He distracted himself with the poster on the wall.Winterlands. His favorite game. The poster was nice. Looked like part of the Destroyer expansion worlds. He’d lost a lot of hours toWinterlandsover the years.
The apartment had gone quiet.
Linc turned back slowly to find Vasquez and the kid looking at him, heads cocked in opposite directions. The kid’s throat bobbed up and down. Linc had the sudden, unexpected, and altogether amazing thought that he’d like to suck on it.
Panicking, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “This is really cool.”
Yup. Very slick. In an emergency, you definitely wanted Lincoln Scott on your team.
As the truck pulled away a few minutes later, Vasquez elbowed him gently. “What was that about?”
Linc stiffened. “What was what about?”
She jerked her thumb over one shoulder and dropped her voice. “‘This is really cool.’”
He shrugged her off. “The kid seemed stressed. I was trying to distract him before he lit something else on fire.”
She laughed and shoved at his shoulder. “That was a new one for me too. A sweet potato? The thing was just gone. He must have had it in there for twenty minutes at least.”
Linc turned his gaze out the window. Somehow, he doubted it. The kid—the guy—whoever he was, hadn’t struck Linc as the sort of person who would let something go so easily. His speech had been precise, even if he used a lot of words. And someone who went to the trouble of framing a poster, instead of tacking it up on the wall, would also color-coordinate their underwear drawer and read all the instructions before doing anything, including turning on a microwave.
“It’s your turn to buy the donuts,” Brian said from behind the truck’s steering wheel.
Relief slithered down Linc’s spine at the change of subject, but it turned to annoyance as he caught Brian’s grin in the rearview mirror.
“IknowI bought them last time,” Linc said. According to Seacroft FD’s unwritten rules, if your call was a false alarm, you brought back donuts so the trip wasn’t wasted. Linc felt like he’d bought donuts every damn day.
“I picked up an extra shift yesterday while you were sleeping,” Vasquez said. “I bought them, then. So it’s definitely your turn.”
“But it wasn’t even a false alarm. There was a fire.”
Brian snorted. “No one is going to believe we got called out on a sweet potato fire.”
Linc grumbled, but he’d lost. As the low man on the SFD ladder, he was pretty much everyone’s bitch. If they said buy the donuts, he bought the donuts. If they brought him in for an extra shift to work the dispatch desk—the most surefire way the regular crew would get called out on an MVA or something requiring any real skill—then he’d sit there and answer the phone. He’d be polite when people called to ask if—hypothetically—they wanted to have a cookout with an open fire—and this was a totally hypothetical question, I just want to know, officer. Do I call you officer?—did they need a permit or could they just light a match wherever they felt like it?
Twenty minutes and a box of eleven donuts later—he’d ordered a dozen, but while Linc was okay with being the department’s donut mule, but he wasn’t going to risk letting someone else eat the double chocolate—they rolled back into the station.
“Are those donuts?” Sharon, the department’s daytime dispatcher, came across the bay with wide eyes and grabby hands as Linc, Vasquez, and Brian finished putting their gear away.
Linc shoved the box at her. “Take your pick.”
“So nothing to report from the scene?”
“Not a thing.” Brian pulled out an apple fritter and stuffed half in his mouth. His wife was pregnant and had banned all sweets and junk food from the house. Once everyone else had a chance, he’d probably polish off the rest of the box.
“Just a college student who needs some cooking lessons,” Vasquez said.
“I think he was older than that,” Linc said, then immediately regretted it, because everyone’s gaze swung to him.
“Oh, yeah?” Sharon winked as she chewed. “Was he cute?”
Good thing Brian had taken the box from Linc, because he would have dropped it. He forced himself to keep his breath steady.
“Is he your type?” Vasquez cocked an eyebrow at him.
“No.” The answer came faster than blinking. Years of practice made the lie a reflex.
She waited, letting the question hang. Brian fished another fritter out of the box.
