeremy and tell him to bring his video camera to the sheriff’s office.”
    Zach lifted his gaze and scowled at her. “Excuse me? Why in the world would you say that?”
    “Jeremy specializes in bear videos, doesn’t he? I see one great big angry one sitting in front of me.”
    Zach bared his teeth and growled at her. Ginger laughed, then asked, “What can I do to help you, Zach?”
    “Have we had any resumes arrive that seem promising?”
    “I put two into your in-box. They’re the best we’ve received.”
    The tone of her voice didn’t sound promising, but as he searched through his box for the résumés, Zach held out a glimmer of hope that at least one of these applicants would do. When he returned to the office followinghis day off a week ago, he’d learned that his deputy—a navy reservist—had been called to active duty. This, two weeks after his other deputy took a job in Durango. Since then he’d averaged only four hours of sleep per night, and he couldn’t keep up the pace much longer.
    With the tourist season bearing down upon him—pun intended—he needed to hire help fast. If they did have an emergency, he’d be deputizing friends in order to deal with it, and that was no way to run a law enforcement office.
    He scanned both resumes and remained underwhelmed. However, his in-box was beginning to resemble Murphy Mountain, and since Ginger had a point about his grizzly-bear attitude, he picked up the phone on his desk and called the first candidate. Martin Varney answered on the third ring and was happy to participate in