Mateo's last words.The ones he'd choked out with blood on his lips and a ceiling collapsed across his chest, his eyes already knowing what I couldn't accept. I'd heard them in the warehouse three years ago, smoke so thick I could barely see his face. I'd heard them every day since.
Some mornings they were the first thing in my head, before my own name, before the day of the week. Like my mind had been replaying them while I slept, making sure I never forgot the promise I'd made to my best friend while he died in my arms.
The firehouse was quiet at 6 AM, that stillness before a 24-hour shift when everything felt suspended. I stood in the apparatus bay running through equipment checks, hands moving with mechanical precision while my mind stayed somewhere else entirely. Flashlight. Radio. Halligan bar. Thermal imaging camera.
Four years as captain. Respected. Steady. The guywho never lost his cool on a scene, who always knew what to do, who brought his crew home safe.
Except once.
I checked the air pack straps, tested the regulator, logged everything on the clipboard. Around me, the engine gleamed red and ready, the ladder truck waiting in its bay, the rescue rig stocked and organized. Everything in its place. Everything accounted for.
If only the rest of my life worked that way.
The bay doors were open to the September morning, mountains visible in the distance, the sky that shade of blue that only existed in Colorado. Mateo used to say the sky here was showing off. Used to say God was just rubbing it in for everyone stuck in flat states.
I pushed the thought down and moved to the next rig.
"You look like hell, Cap."
Liam's voice echoed across the bay, cheerful and needling in equal measure. I looked up to find him leaning against the engine, coffee in hand, that easy grin already in place. Liam Murphy, my second-in-command, the guy who could defuse a tense scene with a joke and then turn around and drag a two-hundred-pound victim down four flights of stairs without breaking a sweat.
He was also the guy who noticed everything,which made him invaluable on calls and exhausting the rest of the time.
"Good morning to you too," I said.
"Didn't say good morning. Said you look like hell." He took a long sip of his coffee, watching me over the rim. "You sleeping?"
"I'm fine."
"Uh-huh." He didn't sound convinced. "That's the third time you've checked that regulator."
I looked down at my hands. He was right. I set the clipboard aside.
"Long night," I said. "Neighbors were loud."
It wasn't entirely a lie. I had heard noise from across the hall last night. Not loud noise. The opposite, actually. The kind of quiet sounds that carried through thin walls when someone was trying not to be heard.
Liam opened his mouth to push further, but Owen appeared from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a rag. Owen Mitchell, the quietest member of the crew, the one who fixed things instead of talking about them. He'd been with me almost as long as Mateo had, and he had the same way of noticing too much without ever saying it directly.
"Coffee's fresh," Owen said. Then, to me: "You eat yet?"
"I'm fine."
"That's not what I asked."
"Leave him alone." Riley's voice cut in from behind me, sharp and impatient. I turned to find our newest probie crossing the bay, her bunker gearalready half-on, her expression the particular mix of fierce and exhausted that she always wore. Riley Santos, five-foot-four, looked like a strong wind could knock her over, and had once single-handedly dragged a grown man out of a second-story window. "He said he's fine. He's fine. Can we stop hovering?"
"We're not hovering," Liam said. "We're expressing concern. There's a difference."
"There's really not."
Owen made a sound that might have been a laugh. Liam clutched his chest in mock offense. Riley ignored them both and started her own equipment check, movements quick and efficient.
This was my crew. My family, in all the ways that mattered. We'd bled together, grieved together, carried each other through the worst nights of our lives. Liam with his jokes that hid a sharper mind than anyone gave him credit for. Owen with his quiet steadiness, the guy you wanted next to you when everything went sideways. Riley with her chip on her shoulder and her refusal to let anyone see her struggle, even though I knew she went home every night to a twelve-year-old sister she was raising alone.
And there was an absence in the middle of us. A space where someone should be standing, joining in the banter, making everyone laugh. We'd closed ranks around the gap, the way you do when you lose someone, but we'd never really filled it.
Mateo's name wasn't spoken. It almost never was. But I felt it anyway, the way I always did.
