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Synopsis
"Kimberly Kincaid burns up the pages!"
--Carly Phillips
SOMEONE'S BOUND TO GET BURNED...
Zoe Westin may be a fire captain's daughter, but feeding the people in her hometown of Fairview is her number one priority. Running a soup kitchen is also the perfect way to prove to her dad that helping people doesn't always mean risking life and limb. But when she's saddled with a gorgeous firefighter doing community service after yet another daredevil stunt, the kitchen has never been so hot.
Alex Donovan thrives on adrenaline, and stirring a pot of soup doesn't exactly qualify. He's not an expert at following the rules either, not even when they come from the stubborn, sexy daughter of the man who's not only his boss, but his mentor. Determined to show Zoe that not every risk ends in catastrophe, Alex challenges her both in the kitchen and out. One reckless step leads to another, but will falling for each other be a risk worth taking, or will it just get them burned?
--Carly Phillips
SOMEONE'S BOUND TO GET BURNED...
Zoe Westin may be a fire captain's daughter, but feeding the people in her hometown of Fairview is her number one priority. Running a soup kitchen is also the perfect way to prove to her dad that helping people doesn't always mean risking life and limb. But when she's saddled with a gorgeous firefighter doing community service after yet another daredevil stunt, the kitchen has never been so hot.
Alex Donovan thrives on adrenaline, and stirring a pot of soup doesn't exactly qualify. He's not an expert at following the rules either, not even when they come from the stubborn, sexy daughter of the man who's not only his boss, but his mentor. Determined to show Zoe that not every risk ends in catastrophe, Alex challenges her both in the kitchen and out. One reckless step leads to another, but will falling for each other be a risk worth taking, or will it just get them burned?
Release date: February 1, 2016
Publisher: Zebra Books
Print pages: 336
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Reckless
Kimberly Kincaid
Two things in firefighter Alex Donovan’s life were dead certain. The first was where there was smoke, you could bet your lunch money there was going to be fire. The second was wherever there was fire, Alex wanted in.
No contest. No question.
“Okay, listen up, boys, ’cause it looks like we’ve got a live one,” Alex’s lieutenant, Paul Crews, hollered over the headset from the officer’s seat in the front of Engine Eight, scrolling through the confetti-colored display from dispatch with a series of clacks. “Dispatch is reporting a business fire, with smoke issuing from the windows at a warehouse for a chemical supply company on Roosevelt Avenue. Looks like the place has been abandoned since the company went under last year.”
“Is that down in the industrial park by the docks?” His best friend Cole Everett’s tried-and-true smile disappeared as he reached down from the seat next to Alex to yank his turnout gear over his navy-blue uniform pants, and yeah. This wasn’t going to be your average cat stuck in a tree scenario.
“Yup. Nearest cross street is Euclid, which puts it four blocks up from the water and smack in the middle of Industrial Row.” Crews looked over his shoulder and into the back step of the engine, jerking his chin at the two of them in an unspoken get your asses in gear, and hell if Alex needed the message twice.
“Pretty shitty part of town,” he said, his pulse jacking up a notch even though he reached for the SCBA tank in the storage compartment behind his seat with ease that bordered on ho-hum. Not that his adrenaline wasn’t doing the hey-now all the way through his system, because it sure as shit was. But getting torqued over a promissory note from dispatch without seeing the reality of flames only wasted precious energy. He’d learned that well enough as a candidate eight years ago.
Plus, there would be plenty of time to go yippy-ki-yay once shit started burning down.
“Does it matter that we’re headed into Fairview’s projects?” Mike Jones asked from Alex’s other side, yanking his coat closed over his turnout gear with more attitude than anyone with three weeks’ experience had a right to.
Hello. The candidate has a sore spot. Not that it would change Alex’s response, or his delivery. Sugarcoating things was for ass-kissers and candy store owners, and neither title was ever going to go on his résumé.
He fixed Jones with a hard stare. “It does when there are probably squatters inside the building, Einstein. How do you think a fire starts in an abandoned warehouse anyway?” Even money said the place hadn’t seen running electricity in a dog’s age, and with the city still in the tail end of winter’s hard grip, there was a zero percent chance this call site had nobody home.
“Oh.” Jonesey dropped his chin for just a split second before picking up the rest of his gear. “Guess I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”
But Alex just shrugged. He’d never been one for getting his boxers in a wad, let alone keeping ’em that way. Especially over the small stuff.
After all, life was too short. And hell if he didn’t know that, up close and personal.
“Gotta use it for more than a hat rack, rookie.” Alex tossed back the emotion in his chest like a double shot of Crown Royal, and it burned just the same as he slapped the kid’s helmet with a gloved hand. “You’ll learn.”
Crews eighty-sixed his smile just a second too late for Alex to miss it, the wail of the overhead sirens competing with the lieutenant’s voice over the headset as he blanked the momentary blip of amusement from his face. “There’s no reported entrapment, but Teflon’s right. An abandoned warehouse in a neighborhood like this is ripe for squatters, even in the daytime. Plus—” Crews broke off, the seriousness in his voice going full-on grim. “We don’t know what kind of chemicals might’ve been left in the place. We need to go by the book on this one. Thirteen’s already on scene.”
“Outstanding,” Cole muttered, tacking on a few choice words to the contrary about their rival house, and Alex’s gut nose-dived in agreement.
“Those guys are a bag full of dicks.” Not to mention their captain was a douche bag of unrivaled proportions. Alex might not stay mad at most people for long, but he sure as hell knew a jackass when he laid eyes on one.
“I mean it, Teflon.” Crews’s warning went from dark to dangerous in the span of half a breath. “I don’t like those assclowns at Thirteen any more than you do, but a call’s a call. Head up, eyes forward.”
“Yeah, yeah. Copy that.” Alex took off his headset, his mutter falling prey to the combination of Engine Eight’s growl and the rush of noise that accompanied the final prep for a real-deal call. He went the inhale-exhale route as he triple-checked his gear, monitoring his breath along with the time as they approached the edge of town leading into Fairview’s shabbier waterside neighborhoods.
“So, um, how come your nickname is Teflon?” Jones shifted against the SCBA tank already strapped to his back, the heel of one boot doing a steady bounce against the scuffed black floor of the engine.
Alex’s laugh welled up from behind his sternum, and what the hell. The rookie might be ten pounds of nerves stuffed into a five-pound bag, but at least he was curious, too. “I guess you could say it’s because I’ve got special talents.”
Jones’s head jerked back. “You cook?”
Cole flipped the mouthpiece of his headset upward, tugging the thing off one ear to interject. “Hell no,” he said, his tone coupling with his laugh to cancel out any heat from the words. “Clearly, you didn’t partake in dinner last week when he was on KP.”
“Hey,” Alex argued, although he had a whole lot of nothing to back it up. He was a single guy who’d lived all by his lonesome for twelve years. Sue him for not being a gourmet chef. “Dinner wasn’t that bad.”
“Dude. You fucked up spaghetti.”
“Italian cuisine can be extremely tricky.” He tried on his very best cocky smile, the one that got him out of speeding tickets and into the panties of every pretty woman he set his sights on, but of course, Mr. Calm, Cool, and Buzzkill just snorted.
“The directions are on the freaking box.” Cole lifted a hand to stop Alex from going for round two, turning his attention back to Jones. “To answer your question, Donovan here got his nickname for exactly what you just witnessed.”
The candidate’s blond brows lifted upward, nearly disappearing beneath the still-shiny visor on his helmet. “Which is . . . ?”
“He’s slick enough to sell a cape to Superman. No matter what he gets himself into—and believe me, I’ve seen him get into some high-level shit—he talks his way right out of it. Trouble always slides right off him.”
“Ah.” Understanding dawned on Jones’s face, and he swung his gaze from Cole to Alex. “Nothing ever sticks to Teflon.”
“Nope,” Alex said with a grin. Going through life on a bunch of should-haves and maybes was about as appealing as a prostate exam with a root canal chaser. If he wanted something, he did it without hesitation. Dealing with consequences was for after the fact, and despite Cole’s smart-ass delivery, he wasn’t wrong. Alex could handle anything that came his way, no matter how big, how bad, or how dangerous.
And he tempted all three on a regular frickin’ basis.
“Gentlemen!” The staccato clip of Crews’s already serious voice popped him back to full attention in the back of Engine Eight, and Alex replaced his headset with a swift tug. “We’ll be on-scene in two minutes. Squad is right in front of us, and O’Keefe and Rachel are in the ambo directly behind, but we need to be ready for anything. Look sharp and be on point to set up water lines if Thirteen needs an assist. Let’s get ready to work.”
Alex shot a gaze out the window, balancing the now palpable push of adrenaline in his veins as he used all five senses to calculate and categorize. Getting a good line of vision on the call site was impossible with the rows of tightly packed factories and warehouses on either side of the street, but even though he couldn’t get his eyes on the telltale column of smoke that always marked an active fire, the acrid bite of something burning filled his nose, growing stronger as they approached the heart of Fairview’s industrial park. Squat, boxy buildings in various states of dingy and decrepit lined either side of the street, and when Engine Eight screeched to a stop in front of one of the filthier suspects, Alex didn’t even burn an unnecessary nanosecond hitting the pavement to get a better visual.
“Whoa.” Even from the opposite side of the street, the warehouse was a nightmare waiting to shake out. Although access to the block had been cut off by the imposing presence of all the emergency response vehicles, a smattering of onlookers dotted the perimeter of the scene. Dark gray smoke chuffed from the partially boarded front windows of the shabby warehouse, painting a thick layer of haze over the bright early-morning sky. Thin ribbons of orange firelight glowed behind the few surviving windowpanes on the Alpha side of the warehouse, but instead of staring at the flames, Alex focused on his assessment.
The fire wasn’t always where the biggest problem lay. Or the biggest threat.
“Nice of you girls to show,” came an obnoxious drawl from his left, and great. Looked like it was time to play Name That Asshole.
“Captain McManus,” Crews deadpanned, all business. “What’ve we got?”
McManus jabbed his pointy chin toward the dilapidated warehouse. “We’ve got a warehouse fire, Lieutenant. Showing flames on the Alpha side, second floor, roof intact. My men are trying to set up water lines, but the goddamn hydrant’s stripped.”
“You’re not going to search ahead of the water?” Alex asked, and McManus turned to pin him with a stare, his lips pressing into a thin, white line of screw you.
“Use the big head for thinking, would you, Donovan? This warehouse is abandoned. As in, no one’s inside.”
He straightened, pegging McManus with the irritation free-flowing beneath his sternum. “Nothing’s abandoned in the projects.” Come on, this was Common Sense 101. Not that McManus’s overprivileged and underachieving ass seemed to care.
“Dispatch says this place is, and I’m not inclined to disagree.” The guy stepped up, his chest barely inches away from Alex’s. “A search isn’t necessary in this situation.”
Only if you’re too chickenshit to do one. Alex opened his mouth to tell McManus exactly where to shove his “situation,” but Crews shouldered between them, decisive and quick.
“Captain McManus, can you advise?”
A smug smile twisted the man’s lips into an expression that was all teeth. “Let’s get Squad Eight on the roof for a vent. Engine Eight can run backup water lines if Thirteen needs an assist. You can clean up whatever my men don’t catch.”
The muscle over Crews’s jaw gave a single twitch. Alex silently begged the guy to argue, to tell McManus to get bent, to do something other than fall in line.
But then Crews’s expression went blank. “Copy that. Jones, you come with me to ready the hoses from Eight in case we need them.” He turned, snapping Alex’s brewing protest in half with a don’t-fuck-with-me frown. “If we see any evidence of entrapment, I’m sure we’ll reevaluate the need for a search. Until then, Donovan, you and Everett stand by. Clear?”
“Crystal,” Cole said, walking Alex out of McManus’s earshot before either of them could respond.
“This is bullshit,” Alex hissed, grinding his molars hard enough to test the limits of their integrity. “The fire’s not fully involved, and the roof is sound. You and I both know if we’d been first on scene, Westin would’ve had us in that warehouse looking for squatters while squad vented the roof.”
“I do.” Cole stepped in, his voice low and level. “But I also know that’s a judgment call, and someone who outranks me made it. I want to make sure that building is clear just like you, Donovan, but as much as it sucks, we have no way of knowing what’s inside. Or more to the point, what’s not.”
Anger ricocheted through Alex’s chest, leaving a bitter exit path in his mouth as he exhaled. “Someone could be trapped in there.”
“And the second we see evidence that someone is, we’ll go in and get them out.”
Alex swore roundly under his breath, channeling his irritation into examining the scene again to look for any signs of life inside the building. The front doors were old and unchained, and although they were likely locked, it was nothing five seconds with his Halligan bar wouldn’t take care of. Heat blurred the edges of the dirty wooden window casings, escaping beneath the splintered boards nailed over the openings from the inside. Smoke poured from the building in thicker bursts, indicating the fire was growing, and God damn it, this warehouse had shit for visibility in or viable exits out. Not to mention that their chances of getting anyone to those limited exits were circling the drain with each passing second.
Alex’s boots had him on a trajectory for the building before the movement made it all the way up the chain of command to his brain.
“Hey!” Captain McManus scrambled forward to step directly in front of Alex, puffing out his narrow chest as his face turned the color of the fire truck blocking the street behind them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going into that warehouse to do a search,” he said, and what do you know, it wasn’t a question. He’d have plenty of time to make nice with McManus later. Right now, he needed to do his job. His way.
No hesitation.
“Your level of fuck-uppery knows no bounds, Donovan. You’re not going anywhere.” McManus refused to budge, crossing his arms as if awaiting an argument. But Alex was done yapping, and he moved to just sidestep the guy so he could get on with what mattered.
“I said stand down, you little punk,” the captain spat, matching Alex’s lateral movement as he poked a finger into his chest. Although the sensation barely made it past all the reinforced protection of his turnout gear, the contact sent a hot, unrelenting pulse of oh-hell-no all the way through his blood.
He dropped his gaze toward the offending digit for only a split second before returning it to McManus’s beady eyes. “Take. Your hands. Off me.”
Testosterone collided with the uncut adrenaline coursing through Alex’s veins, creating a whoosh of white noise in his ears. He was vaguely aware of the thud of boots over pavement, another voice adding to the distant, muffled sounds beyond the anger making a spin cycle out of his gut. But the only thing he heard with any clarity was the irrefutable challenge of Captain McManus’s reply.
“Or what, son?”
His body went subarctic despite the heat rolling off the building in front of him. “What did you call me?”
McManus’s upper lip curled, his finger pressing harder as he hissed, “I said stand down. You’re out of your league. Son.”
In one scissor-sharp instant, Alex’s last thread of control spontaneously combusted.
His stiff-arm found McManus’s center mass in less than a breath, reopening the direct avenue of daylight between him and the warehouse’s closest point of entry. His legs made quick work of the distance, while a punishing kick eliminated the barrier of the door. Heat and smoke met him in a one-two punch of hot and nasty, and he yanked his mask over his face with a swift tug.
“I’m pretty sure that’s less cordial than McManus is used to,” Cole said in a half holler, and Alex wheeled around just in time to see his best friend pull his own mask into place. Shock took a potshot at his rib cage, but the sensation didn’t last. Station Eight’s golden rule was to have each other’s backs above all else. Of course Cole hadn’t broken ranks. Just like Alex wouldn’t have if the situation were reversed.
After all, there was no I in team.
“I’ll deal with that weasel-faced asshat later,” Alex said, pointing to the dimly lit corridor in front of them. “Right now, we need to make sure this place is empty, from the top down.”
“Copy that.” Cole snapped on his flashlight, jerking his helmet at the rusty door marked STAIRS. “Let’s go to work.”
Alex flipped directly to go-mode, the echo of his boots on the concrete steps alternating with his deep-lunged shouts for anyone within earshot to call out. He and Cole divided the third-floor office space down the center of the smoke-stained hallway, checking the offices at the far end with an economy of movement. The first few rooms turned up enough discarded food wrappers and empty liquor bottles to send Alex’s hackles into high alert, and he slammed the doors shut in his wake to hold off the spread of heat and smoke pushing up from below.
Someone was in here. And time was running out to find them.
“Fire department! We’re here to help you. Call out!” He tore a path to the next office, swinging his flashlight over the littered floor. The beam caught on a pile of rumpled fabric in the corner, and Alex’s heart knocked against his ribs like an MMA fighter in a cage match as he raced over the dirt-streaked linoleum.
A stuffed rabbit the color of grime tumbled from the empty sleeping bag.
“Command to Donovan,” crackled the radio on Alex’s shoulder, and shit. Guess Crews had gotten the news flash on his whereabouts. “Get your ass out of that warehouse. Now.”
“No can do, Lieu.” Alex stuck as much respect as he could to the words, but no way was he leaving this party with only half his dance card punched, especially now. He scanned the rest of the office, pulling the door snug within its frame as he moved back into the hallway. “We’ve got definite signs of squatters in here. I’m finishing this sweep.”
Crews switched tactics on a dime, although his tone was no less pissed. “Command to Everett. I want you both to fall out immediately, if not sooner. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative, sir,” Cole said, swinging his flashlight back toward the stairwell door as he signaled to Alex that his side of the floor was clear. “But with all due respect, if Donovan’s finishing this search, I’ve got his six.”
Crews unleashed a string of upper-level curse words through the radio before continuing. “You’re in a world of goddamn hurt when you get out of there, Donovan.”
But as much as getting chewed out by Crews was going to suck in Technicolor 3-D, taking the hit in order to do his job right was worth every syllable.
“Copy that. But I’m not leaving ’til the rest of this building is clear.”
Alex double-timed it to the second floor with Cole on his heels. Smoke clogged the hallways and larger storage rooms, turning their visibility to jack with a side of shit. In the handful of minutes they’d been in the building, the flames had rolled out to cover the entire north side of the second floor. Damn it, this scene was getting sketchier by the second.
“Fire department! Call out!” Alex’s bellow thundered past his lips. Sweat trailed between his shoulder blades and over his eyebrows, his breath tearing a path through his lungs in spite of the mask regulating his air flow from the SCBA tank on his back. He repeated the yell in every door frame, searching each smoke-filled corner with growing despair.
No one answered.
“Donovan!” Cole hunched at the waist in the main hallway, planting himself in Alex’s line of vision with a tight shake of his head. “Looks like anyone who was in here took off. Squad’s gotta be close to done venting the roof, and this fire’s getting out of hand, fast.”
Alex squinted through the haze of smoke and soot, sweat pouring down to sting his eyes beneath his mask. Shit—shit—Cole wasn’t wrong. Alex might jump the gun and the rest of the arsenal along with it sometimes, but that didn’t mean he had a death wish.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s hit the ground level and make sure no one got lost on their way to daylight. Go.”
He and Cole pivoted toward the stairwell in tandem, their boots competing with the whooshing rush of the flames as they carved an exit path. They retraced their steps to the first floor, and Alex swung the beam of his flashlight through the thick waves of falling ash in a quick check of the cavernous ground-level space before following Cole through the front door. Sunlight blasted his retinas, momentarily French-frying his vision as he clambered back into the full reach of daylight, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness overload.
When he opened them a few seconds later, the first thing Alex saw was his boss, Captain Robert Westin.
And the man was downright furious.
Alex reached up, relieving himself of his helmet and mask combo as his gut plummeted toward the cracked and dusty pavement of Roosevelt Avenue. Although Captain Westin was a pretty hands-on boss—not to mention an extremely dedicated firefighter—he almost never showed up when another captain had already called the ball at a scene.
Which meant someone had radioed him in. And Westin stuck to protocol hard and fast. Christ, Alex was going to need to work up more damage control than he’d thought in order to get out of this.
“Cap, I—”
“Do you need medical attention, Donovan?” A muscle pulled tight over Westin’s clean-shaven jaw, telling Alex in no uncertain terms to offer nothing but an answer to the question.
“No, sir.”
“Good.” The captain shifted to look at Crews for just a split-second’s worth of eye contact before pile-driving Alex with a cold, flat stare. “Then store your gear in the engine and get in my vehicle. You’re going back to Eight with me.”
Just like that, damage control became the understatement of the millennium.
Alex unshouldered his SCBA tank, the blast of cool air that accompanied the removal of his hood and coat barely registering as he replaced his gear in his allotted storage space. He walked a straight line to the captain’s red and white department-issued Suburban, parking himself in the passenger seat as he shut the door and braced for impact.
It didn’t come.
The entire fifteen-minute drive back to Station Eight was filled with nothing but the intermittent squawk of the radio on Captain Westin’s shoulder and the low, rhythmic rumble of the Suburban’s engine. Although Alex was tempted to jump in and rip the Band-Aid off the conversation just to get it over with, he trapped his tongue between his teeth instead. Westin might be a great captain—one of the best, even—but he could be a salty old guy when he set his mind to it. Alex had seen Westin pissed enough to swear at, suspend, even sanction his firefighters if the spirit moved him.
But only once in eight years had he seen the guy go for the full-out silent treatment, and yeah. Alex was going to have to play things just right in order to keep this little come to Jesus meeting from leaving a mark.
Westin pulled the Suburban into the oversized garage bay on the far left of the two-story brick building, his precision barely a half step from surgical as he got out and shut the door. Alex ran a hand first over his helmet-matted blond hair, then the sweat-damp T-shirt he’d worn beneath his turnout gear, the impenetrable bite of smoke clinging to the bunker pants and suspenders he still had on over the rest of his uniform. His stomach knotted as he followed a still-silent Westin through the equally quiet hallways of Station Eight, passing the locker room and the house’s common space before cutting across to the back of the building where the captain’s office stood.
Captain Westin pushed the door shut with a snick, finally breaking the silence. “Tell me, Donovan. In your eight-year tenure as a firefighter, have you ever been told that the chain of command is optional?”
Alex cemented his feet to the linoleum to stand at complete attention, despite the fact that his vitals had just spiked up to oh-shit territory. “No, sir.”
“Really?” Westin’s gray-blond brows winged upward, his arms flexing tight as he knotted them over the front of his crisply pressed uniform shirt. “Did you get a recent promotion I don’t know about, then? Because last I checked, both Captain McManus and Lieutenant Crews outrank the shit out of you.”
“I can explain,” Alex started, but Westin cut him off with no more than a single shake of his head.
“You shoved a superior officer to the ground before disregarding his command to stand down at the scene of an active fire, and then you disobeyed a direct order from a lieutenant in this house to fall out. You are going to have to do a hell of a lot more than explain to get yourself out of this.”
Shock combined with realization to form a cocktail of fuck-me in his veins. “I didn’t mean to knock McManus down.”
“Your intentions don’t mean a thing in the face of your actions,” Westin popped back, his stare going thermonuclear and wedging the rest of the story in Alex’s throat. “Every time you try to clean up a mess, the only thing you do is end up filthy. And it is getting harder and harder for me to keep hosing you off.”
Anger snapped up from Alex’s chest, and it blew past his already questionable brain-to-mouth filter in one swift gust. “I only wanted to get around the guy, and anyway, he put his hands on me first.”
“But you upped the stakes when you retaliated, not to mention when you ran into that building. McManus wants your head on a Thanksgiving platter, Donovan. But since I’m pretty sure he’ll settle for your job, you might want to change your tune.”
Icy fingers of dread slithered between Alex’s ribs, digging in hard. “You can’t be serious,” he breathed. Being a firefighter was the axis that had kept his world spinning for the last eight years. The job wasn’t what Alex did, it was who he was, as much a part of him as his blood or breath or bones. He could not—under any circumstances—lose it.
This house was the only family Alex had.
“There has to be a way I can get around this,” he said, channeling all his effort into a level voice even though his pulse had surpassed warp speed. “I might not always go by the book, but come on, Cap. I belong here. I’m a good firefighter.”
“You are a good firefighter,” Westin agreed, the surprise in Alex’s chest morphing quickly into trepidation as the captain added, “But lately I’ve got to wonder if you’re forgetting the difference between bravery and recklessness. We lost a good man from this house two and a half years ago.” His gaze shot through the window to the wall outside the office door, where a framed photo of Mason Watts hung in silent memorial, and Alex’s gut went for the full free fall. “I won’t lose another, especially not over something that can and should be controlled.”
He scraped in a breath, unable to keep his exhale from going hoarse over his words. “I can’t lose this job, Captain Westin. You know I can’t. . . .” He broke off. Sucked in a breath. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Westin paused for a minute that lasted a month. “According to the personal conduct policy, there is one option.”
“Name it.”
“As your captain, I can recommend you for a remediation program. You’d have to agree to perform four weeks of community service, done concurrently with an unpaid leave of absence from the house. After that, the fire chief will review your case and decide whether or not to reinstate you to active duty.”
Alex’s jaw took a one-way trip south. “You want me to ride the pine for four weeks?” Chris. . .
No contest. No question.
“Okay, listen up, boys, ’cause it looks like we’ve got a live one,” Alex’s lieutenant, Paul Crews, hollered over the headset from the officer’s seat in the front of Engine Eight, scrolling through the confetti-colored display from dispatch with a series of clacks. “Dispatch is reporting a business fire, with smoke issuing from the windows at a warehouse for a chemical supply company on Roosevelt Avenue. Looks like the place has been abandoned since the company went under last year.”
“Is that down in the industrial park by the docks?” His best friend Cole Everett’s tried-and-true smile disappeared as he reached down from the seat next to Alex to yank his turnout gear over his navy-blue uniform pants, and yeah. This wasn’t going to be your average cat stuck in a tree scenario.
“Yup. Nearest cross street is Euclid, which puts it four blocks up from the water and smack in the middle of Industrial Row.” Crews looked over his shoulder and into the back step of the engine, jerking his chin at the two of them in an unspoken get your asses in gear, and hell if Alex needed the message twice.
“Pretty shitty part of town,” he said, his pulse jacking up a notch even though he reached for the SCBA tank in the storage compartment behind his seat with ease that bordered on ho-hum. Not that his adrenaline wasn’t doing the hey-now all the way through his system, because it sure as shit was. But getting torqued over a promissory note from dispatch without seeing the reality of flames only wasted precious energy. He’d learned that well enough as a candidate eight years ago.
Plus, there would be plenty of time to go yippy-ki-yay once shit started burning down.
“Does it matter that we’re headed into Fairview’s projects?” Mike Jones asked from Alex’s other side, yanking his coat closed over his turnout gear with more attitude than anyone with three weeks’ experience had a right to.
Hello. The candidate has a sore spot. Not that it would change Alex’s response, or his delivery. Sugarcoating things was for ass-kissers and candy store owners, and neither title was ever going to go on his résumé.
He fixed Jones with a hard stare. “It does when there are probably squatters inside the building, Einstein. How do you think a fire starts in an abandoned warehouse anyway?” Even money said the place hadn’t seen running electricity in a dog’s age, and with the city still in the tail end of winter’s hard grip, there was a zero percent chance this call site had nobody home.
“Oh.” Jonesey dropped his chin for just a split second before picking up the rest of his gear. “Guess I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”
But Alex just shrugged. He’d never been one for getting his boxers in a wad, let alone keeping ’em that way. Especially over the small stuff.
After all, life was too short. And hell if he didn’t know that, up close and personal.
“Gotta use it for more than a hat rack, rookie.” Alex tossed back the emotion in his chest like a double shot of Crown Royal, and it burned just the same as he slapped the kid’s helmet with a gloved hand. “You’ll learn.”
Crews eighty-sixed his smile just a second too late for Alex to miss it, the wail of the overhead sirens competing with the lieutenant’s voice over the headset as he blanked the momentary blip of amusement from his face. “There’s no reported entrapment, but Teflon’s right. An abandoned warehouse in a neighborhood like this is ripe for squatters, even in the daytime. Plus—” Crews broke off, the seriousness in his voice going full-on grim. “We don’t know what kind of chemicals might’ve been left in the place. We need to go by the book on this one. Thirteen’s already on scene.”
“Outstanding,” Cole muttered, tacking on a few choice words to the contrary about their rival house, and Alex’s gut nose-dived in agreement.
“Those guys are a bag full of dicks.” Not to mention their captain was a douche bag of unrivaled proportions. Alex might not stay mad at most people for long, but he sure as hell knew a jackass when he laid eyes on one.
“I mean it, Teflon.” Crews’s warning went from dark to dangerous in the span of half a breath. “I don’t like those assclowns at Thirteen any more than you do, but a call’s a call. Head up, eyes forward.”
“Yeah, yeah. Copy that.” Alex took off his headset, his mutter falling prey to the combination of Engine Eight’s growl and the rush of noise that accompanied the final prep for a real-deal call. He went the inhale-exhale route as he triple-checked his gear, monitoring his breath along with the time as they approached the edge of town leading into Fairview’s shabbier waterside neighborhoods.
“So, um, how come your nickname is Teflon?” Jones shifted against the SCBA tank already strapped to his back, the heel of one boot doing a steady bounce against the scuffed black floor of the engine.
Alex’s laugh welled up from behind his sternum, and what the hell. The rookie might be ten pounds of nerves stuffed into a five-pound bag, but at least he was curious, too. “I guess you could say it’s because I’ve got special talents.”
Jones’s head jerked back. “You cook?”
Cole flipped the mouthpiece of his headset upward, tugging the thing off one ear to interject. “Hell no,” he said, his tone coupling with his laugh to cancel out any heat from the words. “Clearly, you didn’t partake in dinner last week when he was on KP.”
“Hey,” Alex argued, although he had a whole lot of nothing to back it up. He was a single guy who’d lived all by his lonesome for twelve years. Sue him for not being a gourmet chef. “Dinner wasn’t that bad.”
“Dude. You fucked up spaghetti.”
“Italian cuisine can be extremely tricky.” He tried on his very best cocky smile, the one that got him out of speeding tickets and into the panties of every pretty woman he set his sights on, but of course, Mr. Calm, Cool, and Buzzkill just snorted.
“The directions are on the freaking box.” Cole lifted a hand to stop Alex from going for round two, turning his attention back to Jones. “To answer your question, Donovan here got his nickname for exactly what you just witnessed.”
The candidate’s blond brows lifted upward, nearly disappearing beneath the still-shiny visor on his helmet. “Which is . . . ?”
“He’s slick enough to sell a cape to Superman. No matter what he gets himself into—and believe me, I’ve seen him get into some high-level shit—he talks his way right out of it. Trouble always slides right off him.”
“Ah.” Understanding dawned on Jones’s face, and he swung his gaze from Cole to Alex. “Nothing ever sticks to Teflon.”
“Nope,” Alex said with a grin. Going through life on a bunch of should-haves and maybes was about as appealing as a prostate exam with a root canal chaser. If he wanted something, he did it without hesitation. Dealing with consequences was for after the fact, and despite Cole’s smart-ass delivery, he wasn’t wrong. Alex could handle anything that came his way, no matter how big, how bad, or how dangerous.
And he tempted all three on a regular frickin’ basis.
“Gentlemen!” The staccato clip of Crews’s already serious voice popped him back to full attention in the back of Engine Eight, and Alex replaced his headset with a swift tug. “We’ll be on-scene in two minutes. Squad is right in front of us, and O’Keefe and Rachel are in the ambo directly behind, but we need to be ready for anything. Look sharp and be on point to set up water lines if Thirteen needs an assist. Let’s get ready to work.”
Alex shot a gaze out the window, balancing the now palpable push of adrenaline in his veins as he used all five senses to calculate and categorize. Getting a good line of vision on the call site was impossible with the rows of tightly packed factories and warehouses on either side of the street, but even though he couldn’t get his eyes on the telltale column of smoke that always marked an active fire, the acrid bite of something burning filled his nose, growing stronger as they approached the heart of Fairview’s industrial park. Squat, boxy buildings in various states of dingy and decrepit lined either side of the street, and when Engine Eight screeched to a stop in front of one of the filthier suspects, Alex didn’t even burn an unnecessary nanosecond hitting the pavement to get a better visual.
“Whoa.” Even from the opposite side of the street, the warehouse was a nightmare waiting to shake out. Although access to the block had been cut off by the imposing presence of all the emergency response vehicles, a smattering of onlookers dotted the perimeter of the scene. Dark gray smoke chuffed from the partially boarded front windows of the shabby warehouse, painting a thick layer of haze over the bright early-morning sky. Thin ribbons of orange firelight glowed behind the few surviving windowpanes on the Alpha side of the warehouse, but instead of staring at the flames, Alex focused on his assessment.
The fire wasn’t always where the biggest problem lay. Or the biggest threat.
“Nice of you girls to show,” came an obnoxious drawl from his left, and great. Looked like it was time to play Name That Asshole.
“Captain McManus,” Crews deadpanned, all business. “What’ve we got?”
McManus jabbed his pointy chin toward the dilapidated warehouse. “We’ve got a warehouse fire, Lieutenant. Showing flames on the Alpha side, second floor, roof intact. My men are trying to set up water lines, but the goddamn hydrant’s stripped.”
“You’re not going to search ahead of the water?” Alex asked, and McManus turned to pin him with a stare, his lips pressing into a thin, white line of screw you.
“Use the big head for thinking, would you, Donovan? This warehouse is abandoned. As in, no one’s inside.”
He straightened, pegging McManus with the irritation free-flowing beneath his sternum. “Nothing’s abandoned in the projects.” Come on, this was Common Sense 101. Not that McManus’s overprivileged and underachieving ass seemed to care.
“Dispatch says this place is, and I’m not inclined to disagree.” The guy stepped up, his chest barely inches away from Alex’s. “A search isn’t necessary in this situation.”
Only if you’re too chickenshit to do one. Alex opened his mouth to tell McManus exactly where to shove his “situation,” but Crews shouldered between them, decisive and quick.
“Captain McManus, can you advise?”
A smug smile twisted the man’s lips into an expression that was all teeth. “Let’s get Squad Eight on the roof for a vent. Engine Eight can run backup water lines if Thirteen needs an assist. You can clean up whatever my men don’t catch.”
The muscle over Crews’s jaw gave a single twitch. Alex silently begged the guy to argue, to tell McManus to get bent, to do something other than fall in line.
But then Crews’s expression went blank. “Copy that. Jones, you come with me to ready the hoses from Eight in case we need them.” He turned, snapping Alex’s brewing protest in half with a don’t-fuck-with-me frown. “If we see any evidence of entrapment, I’m sure we’ll reevaluate the need for a search. Until then, Donovan, you and Everett stand by. Clear?”
“Crystal,” Cole said, walking Alex out of McManus’s earshot before either of them could respond.
“This is bullshit,” Alex hissed, grinding his molars hard enough to test the limits of their integrity. “The fire’s not fully involved, and the roof is sound. You and I both know if we’d been first on scene, Westin would’ve had us in that warehouse looking for squatters while squad vented the roof.”
“I do.” Cole stepped in, his voice low and level. “But I also know that’s a judgment call, and someone who outranks me made it. I want to make sure that building is clear just like you, Donovan, but as much as it sucks, we have no way of knowing what’s inside. Or more to the point, what’s not.”
Anger ricocheted through Alex’s chest, leaving a bitter exit path in his mouth as he exhaled. “Someone could be trapped in there.”
“And the second we see evidence that someone is, we’ll go in and get them out.”
Alex swore roundly under his breath, channeling his irritation into examining the scene again to look for any signs of life inside the building. The front doors were old and unchained, and although they were likely locked, it was nothing five seconds with his Halligan bar wouldn’t take care of. Heat blurred the edges of the dirty wooden window casings, escaping beneath the splintered boards nailed over the openings from the inside. Smoke poured from the building in thicker bursts, indicating the fire was growing, and God damn it, this warehouse had shit for visibility in or viable exits out. Not to mention that their chances of getting anyone to those limited exits were circling the drain with each passing second.
Alex’s boots had him on a trajectory for the building before the movement made it all the way up the chain of command to his brain.
“Hey!” Captain McManus scrambled forward to step directly in front of Alex, puffing out his narrow chest as his face turned the color of the fire truck blocking the street behind them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going into that warehouse to do a search,” he said, and what do you know, it wasn’t a question. He’d have plenty of time to make nice with McManus later. Right now, he needed to do his job. His way.
No hesitation.
“Your level of fuck-uppery knows no bounds, Donovan. You’re not going anywhere.” McManus refused to budge, crossing his arms as if awaiting an argument. But Alex was done yapping, and he moved to just sidestep the guy so he could get on with what mattered.
“I said stand down, you little punk,” the captain spat, matching Alex’s lateral movement as he poked a finger into his chest. Although the sensation barely made it past all the reinforced protection of his turnout gear, the contact sent a hot, unrelenting pulse of oh-hell-no all the way through his blood.
He dropped his gaze toward the offending digit for only a split second before returning it to McManus’s beady eyes. “Take. Your hands. Off me.”
Testosterone collided with the uncut adrenaline coursing through Alex’s veins, creating a whoosh of white noise in his ears. He was vaguely aware of the thud of boots over pavement, another voice adding to the distant, muffled sounds beyond the anger making a spin cycle out of his gut. But the only thing he heard with any clarity was the irrefutable challenge of Captain McManus’s reply.
“Or what, son?”
His body went subarctic despite the heat rolling off the building in front of him. “What did you call me?”
McManus’s upper lip curled, his finger pressing harder as he hissed, “I said stand down. You’re out of your league. Son.”
In one scissor-sharp instant, Alex’s last thread of control spontaneously combusted.
His stiff-arm found McManus’s center mass in less than a breath, reopening the direct avenue of daylight between him and the warehouse’s closest point of entry. His legs made quick work of the distance, while a punishing kick eliminated the barrier of the door. Heat and smoke met him in a one-two punch of hot and nasty, and he yanked his mask over his face with a swift tug.
“I’m pretty sure that’s less cordial than McManus is used to,” Cole said in a half holler, and Alex wheeled around just in time to see his best friend pull his own mask into place. Shock took a potshot at his rib cage, but the sensation didn’t last. Station Eight’s golden rule was to have each other’s backs above all else. Of course Cole hadn’t broken ranks. Just like Alex wouldn’t have if the situation were reversed.
After all, there was no I in team.
“I’ll deal with that weasel-faced asshat later,” Alex said, pointing to the dimly lit corridor in front of them. “Right now, we need to make sure this place is empty, from the top down.”
“Copy that.” Cole snapped on his flashlight, jerking his helmet at the rusty door marked STAIRS. “Let’s go to work.”
Alex flipped directly to go-mode, the echo of his boots on the concrete steps alternating with his deep-lunged shouts for anyone within earshot to call out. He and Cole divided the third-floor office space down the center of the smoke-stained hallway, checking the offices at the far end with an economy of movement. The first few rooms turned up enough discarded food wrappers and empty liquor bottles to send Alex’s hackles into high alert, and he slammed the doors shut in his wake to hold off the spread of heat and smoke pushing up from below.
Someone was in here. And time was running out to find them.
“Fire department! We’re here to help you. Call out!” He tore a path to the next office, swinging his flashlight over the littered floor. The beam caught on a pile of rumpled fabric in the corner, and Alex’s heart knocked against his ribs like an MMA fighter in a cage match as he raced over the dirt-streaked linoleum.
A stuffed rabbit the color of grime tumbled from the empty sleeping bag.
“Command to Donovan,” crackled the radio on Alex’s shoulder, and shit. Guess Crews had gotten the news flash on his whereabouts. “Get your ass out of that warehouse. Now.”
“No can do, Lieu.” Alex stuck as much respect as he could to the words, but no way was he leaving this party with only half his dance card punched, especially now. He scanned the rest of the office, pulling the door snug within its frame as he moved back into the hallway. “We’ve got definite signs of squatters in here. I’m finishing this sweep.”
Crews switched tactics on a dime, although his tone was no less pissed. “Command to Everett. I want you both to fall out immediately, if not sooner. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative, sir,” Cole said, swinging his flashlight back toward the stairwell door as he signaled to Alex that his side of the floor was clear. “But with all due respect, if Donovan’s finishing this search, I’ve got his six.”
Crews unleashed a string of upper-level curse words through the radio before continuing. “You’re in a world of goddamn hurt when you get out of there, Donovan.”
But as much as getting chewed out by Crews was going to suck in Technicolor 3-D, taking the hit in order to do his job right was worth every syllable.
“Copy that. But I’m not leaving ’til the rest of this building is clear.”
Alex double-timed it to the second floor with Cole on his heels. Smoke clogged the hallways and larger storage rooms, turning their visibility to jack with a side of shit. In the handful of minutes they’d been in the building, the flames had rolled out to cover the entire north side of the second floor. Damn it, this scene was getting sketchier by the second.
“Fire department! Call out!” Alex’s bellow thundered past his lips. Sweat trailed between his shoulder blades and over his eyebrows, his breath tearing a path through his lungs in spite of the mask regulating his air flow from the SCBA tank on his back. He repeated the yell in every door frame, searching each smoke-filled corner with growing despair.
No one answered.
“Donovan!” Cole hunched at the waist in the main hallway, planting himself in Alex’s line of vision with a tight shake of his head. “Looks like anyone who was in here took off. Squad’s gotta be close to done venting the roof, and this fire’s getting out of hand, fast.”
Alex squinted through the haze of smoke and soot, sweat pouring down to sting his eyes beneath his mask. Shit—shit—Cole wasn’t wrong. Alex might jump the gun and the rest of the arsenal along with it sometimes, but that didn’t mean he had a death wish.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s hit the ground level and make sure no one got lost on their way to daylight. Go.”
He and Cole pivoted toward the stairwell in tandem, their boots competing with the whooshing rush of the flames as they carved an exit path. They retraced their steps to the first floor, and Alex swung the beam of his flashlight through the thick waves of falling ash in a quick check of the cavernous ground-level space before following Cole through the front door. Sunlight blasted his retinas, momentarily French-frying his vision as he clambered back into the full reach of daylight, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness overload.
When he opened them a few seconds later, the first thing Alex saw was his boss, Captain Robert Westin.
And the man was downright furious.
Alex reached up, relieving himself of his helmet and mask combo as his gut plummeted toward the cracked and dusty pavement of Roosevelt Avenue. Although Captain Westin was a pretty hands-on boss—not to mention an extremely dedicated firefighter—he almost never showed up when another captain had already called the ball at a scene.
Which meant someone had radioed him in. And Westin stuck to protocol hard and fast. Christ, Alex was going to need to work up more damage control than he’d thought in order to get out of this.
“Cap, I—”
“Do you need medical attention, Donovan?” A muscle pulled tight over Westin’s clean-shaven jaw, telling Alex in no uncertain terms to offer nothing but an answer to the question.
“No, sir.”
“Good.” The captain shifted to look at Crews for just a split-second’s worth of eye contact before pile-driving Alex with a cold, flat stare. “Then store your gear in the engine and get in my vehicle. You’re going back to Eight with me.”
Just like that, damage control became the understatement of the millennium.
Alex unshouldered his SCBA tank, the blast of cool air that accompanied the removal of his hood and coat barely registering as he replaced his gear in his allotted storage space. He walked a straight line to the captain’s red and white department-issued Suburban, parking himself in the passenger seat as he shut the door and braced for impact.
It didn’t come.
The entire fifteen-minute drive back to Station Eight was filled with nothing but the intermittent squawk of the radio on Captain Westin’s shoulder and the low, rhythmic rumble of the Suburban’s engine. Although Alex was tempted to jump in and rip the Band-Aid off the conversation just to get it over with, he trapped his tongue between his teeth instead. Westin might be a great captain—one of the best, even—but he could be a salty old guy when he set his mind to it. Alex had seen Westin pissed enough to swear at, suspend, even sanction his firefighters if the spirit moved him.
But only once in eight years had he seen the guy go for the full-out silent treatment, and yeah. Alex was going to have to play things just right in order to keep this little come to Jesus meeting from leaving a mark.
Westin pulled the Suburban into the oversized garage bay on the far left of the two-story brick building, his precision barely a half step from surgical as he got out and shut the door. Alex ran a hand first over his helmet-matted blond hair, then the sweat-damp T-shirt he’d worn beneath his turnout gear, the impenetrable bite of smoke clinging to the bunker pants and suspenders he still had on over the rest of his uniform. His stomach knotted as he followed a still-silent Westin through the equally quiet hallways of Station Eight, passing the locker room and the house’s common space before cutting across to the back of the building where the captain’s office stood.
Captain Westin pushed the door shut with a snick, finally breaking the silence. “Tell me, Donovan. In your eight-year tenure as a firefighter, have you ever been told that the chain of command is optional?”
Alex cemented his feet to the linoleum to stand at complete attention, despite the fact that his vitals had just spiked up to oh-shit territory. “No, sir.”
“Really?” Westin’s gray-blond brows winged upward, his arms flexing tight as he knotted them over the front of his crisply pressed uniform shirt. “Did you get a recent promotion I don’t know about, then? Because last I checked, both Captain McManus and Lieutenant Crews outrank the shit out of you.”
“I can explain,” Alex started, but Westin cut him off with no more than a single shake of his head.
“You shoved a superior officer to the ground before disregarding his command to stand down at the scene of an active fire, and then you disobeyed a direct order from a lieutenant in this house to fall out. You are going to have to do a hell of a lot more than explain to get yourself out of this.”
Shock combined with realization to form a cocktail of fuck-me in his veins. “I didn’t mean to knock McManus down.”
“Your intentions don’t mean a thing in the face of your actions,” Westin popped back, his stare going thermonuclear and wedging the rest of the story in Alex’s throat. “Every time you try to clean up a mess, the only thing you do is end up filthy. And it is getting harder and harder for me to keep hosing you off.”
Anger snapped up from Alex’s chest, and it blew past his already questionable brain-to-mouth filter in one swift gust. “I only wanted to get around the guy, and anyway, he put his hands on me first.”
“But you upped the stakes when you retaliated, not to mention when you ran into that building. McManus wants your head on a Thanksgiving platter, Donovan. But since I’m pretty sure he’ll settle for your job, you might want to change your tune.”
Icy fingers of dread slithered between Alex’s ribs, digging in hard. “You can’t be serious,” he breathed. Being a firefighter was the axis that had kept his world spinning for the last eight years. The job wasn’t what Alex did, it was who he was, as much a part of him as his blood or breath or bones. He could not—under any circumstances—lose it.
This house was the only family Alex had.
“There has to be a way I can get around this,” he said, channeling all his effort into a level voice even though his pulse had surpassed warp speed. “I might not always go by the book, but come on, Cap. I belong here. I’m a good firefighter.”
“You are a good firefighter,” Westin agreed, the surprise in Alex’s chest morphing quickly into trepidation as the captain added, “But lately I’ve got to wonder if you’re forgetting the difference between bravery and recklessness. We lost a good man from this house two and a half years ago.” His gaze shot through the window to the wall outside the office door, where a framed photo of Mason Watts hung in silent memorial, and Alex’s gut went for the full free fall. “I won’t lose another, especially not over something that can and should be controlled.”
He scraped in a breath, unable to keep his exhale from going hoarse over his words. “I can’t lose this job, Captain Westin. You know I can’t. . . .” He broke off. Sucked in a breath. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Westin paused for a minute that lasted a month. “According to the personal conduct policy, there is one option.”
“Name it.”
“As your captain, I can recommend you for a remediation program. You’d have to agree to perform four weeks of community service, done concurrently with an unpaid leave of absence from the house. After that, the fire chief will review your case and decide whether or not to reinstate you to active duty.”
Alex’s jaw took a one-way trip south. “You want me to ride the pine for four weeks?” Chris. . .
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