“Lissa, I lead a volunteer fire department in a small town. You know this. The stuff you’re talking about—canceling plans, needing to be flexible—is a nonnegotiable part of my job and always will be. And even if I could negotiate them, I wouldn’t. I don’t work all the time. But when someone’s out sick, when one of the volunteers can’t come in, when we have a fire like tonight’s—which is all hands on deck, and we’re literally calling in people from other towns to help—I need to be there.”
“No,youdon’t!You’renot on call.” She turns her head, and her eyes pin me. “Yourshift ended hours ago. And we had plans. We’re supposed to go back to my parents’ house and finalize wedding arrangements. They’re waiting for us.”
“Ravi wouldn’t have called if they didn’t need me?—”
“And what about what I need?” She folds her arms over her chest and shows me her profile again. “Isn’t your wife supposed to be your first priority? It gets tiring, coming in second, you know. I bet if Ames needed you, you wouldn’t leavehim.”
I set my jaw so hard my teeth hurt. But I’m driving fast, and the wind’s trying to get under my truck, so I keep my focus on the road.
“Ames has nothing to do with this. You really think I should be having martinis with your parents while my crew’s out there in danger?” I shake my head. “I can’t. I won’t.”
She sniffs. “Well, I guess that says it all, doesn’t it?”
The drive to Lissa’s parents’ enormous house on the southern side of Winsome doesn’t take long at this time of night. As soon as I pull into the driveway, she hops out and slams the door hard enough to make me flinch, then hurries up the wide front steps without looking back.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
I’m sure I could have handled that better somehow, but I can’t think about it now. I push Lissa’s angry face from my mind to worry about later and focus on getting across town to the Sullivan mill fast.
I turn on my radio and put on my emergency light, doing seventy in a forty-five as I speed down the road. I even grab my gear from the back seat and pull on as much of it as I can while still driving, which is a skill I’ve picked up over the years—one that Ames hates.
I take the back roads that skirt the center of town, and I’m still a couple of miles away from the mill when I see an orange glow shifting against the black sky and thick columns of billowing smoke being smeared by the wind.
Ravi was right. It’s bad.
My radio crackles with updates. The crew from Mabel, Winsome’s neighbor to the north, is three minutes out, putting them just a minute behind me, coming from the opposite direction. Hugh—fucking Hugh, who’s supposed to be out sick—is on scene somehow and has taken the lead.
“Structure’s a total loss. First team cleared it. Priority now is containment. Wind’s gusting—”He hacks and coughs, and I feel my blood pressure rise. “Thirty miles per hour out of the west, so watch for spot fires and flying debris. Engine 1 crew, we’re taking the western exposure. Standard defensiveoperation. Keep the exterior wet, protect the tree line. Understood?”
I tear up the driveway to the lumber mill and screech to a stop beside Engine 1. When I hop out, the heat of the fire is a solid wall, blocking out the cold wind.
Engine 1 and Tanker 2 are already positioned, hoses flowing, and the first person I identify through the smoke and darkness is Ames. From this distance, I can’t read his jacket, but I recognize the shape of him and the way he moves as he and someone I assume is Greene saturate the east side of the structure.
“Chief on scene,” I bark into the radio on my shoulder. “I have command. James,” I say to one of the guys who arrived with Tanker 2 and was first on scene. “Situation report.”
While I’m listening to James’s report—which is pretty much exactly what I’d heard from Hugh a minute ago—I find Hugh standing twenty feet away and shake my head with clenched teeth.
Hugh’s older than me and more experienced. He knows being here while he’s not at a hundred percent makes him a liability, and Iknowhe knows that because he was the one who taught me, damn it.
The look he gives me in return—stubborn defiance—tells me he refused to be left behind… probably for the same reasons I couldn’t ignore tonight’s call.
“Axford,” I yell. Ames’s eyes meet mine, and I gesture him over. “C’mere.”
“Yeah?” He lopes over with his usual easy confidence, stubbled jaw and high cheekbones already covered in flecks of sweat-smeared ash. His blue eyes study me, head to foot, in concerned appraisal, like he wants to make sureI’mall in one piece… though I haven’t even gotten close to the fire.
It does weird things to my stomach, noticing that look. I wonder if he’s always looked at me that way and, like so many things about Ames, I’ve simply never noticed until now.
Then I force myself to stop thinking about that stuff entirely.
Christ, Robbie, do your job.
I clear my throat. “That stubborn fucker should be home.” I glance at Hugh.
Ames nods. “I told him that.”
Just as I figured. “Keep an eye on him, Ames. If he’s flagging, you tell me.” I drop my voice lower. “I’ll get him out of here if I have to club him over the head and cart him out.”
Ames flashes me a grin. “Understood.”
