“No.” His tone was calm. Authoritative. “Not yet.”
I opened my mouth to fight it but then closed it again. He was right. The last time I’d disobeyed a direct order, I’d almost been killed; worse yet, I’d almost killed my crew. And now everything had changed, and not just in my work life. I had to obey my command, even if I didn’t want to. Even if I thought I couldn’t.
“How long do we wait, Chief?” I asked, forcing down the concern that tightened in my chest. He didn’t respond immediately, so I picked up the radio and tried to page Hansen again. Still, there was nothing.
“Okay,” Chief Davis said, but I was already moving, pulling on PPE to get ready to go in after them. However, just as I got the last of my gear on, a small, fuzzy voice came through the radio. We all looked up, shielding our eyes just in time to see Paisley appear from the shattered window. Still up there on the ladder waiting to rescue them, Nick helped her out of the window, and a collective sigh of relief traveled through the crowd of us down below. As we watched, Matt appeared second after her, shielding his head from the flames, now licking the wall only inches from their exit. I looked at Chief Davis, who smiled and nodded. We were only waiting on one more.
The windowsill stayed empty for a moment that seemed to go on forever as Paisley and Matt were lowered to safety. The ladder went up again, and just when I was sure that Hansen wouldn’t be coming out of this building, he was there, miraculously, holding what looked like a soot-covered but very much alive cat in his arms.
“Is that a—?” Chief started to ask, and I nodded, feeling my heartbeat slow down in my chest.
“That’s a cat,” I confirmed, the two of us meeting Paisley and Matt as they were led to the ambulance to be checked by our medics.
“How are you feeling?” I asked them. Matt chuckled, coughing as he did so, and shook his head.
“It’s always an adventure here. But we’re good, Cap. We’re good.”
“Paisley?” I prodded, but her attention wasn’t on me. Her eyes were glued to Hansen as he and Nick were lowered back to the ground on the ladder. Am EMT rushed forward to help him, and I flanked his other side, a relief so intense at seeing him alive that I almost couldn’t breathe.
“You sonofabitch,” I said, glaring at the animal in his arms. “You went back for acat?”
“Hell yeah, I did, man,” he said, holding the slightly charred cat at arm’s length. It didn’t look pretty, but it was alive and hissing at us with everything it had. “What would Paisley think if I’d left the cat?”
“I’d think you were an idiot foreverconsidering that I couldpossiblycompare your life to the life of some stupid cat,” she fumed, jumping to her feet to storm her husband. “You are anidiot, Hansen, and I’m furious with you.”
“She’s got a point, man,” I said. “I wouldn’t have gone back for the cat.”
“Sure you would have,” Hansen said, looking at Paisley, who had stopped screeching just long enough to drop to her knees in front of the frightened kitty, murmuring sweet nothings in the thing’s ear as it growled threateningly deep down in its throat. “You would have,” he said. “Because Peyton probably would have wanted you to, even if she’d never admit it. And sometimes, when we’re in love, we do stupid things to make them happy.”
A wave of emotion washed over me then, and I turned away from Hansen, mostly because I actually felt like fucking crying, and if I was going to cry in front of anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be him. Instead, I focused my attention on Paisley, still kneeling in the dirt, massaging the kitty’s ears, comforting the poor thing. Once upon a time, Paisley had rushed into a burning building to save me. We hadn’t even been friends then; I’d been nothing but a jerk to her. But it didn’t matter because Paisley was a firefighter. It’s what we did. Who we were. We would do it whether it was for a mortal enemy or a damn cat. We would always go back because that’s what we signed up for.
It was our life. All of ours.
A young man in a ragged suit and soot on his face stepped forward, his eyes on the cat.
“Muffin?” he said, kneeling next to Paisley on the ground. “I thought you were dead.”
“Is this your cat, sir?” Hansen asked, unwilling to give the cat up to just anybody, apparently.
“Yes. Well, he’s—uh, he’s the office cat,” the man said, flustered. At that moment, a few other stragglers standing behind the police line stepped up behind the guy. I could tell they were employees of this office, dressed in sooty and slightly burned business casual.
“Hey, it’s Muffin,” one of the women said, and a smile grew on her face. Seconds later, we were surrounded by employees, all fawning over the cat, which Hansen promptly handed over.
“He’s the office cat, but we’re not allowed to have him,” the first guy said to us, looking ashamed. “Our bosses would kill us if they found out.”
“Consider our lips sealed,” said Paisley, grinning between Hansen and me. She scrambled to her feet and looked around at the crowd. “Hey, does anyone know what happened here?” she asked. “Have you seen anybody suspicious in the area? Anything strange happen before the fire started?”
A few people looked around at each other, some murmurs rising over the crowd. A few shrugs, some head shakes.
“Look,” I called out over the crowd. “If anyone knows anything, they need to come forward.”
Nobody spoke, and while I didn’t want to accept their silence, I believed it. These people were employees, just like us, who changed at each business location. They got up, went to work, came home to sleep, and did it again the next day.
No, this was the work of someone who might know what they were doing.
“Hansen, Butler, Hill,” Chief Davis said, stepping up beside us as the crowd eventually parted, and the different fire crews cleaned up the last smoldering flames. “Let’s head back to the office,” he said. “I think there are some things we need to discuss.”
* * *
