Burn Patterns (First in Line #1)

16. James

Chapter sixteen

James

P aper crackled beneath my fingers as I turned another page, the sound sharp in the archives' midnight silence. My shoulders ached from hours hunched over personnel files and case reports at fire department headquarters, but I couldn't stop. Not when each document revealed another piece of the pattern.

The basement lab's ventilation system whispered overhead. Three empty coffee cups formed a half-circle around my laptop, their dregs gone cold hours ago. I should have been at Marcus's. I should have been sleeping. Instead, I was chasing ghosts through department records, trying to understand what transformed an ordinary fire academy washout into something monstrous.

Digitized records glowed on my screen—psychological evaluations, incident reports, and newspaper clippings that hadn't seen daylight in years. Most were fragmentary, bureaucratic breadcrumbs that led nowhere, but something darker took shape beneath the formal language and carefully redacted sections.

I opened another file. The time stamp read 3:47 AM, but time had lost meaning somewhere between the fourth cup of coffee and the growing certainty that I was missing something crucial. Something that could keep Marcus alive.

The archive's ancient oak table creaked as I shifted my weight, spreading another set of documents. My fingers traced each page with the same careful attention I gave crime scene evidence, searching for the truth buried in forgotten details.

Then I found it.

The evidence box held a single journal, its pages warped from years in storage, edges singed as if it had survived a baptism by fire. The cover bore water stains from fire hoses long since silent. Evidence tag: 2015-4473. It was part of the contents collected from Elliot Raines's locker after the training incident.

I opened it. The first pages were technical—thermal calculations and ventilation diagrams rendered with mechanical precision. Then the tone shifted, and I stopped breathing for a moment.

"First observed Lieutenant Graham McCabe during night drill. The way he reads fire—it's unlike anything I've seen. Others react. He anticipates. Moves like he can hear the flames speaking."

Lieutenant Graham McCabe , Marcus's father. My fingers paused on the page as the connection slammed into me. I'd seen that name on Marcus's academy graduation photo, hanging on a wall in his mother's dining room just days ago.

He had the same proud set of the shoulders and the same intensity in his eyes. Now Graham's ghost stared up at me from pages written by Marcus's stalker.

I turned to the next entry, my mouth gone dry.

"Graham understands what the rest of us only glimpse. Watched him enter a flashover today. Any other man would have retreated. He moved through it like he belonged there, like the heat recognized him. Beautiful. Perfect. This is what we're meant to become."

The handwriting changed, growing more intense:

"He sees it, too. Must see it. The way fire transforms everything it touches. Not destruction—transcendence. Today he told the recruits that flame strips away everything but truth. He KNOWS."

My fingers went numb as I read further. The margins were full of observations of Graham McCabe's techniques, training methods, and understanding of fire behavior. It wasn't academic interest. It was worship.

"The others are blind. They fight against fire's gift. Graham embraces it. Lets it reshape him. Each burn makes him stronger, purer. He's proving what I've always known: some men are chosen by the flame."

The final entries were dated just before Raines's dismissal from the academy:

"They fear what they don't understand. Call it reckless, dangerous. Only Graham knows. Fire isn't our enemy. It's our inheritance. Our destiny. Some men are meant to be consumed, to become something greater. He's showing us the way."

The journal ended there, but my mind raced ahead, connecting points across the years like plotting burn patterns at a scene. Graham's death in the refinery fire. Marcus following his father's path. Every calculated intrusion into Marcus's life—

"Oh, God." The words tumbled into the archive's silence.

It wasn't about destroying Marcus. It was about a legacy, finishing what started with his father. Raines wasn't studying Marcus.

He was preparing him.

My phone was heavy as lead in my hand as I pulled up the recent case photos. I had Marcus's training routes marked in precise red lines. Another picture showed the calculated burn patterns at each scene, how each fire pushed him harder and tested him further.

Raines hadn't chosen Marcus because he was a fierce competitor or skilled firefighter. He'd chosen him because he was Graham McCabe's son. He was the only one who could complete the transformation his father had begun.

I needed to warn Marcus that every fire pushed him closer to becoming what Raines believed his father had almost achieved. Then, the words stuck in my throat as I stared at the journal's final page, where a single line was written in dark red ink:

"Some men are chosen by the flame."

The words burned into my vision as I stared at the page. My chest tightened around each breath. The archive's fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with a sterile glow.

I spread the recent case photos across the table. The warehouse fire. The gym. The abandoned factory. Each scene was a test. The precisión that had looked like an artistic obsession now revealed itself as something darker—the completion of a ritual begun twelve years ago with Graham McCabe.

The photos of Marcus's training routes took on new meaning. Every surveillance shot amounted to assessments and comparisons. It was a son's capabilities measured against his father's.

I pulled up the chemical analysis from the latest fire on my laptop. Raines showed off his technical mastery with the accelerant combinations. He'd recreated the conditions from the refinery fire that killed Graham McCabe, testing whether Marcus could withstand what his father couldn't.

My coffee cup clattered against the table as I shoved back from the evidence. The sound echoed through the empty archives like a gunshot. I pressed my palms against my eyes but couldn't unsee the pattern.

Every fire had pushed Marcus harder, driven him to adapt and overcome. He had responded precisely as Raines wanted—with more training, discipline, and determination to prove himself stronger than the flames. If he'd given up at any point, it would have all been over.

My phone vibrated against the table—a text from Marcus. The screen showed his name. It was a connection to a part of the world that still made sense. My fingers hovered over the keys, but the words wouldn't come.

How could I tell him that his father's death was the beginning?

Papers scattered as I shoved everything into my messenger bag. I needed to organize it and understand the full scope before I dropped the weight onto Marcus's shoulders.

My apartment was closer than his. I could piece it together there and find the right words to explain how a madman had turned his father's memory into a blueprint for transformation.

The evidence weighed against my thigh as I walked to my car. Raines's journal burned in my messenger bag like a hot coal. Each step echoed off brick walls, and I caught myself scanning the shadows between buildings, wondering if someone was documenting my movements with the same precision they'd used to study Marcus.

Seattle's streets were nearly empty, the late hour stripping away the usual traffic and leaving only pools of sodium light on wet pavement. My car's leather seats were too normal against my skin when everything else had shifted sideways into a nightmare.

I took Eastlake instead of I-5, choosing the longer route that wound past darkened buildings and silent marinas. The lake's surface reflected city lights in fractured patterns. It was the same lake where Marcus trained every morning, where someone watched, measured, and planned. My fingers tightened on the steering wheel as I imagined him cutting through that dark water, unaware of the legacy forced upon him.

The radio stayed off. I couldn't bear the unaffected cheer of late-night DJs or news reports. Instead, I filled my mind with terrible calculations: the precise temperature of burning refinery fuel, the melting point of human tissue, and the exceedingly slim odds of surviving what Raines had planned.

A fire truck screamed past, lights painting my windshield in urgent red. For a moment, I couldn't breathe, imagining Marcus running toward flames specifically crafted to test him and complete what his father had started.

I pulled over, pressing my forehead against the wheel as nausea rolled through me. Opening the car door, I lost the contents of my stomach at the edge of the road. The case files in my lap spilled onto the floor. I'd been so focused on methodology that I'd missed the most crucial pattern.

Graham McCabe's ghost haunted every scene.

When I finally started driving again, cold sweat pasted my shirt to my back. Traffic lights cycled between red and green, each one marking time like a countdown. To what?

My analytical mind tried to predict Raines's endgame, but emotions kept interfering. My brain cycled through memories of Marcus's face when he spoke of his father.

I wanted to call him and warn him, but these weren't the kind of revelations you delivered over the phone.

The familiar sight of my building should have been comforting. Instead, something primal in my hindbrain screamed a warning as I pulled into my usual parking spot. The security light above the entrance flickered, casting unstable shadows across the brick walls.

I grabbed the messenger bag, each step toward the building's entrance feeling heavier than the last. The night had gone too quiet like nature itself was holding its breath.

It wasn't until I reached my floor that I understood why.

My apartment door stood slightly ajar, darkness seeping through the gap between frame and lock. The hallway's fluorescent lights cast strange shadows across the threshold, and beneath them, something curled into the corridor—not shadow, but smoke.

My hand froze on the doorknob. The metal radiated heat.

Every instinct screamed to back away and call it in. That would have been my choice in any other situation, but the evidence in my bag was like a lead weight, each page carrying truth that could keep Marcus alive. If Raines had found my other research...

I pushed the door open. Heat slammed into me, carrying scents I'd documented at dozens of scenes but never experienced in my personal space—burning paper, melting plastic, and the distinct signatures of fuel chosen for specific effects. The air shimmered with convection currents, creating patterns I could have sketched from memory after years of studying fire behavior.

In my living room, my desk lay overturned, its drawers pulled out and scattered. Papers carpeted the floor in careful patterns, deliberately placed.

And through the bedroom doorway, orange light danced, accompanied by ominous crackling.

The heat pressed against my exposed skin, trying to drive me back. Sweat instantly soaked my shirt, plastering cotton against my spine. My throat burned with each breath, and my analytical mind helpfully supplied the exact chemical compounds I was inhaling.

For the first time in my life, I grabbed a fire extinguisher, brandishing it as a weapon against the flames. I moved through the apartment like it was another investigation, processing details even as my survival instincts screamed at me to run. The flames consumed my bedspread in controlled patterns—not the chaos of a natural fire, but the precise destruction I'd seen at every scene. It wasn't random arson. This was a message.

The fire climbed the walls in elegant spirals, creating the same signature patterns I'd photographed at the warehouse. My curtains ignited in a careful sequence, each panel catching at precisely timed intervals.

Part of me—the researcher and analyst—wanted to document all of it. Another part recognized I was watching a systematic threat on my life.

A sharp crack overhead broke through my professional detachment.

I looked up just as a section of the burning ceiling broke free. Time stretched into slow motion as I watched it fall, my mind calculating the trajectory and mass even as I tried to move.

Pain exploded in my shoulder as superheated debris struck. The impact drove me to my knees, and suddenly, the fire wasn't a subject of study—it was alive, hungry, and personal. I smelled my flesh burning before I managed to throw the chunk of ceiling aside.

The pain cleared my head. I deployed the extinguisher with mechanical precision, cutting through flames arranged like brush strokes on canvas. The chemicals mixed with smoke, creating a fog that burned my eyes and coated my tongue.

Somehow, I put the fire out and made it to the street. My shoulder screamed where the debris had struck, and each breath was like inhaling shards of glass. Somehow, my hands were steady as I pulled out my phone, finding Marcus's number

One ring. Two. Then his voice, solid and real: "James?"

"It's him. He was here."

A heartbeat of silence. Then, lower: "Where are you?"

"Outside my building." I tasted ash on my tongue. "My apartment is gone."

"I'm coming." No hesitation. No questions.

"Marcus—" I couldn't finish the thought, overwhelmed by everything I needed to say. Which should I begin with? I was sorry? I should have seen it sooner? His father's ghost held the key to everything?

"Stay on the line." His voice anchored me as sirens wailed in the distance. "I'll be there."

I pressed the phone closer, letting his steady breathing ground me while flames danced in my building's windows. The evidence in my bag was like a living being harboring a terrible truth.