In the Clear Read Free Page A

was talking made it sound an awful lot like . . .
    He slapped the paper into Fletcher’s chest and gave his hat—a sensible black knit with a bill to keep the worst of the snow out of his eyes—a tweak. “I can’t believe you’ve worked here for two years and somehow failed to mention that you rescue people in your spare time. You’re a goddamn superhero.”
    Yeah. That. That was what it sounded like.
    “It’s not really a big deal,” Fletcher said uncomfortably. “It’s just this thing I do.”
    “It’s one hell of an extracurricular.”
    He didn’t know how to respond to that. Saving people, playing hero—it was a big deal. He knew that. He felt it every time he was called to help the local Search and Rescue team head out to find missing children, lost hikers, people trapped in adverse weather. But that didn’t make it any easier to talk about. If anything, it made it harder.
    “Don’t look so scared. I mean that as a compliment.” Gerald winked. “You’re out front today. I want you to smile and wave and, if there’s an ounce of sense somewhere inside that head of yours, put on some kind of shiny badge or cape. Let’s see if we can’t blow Ben’s record out of the water, eh?” He chuckled as he realized he’d just let out a pun. “Ha! Out of the water. You should know all about that.”
    Fletcher watched his boss’s retreating back, hunched in its puffy blue coat, and held the paper clutched to his chest. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see—
    There it is.
    He stared at the picture, grainy from the printer and streaked from the melting snow, seeing nothing past the odd expression on his own face. The two-dimensional image of himself wore a twisted grimace that made him look angry, but all Fletcher remembered feeling was cold. Numbing cold and a mountain of relief.
    By the time the entire Search and Rescue crew had assembled, it had to have been ten o’clock at night, at least two hours more before they had the woman stabilized. How could a reporter have gotten there and snapped a picture without his knowing?
    Of course. The website lady. They’d earmarked some money to do an overhaul of the SAR crew’s existing website, and the woman they hired had wanted to get a few action shots so she wouldn’t have to rely on stock footage. But she hadn’t said anything about posting the pictures at an online news website—and she definitely hadn’t said anything about attaching his name to them, or he would have flatly refused. He didn’t like being the center of attention, especially out on the field. Crowing over his own contributions detracted from the real mission of the organization. And if he was being honest, he was also hesitant to shift the status quo.
    There was no denying he was a man slow to change, that he clung to the familiar even after the rest of the world had moved on.
    It was simple, really. He didn’t want to talk about his Search and Rescue group for fear people would start having unrealistic expectations about him. He didn’t fill out the college application for the EMT program for fear a rejection would close the door on that possibility for good.
    And he never did anything— anything —that might upset his place in the Sinclair family. Friend, brother, almost a son. Ever since his father had died when he was eight years old, they’d been the most constant of all the constants in his life.
    They were everything.
    A car drove by at that moment, kicking up a huge spray of sludge and ice chunks. Fletcher felt the splash soak through his clean khakis, clinging to his legs in big, damp patches. It seemed a much more fitting start to the day than Gerald’s bizarre belief that he could suddenly become some kind of car-selling god just because of a chance snapshot by an indiscreet photographer.
    “Don’t just stand there, Owens. Get moving.” Gerald gestured from the main showroom. “No one will recognize you in all that snow gear. I bet we can find one of