Mac gathers us near the engine once the checks are done.
“We’re the call now,” he says.
No preamble. No rallying speech. Just truth. That sentence carries enough weight all by itself.
This town waits long enough for everyone else. If something happens here, if something catches, if someone’s chest locks up at the marina or a tourist drives too fast on wet roads or a kitchen flare-up gets bigger than a pan and faster than reason, the answer isn’t somewhere else anymore.
It’s here. Us.
Mac looks from one of us to the next. “If something comes in, we move. No wasted motion. No showboating. We do the job.”
His gaze settles on me last, and I hold it.
“Yes, sir.”
The tones drop before he can say anything else. Sharp. Immediate. The sound cuts through the whole building and snaps every loose thought into line.
Mac turns for the truck. “Brushfire. Back Bay Beach. Unattended.”
Beckett exhales through his teeth. “Tourists.”
Ray is already moving. So am I. That’s what I notice later, after the call and after the cleanup and after the adrenaline settles enough for me to think clearly again. There’s no lag. No hesitation.
My body goes before fear can catch up.
Helmet.
Gloves.
Coat.
Boots secure. Tank ready. No fumbling. No drama. Just movement.
The engine roars to life and rolls out fast, siren opening over the town as Mac takes the wheel.
I climb into the passenger seat and watch Coral Bell Cove blur past the windshield.
Storefronts slide by in streaks of color and shadow. The bookstore. The bait shop. The stretch near the marina where tourists like to walk too slow and locals like to complain about them doing it. Water flashes silver between buildings. The boardwalk sits quiet this early. A fisherman on the far end of the dock looks up as the siren cuts through the morning.
The town looks calm. It usually does from a distance. The access road to Back Bay Beach opens ahead, all sand and scrub grass and low dune. We see the smoke before we reach the pull-off. A dark line against the pale sky. Thin. Active. Wrong.
Mac slows only enough to assess, then steers us onto the packed-sand track. The wind hits stronger as soon as the doors open. Salt. Smoke. Heat under the surface.
We climb down fast.
Ray grabs the shovel and extinguisher. Beckett hauls the water can from the side compartment. Mac scans the perimeter with one sweep that seems to clock everything at once—the smoldering driftwood, the tourists standing too close, the dry dune grass beyond the fire ring, the old boardwalk, the line of wind coming in off the water.
I move toward the center of it before anyone tells me to.
The fire itself looks deceptively small. That’s what makes it dangerous. A half-buried ring of burned wood and blackened sand, the top layer muted and dull enough that someone carelesscan convince themselves it’s dead. Heat still pulses underneath. I feel it before Ray even drives the shovel into the edge.
Steam rises fast.
“Still live,” Ray says.
Mac nods. “Break it down.”
I drop to one knee and start pulling sand back while Beckett comes in from the opposite side with water. Heat breathes up through the opening we make, sharper now, angrier. It isn’t a blaze. In some ways, that makes it worse. Something hidden long enough to spread if you trust appearances.
