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Jethro set down the coffee. The count had been four. Everyone knew it without saying it. He watched the entrance while a rescue specialist disappeared into the gray ruin, then emerged to signal for the screen.
The fifth victim was brought out beneath a white covering. None had survived. Five people had been inside a building the city called abandoned, while everyone who passed it had trained themselves to see an empty place.
The recovery finished after 1200 hours. Investigators could not yet say who the victims were, how they had entered, or whether the person who set the fire had known they were there.
Ordinary work carried them when thought could not. Eloise rinsed ash from the pike poles. Rocco broke down the supply line and watched black water drain toward the curb. Wilder rolled hose with exact, punishing care, making each coupling land square. Sonny started to help, but Wilder shook his head.
“I need to do something.”
“Then make it the prettiest hose bed in the parish,” Sonny said. Wilder gave him a look that almost became a smile.
“That’s a low bar.”
“You’re learning.” Near the command post, Aurora signed the last operational form and stared at the five separate entries on the casualty sheet. Her pen hovered before she capped it. Jethro stood beside her, helmet under his arm.
“You kept us out,” he said looking down at the concern on her face. The woman who had nearly collapsed in front of him from a memory, handled a blaze of this size with precision and professionalism.
“That’s the job.”
“Doesn’t mean it was easy. You were remarkable.”
She looked back at the ruin. Without fire inside it, the cannery appeared smaller, as if the flames had been the last grand thing it would ever do.
“I could hear Wilder asking without asking,” she said. “They all were.” Jethro knew.
Every firefighter had an interior map in the mind, a route taken against orders, a reach made through impossible heat, a different ending purchased with courage. Those maps ignored collapsing roofs, smoke explosions, and the speed at which old wood surrendered. They were built from guilt, not physics.
Kai approached, dragging a final length of hose.
“Truck’s packed,” he said.
“Except the part of my spine we left in the alley.” Sonny called from the engine.
“Put in a requisition. I hear we keep spare spines next to the good coffee.”
“So nowhere?”
“Exactly.” Aurora’s mouth twitched.
“Mount up before either of you discovers a second joke.” They climbed aboard one by one. “And guys? Thank you for tonight. For the expert help we desperately needed and couldn’t have survived without. And for the really bad jokes.”
“Really bad?” frowned Kai. “I think I’m wounded.”
The sun had burned through the clouds, but the cab still smelled of smoke, wet gear, and the chemical sweetness that had greeted them on arrival.
As Rocco pulled away, Jethro looked back through the rear window. Steam drifted from the cannery’s broken frame. Investigators in white coveralls moved carefully around the dumpster. Five covered forms were gone now, carried toward names and histories the crew did not know. The scene receded, but no one mistook distance for escape.
“Third dumpster fire in three days,” Kai said quietly. “You think there’ll be a fourth?”
Aurora keyed the cab intercom though they could all hear her without it.
“Not if we find who did this.” Her certainty was deliberate, something constructed for the ride home. Jethro watched the orange reflections fade from the windows of the waking city.
“And if we don’t?” he asked. No one answered at first. Then Sonny leaned his helmet against the glass and said,
“Then next shift, we bring the toaster.” It was a terrible joke. It was barely a joke at all. But Kai let out a tired breath, Jethro closed his eyes, and the engine carried them toward the station while behind them the cannery settled, beam by beam, into silence.
CHAPTER NINE
