I grinned despite myself. It faded as he disappeared around the truck.
Two men who spent their lives running toward danger. Completely unprepared for the terror of standing still.
Captain Rodriguez’s wife showed up around noon with their kids.
Lucia and Marco burst through the bay doors like tiny tornadoes, screaming "Daddy!" at a volume that made the probies wince.
Rodriguez caught them both. One in each arm, like he'd been doing it his whole life. Lucia wrapped around his neck. Marco grabbed his face with sticky hands. And Rodriguez, this man who commanded a firehouse and ran into burning buildings and had seen things that would break most people, melted.
"There's my monsters." He pressed kisses to both their heads. "You being good for Mama?"
"Marco ate glue," Lucia announced.
"Did not!"
"Did too. I saw you."
"It was an accident!"
His wife, Maria, reached them, shaking her head. "It was not an accident. He did it because Tyler dared him." She kissed Rodriguez's cheek, quick and easy, the kind of gesture that held two decades of marriage. "I brought enough for everyone. Pernil, rice and beans, tostones. The real stuff, not whatever Brian's attempting to cook today."
"Hey," Brian called from across the bay. "I heard that."
"You were supposed to." Maria winked at him, then turned back to Rodriguez. "There's flan in the cooler. Don't let Torres eat it all."
"You're an angel."
"I know." She smiled at him. He smiled back. And for a moment, right there in the middle of the apparatus bay with kids squirming in his arms and his wife looking at him like he was everything, Rodriguez looked like the luckiest man in the world.
I watched from across the bay.
I was reminded of what I wanted, of why I’d stopped sleeping around in the first place.
I wanted this. Not someday. Not in theory. I wanted the chaos and the sticky hands and the wife who showed up with enough food for the whole crew. I wanted someone who looked at me like I was home.
I thought about Maya. Then Zoe. About how it would feel to have them show up at the station with lunch—Zoe rolling her eyes at whatever Brian said, while Maya kissed my cheek. I thought about coming home to them after a long shift. About being the one they waited for.
I held onto the image and let it stay.
It felt less like a daydream and more like a direction.
The briefing started at two sharp.
Captain Rodriguez stood at the front of the room, his face grim enough to make everyone straighten up. Behind him, a whiteboard showed photos of four burned buildings. Schools. All of them.
"Queens arson investigation update," he said. "The fire marshal's office has confirmed what we suspected. These are connected."
The room went quiet.
"Three schools in three months. All elementary and middle schools. All in our district." Rodriguez pointed to the photos oneby one. "Woodside, Laurelton. And last week, P.S. 89 in Rego Park."
I studied the photos. The blackened shells of buildings where kids were supposed to learn. Where teachers like Maya spent their days trying to make a difference.
"Same accelerant pattern at each site," Rodriguez continued. "Same message spray-painted on exterior walls before ignition." He tapped the whiteboard, where someone had written the words in block letters:LET THE SYSTEM BURN.
"A profile's emerging. Young. Male. Likely connected to the school system somehow. Former student, maybe. Someone with a grudge." Rodriguez's jaw tightened. "And he's escalating. The gaps between fires are getting shorter. Whatever he's building toward, it’s not over."
Brian shifted beside me. "Any leads on who?"
