Making eye contact over the lip of his glass, he took a pull then set it back on the table. “None of that Chief shit, Rusten. I’m off the clock,” he informed her, sans any of the iron tone he’d use if he were really reprimanding an officer. It was a suit that didn’t fit quite right in the shoulders just yet. “None of that little people bs either. I’d name you deputy chief if I thought you’d take it, and if you didn’t already have a decent offer on the table.”
Sitting on the new council was big, possibly larger than Joel’s own promotion. But it came with politics, and not the kind either of them were used to within the departments of the APD.
“Soon I’ll have to schedule times to see you with your secretary, then you’ll ask to be moved out of the bullpen, and I’ll be left trying to find myself a new partner.” If he believed a word of that he wouldn’t have said any of it. He hadn’t been born yesterday, as Jane was so fond of reminding him at every opportunity, and he knew that she, out of all of them, was the least likely to get an ego about the responsibility Mayor Clarke had offered.
“I’ll have to explain to Kaisha why you’re not coming around anymore, and eventually get shot in the line of duty because the new guy just wasn’t watching my back as close.” By that point he was just laying on the shit for good measure, because he could, because it felt pretty damn good to shake the seriousness of the department off his shoulders for a night.