Page 124 of No Good Fight

I love Ryder.

I love his hands on locks and the coffee mugs he hands me to keep me busy. I love his silent waiting when I need to speak for myself. I love the part of him that scares him and is obsessed with me. I love the part that stayed loyal to the idea of me. I love the future I saw for one stupid second in his kitchen, with Home Base glowing on a monitor and my family filling his house with noise.

I love him. And I’ll never get another chance to tell him.

My chest locks.

I try to say it.

Nothing comes out but choked smoke.

The orange light grows brighter beneath the door, and the world thins at the edges until Ryder’s voice sounds far away, buried under the alarm and the rain and Mrs. Vance’s shallow breathing.

Preston got what he wanted. He did exactly what he said he would do to me if I left him.

He killed me before I could tell Ryder I was in love with him.

My fingers loosen around the phone.

The last thing I hear is Ryder screaming my name.

24

RYDER

I hear the alarm before I hear her voice.

A thin, vicious shriek cuts through the phone speaker, tearing across the engine bay while I stand with one hand braced on the open locker and my other wrapped around my cell. Alex’s name is bright on the screen. Her breathing is wrong. Coughing, dragging, scraped raw by smoke.

Then the station tones drop.

Mason Street apartments. Structure fire. Possible entrapment. First floor. Elderly female. Second victim.

My blood goes cold in a way fire never makes it.

Josh looks up from beside the engine, one boot half-laced, his hand frozen on the pull strap. He sees my face before dispatch repeats the address. Whatever is left between us from me keeping his sister’s secret disappears under the sound of Alex coughing into my ear.

I shove the phone against my shoulder and drag on my turnout pants.

“Alex.” My voice comes out flat. Too controlled. Wrong for the way my hands are moving. “Stay low.”

She coughs again. The alarm screams behind her. I catch a broken sound that might be my name, then Mrs. Vance coughing, then the scrape of something heavy against the floor.

Josh is across the bay before I get my coat buckled. “Is that her?”

I don’t answer. I can’t put her name to the fire we’re going to respond to…not yet. If I do, my brain might split clean down the middle and I can’t have that.

Casey yanks the driver’s door open. Captain Bell is already barking assignments. Gear slams. Air packs thump against shoulders. The bay doors rise with a grinding roar, and wet daylight spills across the floor.

My phone crackles.

“Fire,” Alex manages.

Then the line fills with coughing so hard I feel it in my own chest.

I climb into the engine with the phone still in my hand. Bell grabs it from me before I can argue and looks at the screen long enough to understand exactly whose call it is.

“Cook.” His voice cuts through the siren as we pull out. “You do your job, or you stay outside.”