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Her glare caught him square in the chest, and his argument died in his throat. “Yes, sir,” Lucy said, her words so perfectly even, she might as well have hung them with a level. Sam’s stomach pitched as he watched her head toward the engine to shuck her gear, then went full tilt as he followed her to the front of the warehouse and caught sight of the firefighters from Station Twenty-Nine hitting the place with their hoses. He headed toward the ambo, shrugging out of his coat as he went, and damn, Kellan and Shae were dousing the place, too. How the hell had this fire gotten so out of control, so fast?
“Hey, Faurier,” said Quinn Slater, one half of their husband-and-wife paramedic team, when he reached the ambulance parked beside Engine Seventeen. Her partner, Luke, hung back on the periphery, lifting his chin once at Sam before leaving Quinn to it. “I heard you need a once-over.”
He nodded, having heard Bridges radio ahead as soon as he’d started walking around the warehouse toward the ambo. “Cap’s orders.”
Quinn’s blue eyes were ridiculously keen, and she spotted his injury in two seconds flat. “Ouch. That burn looks nasty.”
Time for damage control. “Ah, it’s nothing,” Sam said, slinging on a smile even though it didn’t quite fit. “Not even enough to leave a mark.”
“Mmm,” Quinn murmured in clear disagreement. “Let’s take a look.”
Sam let her, but didn’t move his eyes from the warehouse, which was now shrouded in an equal mix of mist from the hoses and smoke from the flames being doused. “Bridges called in backup, huh?”
Quinn nodded, grabbing a bottle of saline from the bag propped open in the back of the rig. “All plans to let the fire burn itself out kind of went out the window when you and de Costa went in. This is going to sting,” she added, looking at him apologetically. “And get messy.”
She ran a stream of saline over his neck, and fuck, she wasn’t kidding—about the sting or the mess. But even though the saline dripped between his shoulder blades, it felt soothing after a minute, and his shirt was already soaked with sweat anyway.
Unease twanged in his gut as he watched the fire being put out. “You guys didn’t see anyone who’d been inside? Someone who got out through one of the back doors? Or a window with broken boards, or something?”
“No,” Quinn said, but didn’t elaborate as she kept the saline coming. She switched to cool water a minute later, running it over his skin until the pain coalesced into a dull throb, then started to dab at the burn gently with a sterile pad to clean it out.
Sam stuffed down the urge to flinch, although whether it was at Quinn’s ministrations or the thought that no one had come out of the building, he couldn’t be sure. He’dseensomeone in that window. Yeah, it was possible that whoever it was got out and took off. If they’d been squatting in the warehouse, they might’ve thought they’d get in trouble. But they could be hurt—or worse, still stuck inside, trapped or hurt or hiding, and Sam didn’t care how much trouble he was going to get into.
He'd gone inside to save a life. He’d known it was the right thing. Thenecessarything. Reckless or not, he was never, ever going to be sorry for trusting his gut.
Quinn made quick work of cleaning the burn on his neck, which she proclaimed, “second degree but easily treatable”, bandaging it up before giving him the all-clear. Sam hadn’t made it more than six steps to the squad vehicle, though, before Hawkins appeared in his path.
“I’ll take that,” he said, gesturing to Sam’s gear.
He passed his coat and helmet over, unease starting to spark in his gut, but he plastered over it with a cocky smile. “Valet service. I must be special.”
Hawkins stopped, his normally affable expression replaced by a granite jaw and steely stare, and Sam’s pulse tapped out a warning, too late. “I know you think you were right to do what you did,” Hawkins said, holding up a hand to halt anything Sam might say in his defense, “just like I know you think you can brazen your way out of this with that cocky attitude of yours. But you weren’t, and you can’t.”
Anger spurted in Sam’s chest, pushing his words out on a rush. “Since when is going into a burning building to save someone wrong?”
“Since your CO tells you not to,” Hawkins bit out. “Look, I ain’t gonna dress you down. I’m sure Bridges will take care of that. But you’ve got a whole lot of ego where your brain should be, and you can’t be part of a team if you’re gonna let it lead your actions. There ain’t no freelancing in a firefight. You’ll do well to remember it.”
A thousand thoughts and emotions careened through Sam’s mind, crowding his head so thoroughly that it all turned into a rush of static. “I don’t…I’m not…” He stopped. Tried to reset. Failed magnificently.Damnit! “I saw someone in that window, Hawk.”
“It still doesn’t mean you get to make the call to go in. You could’ve been killed in there,” Hawkins said, his mouth flattening. “And so could de Costa. All because you jumped boots-first into a situation without using your head.” His voice dropped, but his anger didn’t. “I get that bucking authority is your thing, Faurier. With an old man like yours, I can’t really say I blame you. But this time, you went too far.”
Sam’s temper flared at the mention of the F-word—bringing his father into this was a low blow—but Captain Bridges appeared beside them, his expression stony. “Faurier. Get in my vehicle. Do not speak,” he added, making dread pool in Sam’s belly. To Hawkins, he said, “Captain Winters and the crew from Twenty-Nine will finish putting the fire out. Round up Squad Six and Engine Seventeen and get back to the house. I’ll need you and Gamble in my office as soon as you return. Chief de Costa will meet us there.”
Oh, no. No, no.No. “Chief de Costa?” Sam managed, and Bridges arched a brow at him.
“Get in my vehicle, Faurier. We’ll discuss the repercussions of your actions—and Lucy’s—when we get back to the house, and not a second sooner.”
Just like that, the dread in Sam’s gut became fear.
4
Malachi Yearwood crouched in the underbrush across from the warehouse and watched in disbelief as firefighters doused the place window by window, destroying the fire he’d worked so hard to create. He’d been so sure everything was perfect. He’d studied and planned and practiced, over and over, until he’d been certain that this, his first big project, would go off without a hitch. Malachi had started small, of course. Not that he’d wanted to. No. What hewantedwas to strike matches and touch them to every single thing he saw, simply to bring the fire to life and watch it all burn to the ground so everything could be born again, fresh and new.
But he wasn’t some sort of amateur who didn’t understand how these things worked. Fire needed to be cultivated and fed properly. Tended. Cared for. You couldn’t just start one and hope for the best—not if you wanted it to thrive. So Malachi had fought his urge to be impulsive and studied how fire behaved. How it lived and moved and consumed everything it touched, sparing nothing. Then, after that, he’d practiced setting fire to smaller things, starting with piles of leaves, then moving on to old furniture and a few abandoned cars, then again to the shed at the back of the property he’d shared with his mother until the bank had foreclosed on it, forcing them out. Those fires had all been part of the plan, and they’d all burned to the ground, not destruction, but rebirth.
The warehouse was bigger, but it shouldn’t have mattered. Malachi knew which buildings would burn fastest, biggest, brightest, and he knew he’d chosen well when he’d picked it above the others. He knew how to arrange things to dodge suspicion and make the fire look accidental. He had his father to thank for all of these skills, although he never would. Malachi also knew how to make it so the fire department would let the fire burn, just the way he wanted, instead of using their resources to extinguish the flames. He’d left nothing to chance, even studying the weather for weeks to find just the right conditions. Dry and windy, perfect weather to feed a fire. He’d lit all the starting points in the travel path, one by one. With how many old pallets and how much debris there had been in the place, Malachi had known—yes, from experience, because he wasn’t some kind of noob, no matter what his father said—how quickly the fire would spread. How it would burn hot enough to consume everything in its path, leaving only ashes for a brand-new beginning.
The fire had been so beautiful, dancing and moving and doing exactly what he’d told it to. He’d been in control of it.Hehad created it, given it life. He’d come up with the plan, and he alone had set it into motion. He’d been unable to resist the impulse to stay and watch for just a little while, his heart pumping and his cock growing hard as steel at the sight of the flames coming to life in the warehouse, spreading out and traveling fast and doing what they were created to do. Burningeverything. Leaving nothing behind.
