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“That’s illegal,” Six said. “They’re supposed to have one on every floor.”
“Welcome to the world of the poor,” Jericho said sharply. The place was a shithole, and only those down on their luck and desperate rented a place there. The “law” only went so far when it came to the disadvantaged. He and Hunter had grown up in places like this and worse.
The door opened, and Six said politely to the occupant, “Excuse me, ma’am, there’s a fire in the building. We’re gonna need you to evacuate.”
Jericho pulled out his phone as he banged on the next door and waited with his phone pressed to his ear.
“What?” Greer answered.
“Where are you?”
“Where the fuck do you think I am?”
At work, then. Jericho didn’t think it was so unreasonable to ask, considering that roughly an hour ago Greer had been handling dead bodies with Six and Jericho. Jericho wasn’t his dad; he hadn’t asked where Greer was going when he and Six had headed out to come here. “Need you to turn on the fire alarm in the building and get the fire department here now.”
“You mean your shitty apartment?”
“It was Warren’s.”
“Which was you.”
“Semantics are only fun when I’m the one pointing them out,” Jericho said.
Greer said something in French that made Jericho laugh just as a woman answered the door with a towel wrapped firmly around herself.
She glared at him. “What do you want?”
Charming. “Fire. Get your shit and get out.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
Jericho was already moving on. “Now,” he snapped at her over his shoulder. He didn’t have time to hold her hand. It’s not like he’d left his statement open to interpretation. How many ways did you have to say “fire” for a person to understand?
“There’s a generic fire alarm in the foyer, but it’s like a hundred years old, according to this. I can’t do anything with it from here…” Greer trailed off, the clacking of his keyboard in the background. “There’s a pawn shop across the road. I’m setting off their alarm and putting through an alert to the fire department. What the fuck is going on?”
“There’s a fire.” Jericho didn’t think that needed to be said, but maybe Greer hadn’t had a Snickers yet today. He wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that Six ate the one in the car, that was for sure.
“No fucking shit.”
“Why’d you ask, then?”
“Fuck, I hate you.”
“You love me.” It was a complicated love. One built over their mutual love for Six. Albeit a different kind of love because while Six was great and Jericho would take a bullet for him, he didn’t want to see him naked. Unless there was a towel in the vicinity to whip his ass with and make him cry. A brotherly love.
Six met Jericho at the stairs.
“Which way?” he asked as he put one foot down a step. “One up and two down, right?”
“Yeah.” Luckily, the building wasn’t big; there were only four floors and four apartments to each floor. Jericho looked back to where residents were already coming out of their apartments on their current floor, with a handful of things that were important to them. He couldn’t hear anyone coming from upstairs. There was only one floor above him, but he knew that a single mum with her three kids lived up there, and an older gentleman who always bombarded Jericho with pictures of his grandkids whenever he ran into him.
“I’ll go up. You go down.”
“Did you just sayup?” Greer growled. “Don’t you fucking dare, Rowlands. Get the hell outside and wait for the fire truck.”
“Not without checking,” Jericho said, already taking the stairs up two at a time. The fire would take time to spread. Not a lot of time but enough for him to do one round.
“Fuck’s sake,” Greer said. “Fire department is on their way, along with uniform police. Try not to get killed. Where is Six?”
