The office off the apparatus bay was technically shared space. Everyone knew it was my domain.
I'd claimed it three years ago, after Shane pointed out that my "filing system" was taking over the common room. Fourfiling cabinets now. A desk buried under folders. A system that looked like chaos but made perfect sense to me.
I waited until the others dispersed. Shane calling Maya. Brian texting Ava. Rodriguez locked in his office making calls to anyone who might help.
Then I slipped away.
The bottom drawer had a lock. I was the only one with the key.
Seven years of documentation spread across my desk.
Fire safety violations were reported and ignored. Buildings that should have been condemned but kept passing inspections. Falsified reports with signatures I'd learned to recognize. A web of shell companies, political donations, and convenient oversights—all connecting to city officials and department brass who decided which firehouses stayed open.
It started with Emma.
I didn't let myself think about her often. The memories were a door I kept locked, in the same way I kept these files locked. Some things were too heavy to carry in the daylight.
But she was always there.
Underneath everything.
Eight years old. Blonde hair her mother had braided that morning—I learned that later, from the news reports, from the memorial service I attended without telling anyone.
Blue eyes full of terror when I found her on the fourth floor. Pressed against a wall already hot to the touch.
The building had seventeen code violations. Faulty wiring that sparked the fire. Blocked exits that trapped residents. Sprinklers that hadn't worked in years.
Every violation documented. Reported. Ignored.
I went in. Got close enough to hear her crying through the smoke. Close enough to reach for her.
The floor collapsed.
The sensation of falling. The impact that knocked the air from my lungs. The moment I realized I was in the stairwell below, alive, and she was still up there.
The sounds she made when the ceiling came down.
Then silence.
The official report called it a tragedy. Unavoidable. Wrong place, wrong time.
I knew better.
Someone had signed off on that building. Someone had looked at the inspection reports and decided a little girl's life was worth less than a landlord's profit margin. Someone had buried the violations, collected the checks, and slept fine at night.
While Emma Marsh died screaming in a fire that should never have happened.
I'd spent seven years finding out who.
The current arsons—I'd already checked. The buildings being targeted matched my files. Same shell companies. Same inspectors looking the other way. Same network of corruption that let Emma's building rot until it killed her.
Someone else had figured it out, too.
Someone angry enough to burn.
I thought about Sloane. Her articles. The way she tore through corruption like a force of nature, relentless and precise. She'd exposed the Lang family when everyone said it couldn't be done. Changed foster care policy across the state with the Vickers coverage.
She could blow this wide open.
