Something that looked like care. For me.
I'd told myself I was imagining it. Took two sleepless nights to make myself believe it.
I shook the thought away.
Looked back at the crime scene photos. The charred buildings. The devastation.
Someone was setting these fires for a reason. There was a story here—maybe a big one. The kind of story that changed things. That mattered. That reminded me why I'd chosen this life even when it cost me everything else.
I could do this.
Call Captain Rodriguez. Work through Shane and Brian like I had before. Keep my distance. Keep it professional.
I pulled a legal pad toward me and started making notes.
The work would keep me warm at night.
It always had before.
CHAPTER 3
Garrett
The briefing started at 0800.
Rodriguez stood at the head of the common room table, a stack of documents in front of him, and the kind of tension in his shoulders that meant brass had been calling.
The crew filtered in with coffee cups and tired eyes. Martinez yawning from an overnight call. Kowalski complaining about the vending machine eating his dollar. Shane leaning against the wall with his arms crossed—the posture that said he already knew this wasn't going to be good news.
"Serial arson." Rodriguez passed the folders down the table. "Five fires in three months, all suspicious, all matching a specific MO. Fire marshal is coordinating with NYPD. We're to report any patterns we notice on our calls. Anything that seems connected."
I took my folder. Flipped it open.
Crime scene photos. Incident reports. Property records showing the same thing I'd noticed weeks ago when the first fire made the news: every building belonged to a slumlord. Every property had a history of code violations.
Someone was sending a message.
"Great," Shane said flatly. "Because that worked out so well last time."
The room went quiet.
Everyone knew what he was talking about. The Tommy Vickers case.
Four years ago now, but some memories don't fade. Maya—though she wasn't Shane's wife yet—had reported cigarette burns on a student's arms to CPS. She thought she was saving him. Instead, she set off a chain of events that destroyed a troubled kid and nearly got her killed.
Tommy Vickers had spent years in the foster system after Maya's report. Group homes. Facilities. His mother died while he was away, and no one told him until it was too late. The rage built slowly, the way it does when you're a kid and the world keeps proving it doesn't care about you. By the time he aged out of the system, he had a plan.
Let the system burn.
He targeted public schools. Empty at night, mostly—except for teachers who stayed late grading papers. Teachers like Maya. He was building toward her specifically, fire by fire, until his final target: PS 147. Maya's school.
Shane wasn't on shift that night. He showed up anyway. Grabbed gear from the rig over Captain Okonkwo's direct orders and ran into a burning building for the woman he loved.
He found Maya. He found Tommy.
And somehow, impossibly, everyone walked out alive.
Shane married Maya a year later. Tommy was in a psychiatric facility upstate, getting the help he should have gotten nineteen years earlier. And Engine 295 learned that serial arsonists always had a story underneath the flames.
