I should have deflected. Should have given her the same non-answer I'd given Shane and Brian.
But something about the way she asked, gentle, genuinely curious, like she actually cared about the answer, caught me off guard.
"Maybe," I said.
The common room erupted. Brian threw his hands up. Shane pointed at me like I'd just confessed to a crime. Even a few of the other guys at the far end of the table started clapping.
Becks laughed again. Warm. Delighted. She squeezed my shoulder the way someone's mother would.
"Good," she said softly. "Everyone deserves that. Someone who makes them light up."
Her eyes held mine for a beat. Just a beat.
And something in them shifted, a flicker, fast enough to miss if I hadn't been looking. Not warmth. Something sharper.
Something that cataloged the admission and filed it away.
Then it was gone, and she was just Becks again, stacking Tupperware, asking Brian if he wanted seconds, reminding Shane to return her containers this time.
Shane and Brian erupted into laughter. I shook my head, but I was smiling as I set my plate down and headed for the apparatus floor.
Behind me, Becks was saying goodbye to the crew. Thanking them for their service. Telling them she'd be back next week.
At the door, she glanced back.
Not at the crew.
At me.
I didn't catch it. I was already gone, clipboard in hand, the smile still on my face.
But she'd gotten what she came for.
The tones dropped at 11:23 PM.
Structure fire. Building on Atlantic Avenue. Multiple floors involved.
We were rolling in under two minutes, the familiar choreography of boots and gear and bodies moving in practiced synchronization. The city blurred past the windows—streetlights and storefronts and late-night pedestrians who barely glanced up as we screamed by.
I was already reading the address, cross-referencing it against the mental map I'd built over seven years of documentation.
Atlantic Avenue. Six-story residential. Owner: Harrington Properties LLC.
My chest tightened.
Flames poured from the upper windows, orange and hungry against the night sky. Residents clustered on the sidewalk in pajamas and bathrobes—some clutching phones, others clutching children.
The building groaned—that deep structural sound that meant things were failing faster than they should.
I read the fire the way I'd been trained to. The color of the flames. The pattern of the smoke. The way the heat pushed outward from specific points rather than spreading organically.
Same accelerant signature. Same controlled burn pattern.
The arsonist again.
"Engine 295, you're on search and rescue, floors three and four," the incident commander's voice crackled through my radio. "Ladder 118 has the roof."
We moved.
