"Yes, Chief."
"Your head is somewhere else, Hale."
"My head is where it needs to be, Chief."
"Prove it."
"Yes, Chief."
"Dismissed."
---
Out in the hall I stand with my back to her door for a three-count. Then I go down the stairs.
The stairwell is concrete. The stairwell is where I have had all of the thoughts I could not have in a room with other people in it. I go down one flight and stop on the landing and put my hand flat on the wall and let my forehead touch the back of my hand.
I have lied to Val four times.
I have known Val for nineteen years. I have worked for her for sixteen. I have reported to her for fourteen. In that time I have never told her a lie. Not about where I slept. Not about who I slept with, when I slept with people, which was not often. Not about what I saw at a fire. Not about what I did on a run. Not about what I ate, where I drank, who I hit at a bar in 2015. I am a woman whose whole professional life has been built on a single operating principle, which is that Val Mercer gets the truth and gets it plain. The arrangement is, she asks, I say. That's the deal. That's the deal that kept me in a rank. That's the deal that got me my rank back.
I just broke it four times in nine minutes.
I press my forehead harder into the back of my hand. I breathe out through my teeth. My scar is a low steady pull on the inside of my forearm, the way it gets when I have been holding my hands in fists without knowing. I open the fists. I make myself open the fists. I look at the back of my hand on the wall. The skin there is red from the pressure of my head. I lift my head off it.
Down one more flight.
The engine bay at the bottom of the stairs is bright with late morning. Two engines are in. A new probie is on the tailboard of Engine 9 cleaning a coupling that doesn't need cleaning. Dani Serrano is in the far corner by the turnout racks running her hand along a strap and examining the stitching, her head tipped the way it tips when she is looking at something she is not yet ready to name. She sees me come out of the stairwell. Shedoesn't nod. She doesn't come over. She looks a second longer than a look.
“Max.” Dani's voice.
I cross to her.
"Ma'am."
"Everything all right upstairs?”
"Yes." Max responded.
"You look rough." Dani looked concerned.
"Long night."
"What were you up to?”
The third person in an hour has asked me where I was last night. Dani asks it as a friend, not as Val asks it. Dani meansare you okay, did you sleep, did you eat.Dani has been asking me that question for seven years in exactly that tone and has been my closest approximation of a friend in this house in all that time. I look at her. I look at her face, the careful flat read of it, the way her eyes sit on me without blinking.
"Cabin," I say.
"The northwest one."
"Yes."
“Still working on it?” Dani tipped her head to the side, the light catching on her ponytail.
"I finished the porch two summers ago."
"Right, sorry I forgot."
