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The sound reached them after the motion, a layered crack and roar, timber breaking under timber, old machinery struck from above, sheet metal peeling free. A pressure wave pushed smoke down the alley.
Jethro felt Kai’s hand catch the shoulder strap of his air pack and pull. They stumbled behind a concrete loading barrier as incandescent debris rattled across it. For several seconds the radio dissolved into overlapping checks.
Aurora called each name. Rocco answered from the pump panel. Eloise from the deck gun. Sonny and Wilder from beyond the Delta corner.
Jethro keyed his mic.
“Jethro, clear.”
Kai pressed his transmitter.
“Kai, clear. Dignity unaccounted for.”
“It was never on the rig,” Sonny said. His breathing was loud in the channel. “Search suspended.”
“Radio discipline,” Aurora snapped, then softer, “All crews accounted for.”
The roof collapse changed the fire’s shape. It opened the center to air, and a column of flame rose with renewed force, twisting embers toward a row of small houses across the vacant lot.
Eloise charged the deck gun. The master stream arced over the yard and hammered the exposed interior. Rocco watched the gauges shudder below the pressure they needed. He called for the incoming engine to reverse-lay from the next hydrant.
Jethro and Kai re-advanced only far enough to protect the east exposure, sweeping the stream across weeds, fencing, and the side of a shuttered machine shop. Pieces of the cannery continued to fall without warning. Each failure tightened the space in Jethro’s chest.
Every time boards shifted in the glow, he imagined the whole wall coming sideways faster than they could run. The building had been brittle before the fire; now it seemed held upright by flame alone, as if extinguishing it might release the final support.
An additional engine arrived in a wash of red light. It was one of two that were kept on the property of Belle Fleur.
Aurora parceled the scene into distances and dangers, assigning crews to protect exposures while she walked a wide command arc, never turning her back on the walls.
The accelerant odor strengthened whenever the wind shifted. Even masked, Jethro caught it at the edges, a petroleum sting entwined with wet ash. Fire had burned low across portions of the loading yard, leaving odd clean lanes in the soot. This was no bored teenager feeding cardboard into a dumpster.
Someone had laid a path. Someone had wanted the cannery to take. A sheriff’s vehicle blocked Bellweather at both ends. A deputy approached Aurora until she pointed him firmly back beyond the collapse line.
“Arson investigator is in route,” dispatch told her. “Advise when the scene is safe.” The investigator would be two of their own, most likely Mike and Naomi.
Aurora looked at the building while an exterior staircase detached one bracket at a time and folded into the fire.
“Tell them to pack a lunch.”
Jethro heard Sonny laugh once over the channel, a short involuntary bark.
“Command cracked a joke. Everybody check the sky.”
“I can rescind it,” Aurora said. She realized that these men were used to using humor to defuse a situation. Her teams were more focused. They had to be. Or perhaps that was ignorance on her part.
“Already documented,” Kai replied. “Historic event.”
Their humor did not ease the fear so much as outline it. A railing fell in a dark stairwell. Jethro used it the way he used the charged hose: something to hold while the ground vibrated under his boots.
Wilder had gone quiet. From the Delta side he watched smoke pulse from the low doorway beneath the awning. Each pulse carried glowing flecks and a greasy darkness that lowered toward the pavement. Sonny caught him staring.
“What?”
“I thought I saw movement.”
“Where?”
“Inside. Low, maybe ten feet back.”
