“Dispatch transcripts?” I asked in wonder, flipping through pages and pages of time-stamped calls and location check-ins from Rhea’s shifts. “This is her MDT.” I stammered, wondering why the fuck it hadn’t been the first thing to come to my head when Goldie begged me to help prove that Rhea wasn’t involved. Hermobile data device, the thing she wore every single shift, all shift long, tracking her location and status. “This is proof.”
“Exactly.” Lucas said, his chest swelled up slightly. “Do you know why I restore old boats?” He asked, drawing my attention back to him.
“My first inclination is to make a joke about sandpaper, but I’ll be honest, it doesn’t feel right at the moment.”
He smirked just a little and held my stare. “I restore boats because I know how rot starts. It starts small. Hidden somewhere in the grain, somewhere you can’t see. But if you don’t cut it out early, it eats the whole damn thing.” Chills broke out across my skin. “This is rot.”
And I felt that in my core.
Sleep.
Fucking sweet, blissful, wonderful sleep.
I could almost feel my pillow against my face as I all but fell out of the firetruck as it parked in the station bay. It was hours past our shift end, and we had been out serving as mutual aid to a neighboring district for almost the entire night. To say I was exhausted was an understatement.
The entire crew was.
There were no improper jokes, no sass or crass about Sweetie’s farts, or even a lick of complaining about Thomas’s driving skills the whole way back to the station.
Collectively, we were all just ready to go the fuck home.
Twenty-four-hour shifts weren’t for the weak when there were no breaks.
“Dalton.”
I turned from where I had been hanging up my gear to find Fire Chief Tolbert standing in the doorway to his office, arms crossed over his crisp white shirt, mustache on point, scowl in place. “Yeah?” I called.
“We need to talk.” He said, turning back into his office without another word, the expectation that I follow was clear.
But my feet were hesitant.
Fuck. Why did I always feel like a kid in elementary school getting called into the principal’s office? That same feeling when you’re driving down the road and even though you know you’re a law-abiding citizen, doing absolutely nothing wrong, your asshole still puckers the instant you see a cop sitting off to the side, watching you. “Coming!” I replied.
“You good?” Thomas asked, looking from the office to me and back.
“Probably about to get fired.” I joked with a shrug, though the comedy behind that fell flat.
And we both knew it.
Things had been weird since the ice rink incident. The hero word icked us all out, yet people wouldn’t stop using it. Could that be what the Chief wanted to talk about? It wasn’t like I was boasting about the praise or anything.
Before I could run away as if I were guilty of something, I walked my tired and dirty ass into the office, pausing in the doorway.
“Close the door, Dalton.” Chief Tolbert said, and it was then that I noticed the union rep sitting across his desk from him. And the Chief of Police.
Double fuck.
Moving on autopilot, I turned to close the door, catching Thomas’s eye. His face fell when we made eye contact, apparently, he could tell this was bad too.
Shutting the door, I stood off to the side, since there were no more available chairs. “Sir?”
“You’ve put me in a really shitty spot here, Dalton.” Chief Tolbert, the head of the entire fire department, said with that authority that always made me squirm.
“Sir?” I repeated, as a cold sweat broke out over my skin.
“Allegations have been made against you. Serious ones.” Chief Tolbert said, and I stupidly waited for him to follow up with something like, ‘but don’t worry, we’ve got your back.’
Instead, Chief Weller, Tanner’s boss, turned to me and pulled the rug right out from under my feet. “You’ve been accused of arson. Destruction of property. Assault with a deadly weapon. Breaking and entering.” He scowled at me. “Honestly, the list is growing by the minute.”
