Don't Call Me Hero by Eliza Lentzski Page B

Otherwise, I’ll end up drinking the bottle all by myself. I’ve got terrible willpower for a cop.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    The weekly newspaper was on my welcome mat the next morning. I would have found this relatively unremarkable except for one detail—my picture was on the front page. I wasn’t the main headline, but there was a story about me just under the middle fold. “Meet Our New Police Officer,” the black bolded words announced, “Military Hero, Cassidy Miller.”
    “What the fuck?” I voiced aloud. I bent and picked up the paper to better assess the situation. I had no idea how a story about me had happened so quickly, or better yet, why it had happened at all, until I saw the byline. “That little weasel,” I muttered.
    Grace’s apartment was steps away. I pounded on the front door. “Grace Kelly!” I yelled through the closed door. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Princess!”
    The door down the hallway opened and Mrs. Graves, the owner of the building and the apartment’s third occupant, peeked out into the hallway. I immediately stopped hitting the door.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    “Uh, sorry.” I tugged on my ponytail. “Do you know where I might find Grace?”
    I doubted she’d tell me since she’d just caught me acting like a crazy person. She peered curiously at me, her newest tenant, over thick eyeglasses. “I imagine she’s at work at the newspaper.”
    “Right.” People had jobs. And they typically went to those jobs when the sun was up. “And where might I find that exactly?”
     
    My anger had dissipated—mostly—by the time I made myself presentable enough to be seen in public and had driven my Harley to the other side of town in search of the Embarrass Weekly headquarters.
    The newspaper office was one giant room filled with half a dozen uninhabited cubicles. An assortment of outdated computers and fax machines hummed in the background and telephones rang unanswered. I wondered if it was so busy because other people had also appeared in the newspaper without their permission.
    An overweight black cat was sprawled over the top of a computer monitor. It cracked open one yellow eye to regard me, but apparently after deciding I wasn’t a person of interest, it went back to its nap.
    Grace walked out of a hidden back room.
    “You mind explaining this to me?” I asked, tapping at my picture on the printed page.
    “Hot off the press.” She seemed unsurprised by the visit. “I thought the town might want to know a little more about its newest resident,” she shrugged.
    “I didn’t realize I was on the record last night. And where the hell did you find this other stuff?” I demanded, feeling my anger building again. “I never told you the details of my time in Afghanistan.”
    “It’s called the Internet . You’re not that hard to find. It turns out they don’t give out too many Navy Crosses—less than twenty for all of Operation Enduring Freedom if my research is correct.” She shook her head and a quirky grin appeared. “I don’t know why you’d keep that a secret anyway. If it were me, that’s what I’d lead with. ‘Hi, I’m Grace Kelly Donovan, and I was awarded a medal of honor by the President of the United States. Could I get a coffee?’”
    “It was the Secretary of the Navy, not the President,” I corrected under my breath.
    “See? It’s a big frickin’ deal,” Grace insisted. “Why would you want to hide that?”
    “I’m just …” I rubbed at my arm. “I’m a private person. I didn’t ask to be front page news.”
    “Well, you are now.”
    She smiled in such a playfully impish way that even though we’d only just met I found it hard to stay angry at her.
    “Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, Embarrass is a small town,” she noted. “People would have eventually found out. Secrets don’t stay secrets around here.”
     
    + + +
     
    After my visit with Grace, I headed back to