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Quinn nodded in agreement. “We want to be sure you’re okay,” she said, her blond ponytail bouncing over one shoulder of her hoodie as she picked up the glass of wine Shae had just poured and passed it to Lucy.
“And we want to get the scoop,” Shae added, meeting the three looks of disbelief from her companions with a lift of her hands. “What? Where’s the lie?”
“We’re here to talk or to listen,” Isabella said, arching a brow at Shae. “Ifyou want us to do either.”
“We’re also here to get you tipsy and full of cheese and mind our own business if that’s your preference,” Kennedy added.
“We could do that,” Quinn said, knowing as well as the rest of them that there were no academy classes on Fridays, so Lucy was free to sleep off a few glasses of wine tomorrow if she chose to. “But it’s not like you to do something as serious as break the chain of command. You might feel better if you talk it out, and you know we won’t judge.”
Lucy took a larger than needed glug of her wine, wishing for just a moment that it were something stronger. Like tequila. Or arsenic. “I appreciate your concern,” she said, because it was true. “But honestly, other than my pride being pretty banged up, which I’ll get over eventually, I’m fine.”
Kennedy tilted her head, her doubt plain as she pulled a container of queso from the bag and popped it into Lucy’s microwave. “Mmmkay. If someone had told me a week ago that you’d disobey a direct order on an active fire call and put yourself smack in harm’s way—not to mention royally pissing off your lieutenantandyour captain—I’d have called them a dirty, dirty liar. Either that, or I’d think you’d been body-snatched by aliens. So, really. What gives, Luce?”
“Breaking such a huge ruleisvery un-Lucy-like,” Isabella added, reaching for the family-sized bag of tortilla chips taking up the rest of the space in Kennedy’s bag.
Lucy pulled a serving bowl from one of the cupboards (far be it for her to stand between a pregnant woman and her chips) and handed it to Isabella, then parked herself at one of the stools at the breakfast bar separating her kitchen from the open-concept living space. “Believe me, I know. I’m not sure what I was thinking.”
“Wild guess,” Shae ventured, eyeing Lucy over the rim of her wineglass as she took a sip. “But maybe you were thinking that we’re firefighters, which means that even when one of us makes a dumbass move, we still have each other’s backs.”
“It was a dumbass move,” Lucy agreed, making Quinn sigh from her spot one bar stool over.
“Faurier tends to make those,” she said. “I worry about him more than anyone else on squad. I patch him up more than any of the rest of them, too.”
Quinn took her job as lead paramedic as seriously as the heart attacks she was trained to treat, so her worry didn’t surprise Lucy. What did shock her, however, was how keenly Isabella was looking at her in that moment.
“But,” Isabella said, placing the bowl of chips on the breakfast bar for everyone to share, but not before placing a serving for herself into a smaller bowl and heading for the couch.
“But what?” Lucy asked.
Ah, hell. Isabella was a detective, and a freaking great one at that. Of course she hadn’t missed a beat. “It was a dumbass movebut…?”
“But Shae is right,” Lucy said, trying to drown the aftertaste of the words with another sip of wine. “Yeah, Faurier put me in a bad spot, and believe me, I’m still pissed about that. But wedoalways have each other’s backs. So, Faurier made a dumbass choice to disregard orders, but I made a dumbass move by breaking the rules, too.”
It was a hard truth Lucy had come to grips with over the past few sleepless nights. Yes, she was still a little mad that Faurier had put her in a shitty spot. But, if she was being honest in the way that a person is when they’re tossing and turning at two in the morning, she was no longer as mad at Faurier as she was at herself. She’d followed her gut—a move that had burned her nearly to the point of no return once—instead of relying on the rules and all the order they brought. She’d been impulsive. She hadn’t thought, justacted, and the fact that she’d done it for Sam Faurier and his sexy little smile was rattling her more than she wanted to admit.
She couldn’t go down that road again. And definitely not for a sexy little smile.
Quinn reached out to place a gentle squeeze on Lucy’s forearm. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You made a tough judgment call in a no-win situation, and you’re an amazing firefighter.”
“Truth,” Shae said, dipping a chip in the queso Kennedy had just put on the breakfast bar and popping it into her mouth with an exaggerated “mmm”. “Anyway, you’re not missing much. Yesterday’s shift was one of the most boring we’ve had in a while.”
Finally, Lucy cracked a smile, albeit a small one. “Only you would complain when things aren’t burning down left and right.”
An image of the warehouse fire, burning too bright and too hot and way too damn fast, flashed through her mind, there and then gone before Shae’s laugh brought her back to the room.
“Okay, maybe I like things a little more roasty and toasty than most people, but comeon. We responded to two MVAs—both so minor, I didn’t even get to direct traffic—and one storage shed fire in a vacant lot that would’ve had promise if it hadn’t burned itself out with no help from us whatsoever. By the time we got there, it was just ashes and ambers,” Shae pouted.
Something tickled in Lucy’s brain, prompting her to say, “Another shed fire? Didn’t B-shift respond to one last month, too?”
“Oh, yeah,” Shae said, recognition lighting in her eyes. “That does ring a bell. A shed on a foreclosed property, I think. They chalked it up to vandalism.”
Isabella nodded from her spot on the couch, making room for Kennedy as the other woman made her way over from the kitchen now that the queso had been warmed up. “I remember seeing a string of arson/vandalism in a police memo not that long ago. A couple of abandoned cars and a shed or two. Patrol is keeping their eyes open, but…”
“Vandals vandalize things, and they usually know how to dodge the police when they have their minds made up?” Kennedy asked, taking a sip of wine.
“I was going to say they’ve got their hands full, but you’re also not wrong,” Isabella said.
Again, a thought pricked at Lucy’s mind, fueled by the memory of the warehouse fire. “You don’t think it’s something more…I don’t know, nefarious, do you? Likeactualarson?”
