The words stung because they were accurate. Lena was asking Erin to minimize her role, to step back from the expertise that made her essential, all because Lena couldn't handle the emotional cost of caring about someone whose work involved real danger.
"I'm not asking you to shrink," Lena said, though even as she said it, she knew it sounded hollow. "I'm asking you to be careful."
"Iamcareful. I'm trained, I'm equipped, and I'm competent. What you're asking for isn't for me to be careful. You want me to stop being myself." Erin opened her truck door, then paused. "And I can't build a relationship with someone who needs me to be smaller than I am to feel comfortable."
"Erin, wait?—"
But Erin was already climbing into her truck, starting the engine with the decisive movement of someone who'd heard enough. She rolled down the window just enough to speak.
"I need some space to think about this, Lena. About whether we want the same things."
Lena watched Erin drive away, leaving her alone in the parking lot with the acrid smell of chemical smoke and two dead bodies that proved she was failing at everything that mattered.
The Rainbow Alliance Center smoldered behind her. Martin Cross was somewhere out there, probably reporting to whoever was paying him that their latest attack had succeeded beyond expectations.
And she'd just driven away the one person whose expertise could help stop the next one.
Lena pulled out her phone, staring at the contact list. There had to be another way to keep Erin safe without losing her. Someone who could help, someone who could make Erin understand the danger she was putting herself in. Her thumbhovered over Captain Hallie Hunter's number for a beat before she pressed call.
10
Erin's phone buzzed against the kitchen table, and seeing Captain Hallie's name on the display made her stomach plummet. Sunday morning calls from her supervisor were never good news.
She'd been staring at the same document in the case file for twenty minutes, not reading a word. It’d been two days since Friday's fight with Lena, and she was still trying to convince herself that the silence between them signified healing, not damage.
Their texts had been carefully neutral:Evidence processing complete. Pattern analysis attached.Safety protocols updated per chemical fire findings.Community meeting scheduled Tuesday.
Nothing about the argument in the Rainbow Alliance parking lot after everyone else had left, their voices raised over fear, control, and protection. Nothing about Erin driving away afterward, telling Lena she needed space to think about whether they really wanted the same things.
The phone buzzed again, more insistent. Erin's throat tightened as she swiped to answer.
"Hi, Captain."
"Morning, Erin. Sorry to bother you on your day off." Hallie's voice carried that careful professional tone that meant trouble. "I need you to come into the station. There's something we should discuss."
The case files scattered across her table suddenly felt like props in a play she didn't want to perform. "Is it about the arson investigation?"
A pause, far too long to be natural. "Not exactly. Can you be here in an hour?"
Erin's hand tightened on the phone. In six years of working with Hallie, the woman had never called her in on a Sunday for anything that wasn't life-or-death urgent. And this didn't sound urgent. It sounded worse.
"Of course. I'll be right there."
She hung up and stared at the phone, dread settling like an anvil on her chest. Whatever this was, it wasn't about accelerant analysis or fire patterns. The tone in Hallie's voice, the way she maintained careful distance, this was damage control.
Deep down, in the place where instinct lived before logic talked it out of existence, she already knew what this was about.
Her hands shook as she gathered the case files, papers scattering as she tried to stack them. The coffee mug slipped from her fingers, and the dark liquid spread across the table and soaked into the incident reports. She cursed under her breath as she grabbed paper towels, but the words on the page were already bleeding together and evidence photos smeared into illegible smudges.
Like everything else this weekend, falling apart at the slightest pressure.
She threw on the first clean clothes she could find—jeans and a fire department polo that felt like the armor she just might need. Her keys weren’t where she’d left them, and she spentprecious minutes searching before finding them under the stack of soggy papers. Her reflection in the hallway mirror looked pale, hollow-eyed, like someone preparing for inevitable bad news.
The drive to the fire station blurred past in a haze of Sunday morning quiet. Her knuckles turned white against the steering wheel where she was gripping so tight her hands cramped. Every red light felt endless, and every turn brought her closer to whatever was waiting for her in Hallie’s office. The familiar streets of Phoenix Ridge—the cafe where she’d grabbed breakfast yesterday, the park where she ran on weekends—looked different now, like scenery from someone else’s life.
Erin sat in her truck outside the fire station, her hands still gripping the steering wheel. The parking lot was nearly empty, just a skeleton Sunday crew. Through the bay doors, she could see the trucks sitting silent and imposing, waiting for calls that may or may not come.
Her mind ran through the possibilities, each one worse than the last. The weekend had been a careful balance of hope and hurt. Hope that Lena would realize her fear was destroying what they were building, and hurt that it had taken a parking lot argument for Erin to finally say what needed saying.
