Chapter Three
The restaurant was already half gone by the time Austin and his team reached it.
He and West exchanged a glance. They knew this place.
The owner was a shifter. They’d eaten here several times, so they also knew that other shifters frequented the place.
They’d always given West and Austin a wide berth, but the owners had never had anything to say about them.
They’d been nice and had always served them good food with a smile.
Austin jumped out of the fire engine as soon as it came to a stop. Taylor was already giving orders as he looked for the person in command. It didn’t take him long, and from his expression, Austin could tell it wasn’t good.
“Austin, West, there are two people still inside,” Taylor yelled over the roar of fire and the sound of the water hitting the building.
Austin swore. With a fire like this, there was a good chance those people were dead, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to go in there to find them.
“Do we know where in the building?” West asked as he grabbed his mask from the engine.
“The kitchen, toward the back.”
West nodded. “I know where it is. Austin and I have eaten here a few times before.”
“Good. Get in there, but don’t do anything stupid.”
Luckily for them, even if they did, they’d be fine. They were dragon shifters. The fire wouldn’t hurt them, but Taylor didn’t know that.
Maybe he ought to.
Now wasn’t the time to reconsider telling him and the others, but Austin couldn’t help but think about it.
Knowing that they couldn’t get hurt would help Taylor feel better about sending them into the fire, and it would give them more leeway.
It would also help them keep their secret from people they didn’t know.
They might trust their team with it, but that was it.
Austin didn’t want the secret to get out to anyone else.
West knocked their shoulders together and nodded. He moved ahead, and Austin quickly finished getting ready before following him inside.
It was like every other fire they’d worked.
The air burned around them, the building was coming down, and they had a job to do.
Thankfully, the heat didn’t bother them, but they still had to be careful of everything else.
They could survive the fire, but they might not survive a beam falling on their heads or a wall coming down on them.
The restaurant was a maze of smoke and heat, the ceiling already sagging in places where the support beams had been weakened. Austin could hear the sound of materials creaking over the roar of the fire—they’d only have a few minutes before the whole building came down.
“Kitchen’s in the back,” West’s voice came through the radio, muffled but still clear enough.
Austin followed West’s lead, stepping carefully over debris. The flames were close, and while the heat couldn’t hurt them the way it would hurt their human teammates, the smoke and toxic fumes coming from the burning building were still dangerous.
They pushed through a swinging door into what had once been a commercial kitchen.
Looked more like the image most people had of Hell, with two figures huddled behind a table that now lay on its side near the far wall.
The older man and the young woman were both conscious but clearly suffering from smoke inhalation and panicking.
“Found them!” Austin called into his radio before moving toward the victims.
The woman looked up as Austin approached, her eyes wide. She was in her mid-twenties, with dark hair plastered to her head and soot streaking her face. The man next to her was older, and Austin recognized her father. Melinda and Joseph both worked at the restaurant. In fact, Joseph was the owner.
“Can you walk?” Austin asked Melinda, kneeling beside them and doing a quick assessment for injuries. He didn’t think she recognized him under his mask.
“I think so,” she breathed out. “But Dad isn’t doing well.”
That would explain why she hadn’t left. As a shifter, she probably would’ve been fast enough. Her father, too, but it looked like he hadn’t had the time.
A crack echoed through the building, a sure sign that something major was happening upstairs. West appeared by Austin, his expression grim behind his mask.
“We need to go now,” he said. “The whole second floor is about to come down.”
Austin didn’t hesitate. “I’ve got him,” he told West, then turned to the woman. “Stay close to us. Don’t let go of my partner’s jacket, no matter what happens.”
She nodded, coughing as more smoke rolled in the kitchen. Austin lifted the unconscious man with ease, but made it look like it was hard just in case.
West led the way out, clearing any debris that blocked their path. Melinda was behind him, one hand clutching the back of his jacket, right over his name. Austin followed with Joseph over his shoulders. They moved as quickly as they could, stepping around weak spots in the floor.
Halfway to the exit, the building shuddered. Austin looked up to see that the part of the ceiling directly above them was cracking open and about to come down. “West!” he called out.
West looked up and immediately understood the danger. They weren’t going to make it, not as humans. They had a choice to make.
It wasn’t really a choice at all.
West moved with shifter speed, grabbing Melinda and throwing her toward the exit while Austin slid Joseph down so he could protect him with his body.
The ceiling crashed down where they’d been standing just seconds before, sending up a shower of sparks and flames that felt hot even to Austin’s dragon shifter skin.
It had been too close.
“Everyone okay?” West called out as he grabbed Melinda and pulled her toward the exit.
He could hear people calling from outside, so he made sure to stumble as he emerged from the building after hauling Joseph back up. “Yeah,” Austin replied. “Let’s get them to the paramedics.”
They emerged from the burning restaurant just as the area they’d been in collapsed, sending flames and sparks everywhere.
Lisa and Jeremy were waiting for them by the ambulance and helped lower Joseph to the gurney.
Austin stepped back as soon as he was clear and tried to catch his breath.
It had been close for Melinda and Joseph.
“Nice work in there,” Taylor said, clapping Austin and West on the shoulder.
“Just lucky,” West told him. Austin nodded in agreement.
Luck was an explanation they often used, but so far, no one had mentioned it. Taylor, Jeremy, and Lisa had to suspect something, though. No one was as lucky as West and Austin.
Austin watched his team work on Melinda and her father, relieved that they were both awake and moving.
This was why Austin had become a firefighter. In moments like this, when their abilities meant the difference between life and death for people, they could give more than any human. It was worth the constant vigilance and the acting.
Even though it sometimes felt like living a lie.
Austin pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his damp hair as he glanced around, half expecting Caleb to be there like he’d been at the bookstore.
He frowned at the sight of one of the firefighters standing there staring at him.
He didn’t recognize the guy, but that wasn’t a surprise.
There were plenty of firefighters he’d never worked with.
Still, this guy should know better than just standing there and watching, especially when the fire was still roaring behind Austin.
West bumped against Austin, distracting him.
By the time he looked back, the other firefighter was gone, probably working, but he’d left an uneasy feeling deep in Austin’s gut.
The way he’d been staring at Austin had made him uncomfortable.
Maybe he was reading too much into it, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone to look into the guy, right?
The only problem was that he didn’t know the guy’s name, only which station he worked at, and he wasn’t sure how to poke around without alarming anyone.
He was sure that Caleb would, though. Pity he didn’t want to work with Austin.
* * * *
THIS WASN’T THE FIRST meeting of this kind Caleb attended, but usually, the people present weren’t shifters. Usually, he wasn’t part of their community.
It was a little intimidating. He knew all these people, but as a customer. It was different than being here for work, because he wanted to help them find out who the arsonist was for personal reasons rather than for his job. He couldn’t make promises, but he wanted to.
He could see how tired Margaret was. He wasn’t surprised that she was already out of the hospital, but he wished they’d kept her a little longer.
She was pale and a little shaky, and no amount of coffee was going to help her.
Thankfully, people here took care of each other.
It was what made them a community. It was what made them stronger.
He stayed at the back of the room as more people continued arriving. He didn’t want to attract attention. He wasn’t here for that. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that people wouldn’t notice him.
“All right,” a woman Caleb recognized as the flower shop owner declared once the room was full.
There were so many people that some of them were standing by the back wall, like Caleb. Someone had brought cupcakes, but they were all gone. The room was full, but it quieted almost instantly. It was impressive.
“Welcome,” the woman said.
Caleb didn’t spend a lot of time at the flower shop, but he was pretty sure her name was Moira. She was some kind of bird shifter, and she had everyone’s attention.
“Thank you for coming. All of us have busy lives, but I believe this is important.” She looked at Margaret, who was sitting at the front, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.
“Margaret, we’re all really sorry about what happened to your store.
I hope you know that. We’ll do what we can to help, including during the reconstruction. ”