Rodriguez ran Engine 295 the way he ran his family: steady hands, zero tolerance for bullshit, loyalty that ran deeper than rank.
Shane Briggs was at the coffee station, arguing with the machine like it had personally offended him.
"Come on, you temperamental piece of?—"
"Works better if you don't threaten it."
He turned, grinning. Second-in-command at thirty-six, built like the quarterback he probably was in high school, with an easy smile that hid one of the sharpest tactical minds I'd ever worked with.
Four years ago, he'd run into a burning school for the woman he loved and the troubled kid who'd tried to kill her. Now Maya was his wife. Zoe was seventeen, already talking about college. They were fostering Lily, fifteen, showed up scared and silent, slowly learning to trust them.
Shane had everything I'd once wanted.
"Stone." He handed me a cup of coffee, black, no sugar. He'd remembered. "You look like you actually slept last night."
"Miracles are your department, Briggs. I just show up."
Brian Torres appeared from the apparatus bay, wiping grease from his hands with a rag that had seen better days. Thirty-four, same as me—we'd come up through the academy together, back when we were both too young and too stupid to know what we were getting into.
They'd assigned him to a house in the Bronx after graduation, me to one in Brooklyn, before the transfer papers came through, and we ended up at Engine 295 together.
That was eight years ago.
Shane was already here for four years, already establishing himself as the guy everyone trusted. Brian was a paramedic now, and recently married to Dr. Ava Rothwell. They'd been neighbors for four years before either of them admitted what everyone else could see: they were inevitable.
"Garrett." Brian nodded at me, tossing the rag over his shoulder. "Ready for another thrilling day of false alarms and chest pain calls?"
"Living the dream."
Shane snorted. "Careful what you wish for. Last time you said that, we got the warehouse fire in Long Island City."
"That was your fault. You jinxed it."
"I don't believe in jinxes."
"Tell that to your wife," Brian said. "She made you knock on wood three times before your last shift."
Shane's expression softened the way it always did when someone mentioned Maya. Subtle—a loosening around his eyes, warmth creeping into his voice—but I'd known him long enough to recognize it.
Love looked like that on him. Easy. Natural. Like breathing.
I remembered what that felt like.
"She worries," Shane said.
"She's got good instincts."
The tones saved me from having to say anything else.
"Engine 295, Ladder 118, respond to structure fire, 2847 Crescent Avenue. Multiple calls reporting flames from second-floor windows."
We moved like a single organism.
Boots. Turnout pants. Suspenders up. Coat. Helmet. Gloves in my pocket—I'd grab them in the rig.
Muscle memory. I didn't have to think anymore.
Good. Thinking slowed you down. In this job, slow got people killed.
