Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Gabriel Egan gripped the dashboard of the fire truck to steady himself as Evan Swanson turned off the highway and took the corner into the club’s parking lot just a little too fast.
Smoke billowed from the west side of The Hair of the Dog, dark plumes visible against the night sky.
A crowd stood watching from the wide gravel parking lot. No one looked hurt or panicked. Gabe breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Looks like everyone got out okay,” he said to Evan, a burly, dark-haired bear shifter who was one of several Swanson volunteers in the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department.
Evan nodded as he pulled the truck between the club and the onlookers. “That’s a relief. I’m sure the place was packed tonight. It could’ve been really bad.”
Ice crawled down Gabriel’s spine as ugly memories surfaced of another club in another town. He pushed them aside. No time for that. He needed to keep his head in the here and now.
This was his first actual fire call since he’d joined his new town’s volunteer fire department a couple of months ago. Until now, they’d been called to respond to medical emergencies of various kinds and a bunch of motor vehicle crashes.
The fire engine lurched to a stop, and Gabriel was out almost before the wheels stopped rolling. The night air hit him with a blast of smoke and spilled beer, tinged with an undercurrent of fear—a scent he’d recognize anywhere.
His sabertooth instincts heightened his senses, making the smells sharper, the sounds clearer. Like everywhere else in Bearpaw Ridge, the crowd was a mix of Ordinary humans and various kinds of shifters.
The casual—and peaceful—coexistence of different shifter lineages here had surprised him when he first arrived and joined the Cougar Lake Sabertooth Pride. Which, to his shock, included at least two bear shifters mated to pride members, including one of the pride’s governing council members.
He shouldered his self-contained breathing apparatus, giving the tank’s gauge a quick check as he jogged toward the entrance.
The crowd parted around him, faces turning with mixtures of relief and concern. Some folks were coughing, others clutching drinks they’d brought with them in the evacuation. Gabriel scanned for injuries but saw mostly just shock and avid interest.
The Hair of the Dog was housed in what looked like a genuine old saloon. Wood frame, western facade, cedar shake roof. It looked like a real firetrap.
Smoke wasn’t pouring from the main entrance, which was a good sign.
As Evan jumped down from the truck, the pump engine pulled in behind them.
Then Gabriel spotted two familiar figures in turnouts. His fellow BPRFD volunteers, Maggie Swanson and her mate, Cade, stood at the front of the crowd. They were at work establishing a perimeter, directing patrons to keep the parking lot entrance clear.
“Maggie!” Gabriel called, jogging toward them. “Status?”
“Gabriel!” She turned, relief flickering across her features. “Everyone’s out of the building and accounted for. Fire started in the back storeroom—looks electrical. It’s working down the hallway toward the kitchen, but the sprinklers kept it from spreading into the bar.”
“Power off?”
“Cade shut the main breaker,” she said, nodding toward her husband. “We tried a hand extinguisher, but it’s too far gone.”
Gabriel glanced toward the rear of the building. Smoke poured from the back of the building, the windows lit orange by the glow inside. “Any hydrants nearby?”
Maggie gave a quick headshake. “Nope. Closest one’s back by the highway turnoff. But the river’s right there.”
She pointed to a line of bushes and cottonwood trees along the back edge of the parking lot. Through a break in the vegetation, Gabriel spotted dark water sparkling in the moonlight.
Gabriel grimaced. “All right. We’ll nurse off the engine tank until the tender’s ready. If we run low, we’ll draft from the river.” He shot her a look. “You okay with my taking command here?”
Maggie nodded. “Like I said, I’m glad you’re here.”
He spoke into his radio. “Bearpaw Ridge Command established. Fire Marshal Egan assuming command. Engine One, set an attack line to the Charlie side entrance. Tanker Two, supply line to Engine One. Establish a draft as soon as possible.”
Then to Maggie: “You and Cade keep crowd control. Nobody past the engines until we give the all-clear.”
“Copy that,” she said briskly. “Be safe in there.”
Gabriel nodded and turned back toward his crew. The wintry night air bit at his face as he slipped on his mask, the hiss of compressed air steady in his ears.
Behind him, more volunteer firefighters arrived in their personal vehicles and rushed over to help unroll hoses, shoulder lines and advance into the clouds of smoke pouring from the club’s open doors.
The engine’s lights cast long red streaks across the building’s weathered wooden facade and antique wagon wheels propped up against porch railings.
The familiar rush of heat and adrenaline surged through Gabriel’s veins as he faced an enemy he could conquer. He issued orders to the new arrivals, then followed Evan and Ward inside the building.
The air in the big dining room was hazed with smoke and anemic sprays of water from the overhead sprinklers, but visibility remained decent. The smoke grew thicker as they moved toward the back of the building and the storeroom where the fire had reportedly started.
As they passed the bar, the back counter lined with taps, blenders, a mini-fridge, and even a toaster oven, Gabriel’s instincts tingled.
The electrical setup in this place looked wrong.
Too many cords, spliced in ways that would make any fire inspector wince, and some of the shoddily installed outlets exposed the wiring behind them.
It was the same hazard that had fueled his nightmares since leaving Granite Gap.
When they reached the storeroom, flames spread from a blackened electrical panel on the back wall and crawled across the ceiling. A row of cardboard boxes crammed onto a wire rack smoldered with the mingled stench of melted plastic bags and charred tortilla chips.
Tongues of flame extended beyond the doorway to lick at the hallway.
“There,” Gabriel pointed. “Ward, hit it with the extinguisher. I’ll check behind that rack for spread. Evan, knock down the fire on the left wall.”
They moved as one unit, each to their assigned task. Since coming here, Gabriel had learned that Fire Chief Dane Swanson did a great job training his volunteers and ensuring that everyone drilled diligently. The hard work showed now.
Once the fire had been knocked down and all remaining hotspots extinguished, Gabriel went back outside to coordinate the rest of the response.
He spotted a lanky young man wearing a shirt embroidered with the club’s logo. “I need to speak with the club’s manager or owner,” Gabriel said to him.
“That would be Kymberlie. She owns the place.” The young man pointed at a tall blonde woman standing at the edge of the parking lot, a blanket draped around her shoulders.
She was speaking with Maggie and Cade, every line of her tall, curvy body tense with worry and distress.
Kymberlie looked up then, as if sensing his assessment, and their eyes locked across the distance.
For an instant, everything else fell away—the smoke, the flashing red lights from the fire engines, the excited buzz of questions and speculation from the watching crowd.
Gabriel’s heartbeat slammed once, twice, hard enough to shake him. His inner cat surged up with a low, primal recognition.
The club’s owner
wasn’t just beautiful—she was his.
He and his cat had never reacted to a woman, shifter or Ordinary, like that before.
Fuck. And I’m going to be the one who has to deliver bad news to her.
He squared his shoulders and prepared to approach her.
“Gabriel!” Ward called from inside the club. “You need to see this!”
Gabriel snapped back to full alert. He ruthlessly pushed down his cat’s desire to hurry over and reassure Kymberlie. Not now. We have a job to do.
He re-entered the building to find Ward standing in the storeroom, next to the damaged electrical panel. The young carpenter had also pulled away a section of water-soaked drywall to reveal a tangle of charred and dripping wires.
“Look at this mess,” Ward said, his voice tight with concern. “I mean, what the actual fuck?”
Gabriel shone his flashlight on the revealed nest of century-old knob-and-tube wiring illegally spliced into new wiring. His jaw clenched. This wasn’t just a single overloaded circuit behind the bar. This whole place was probably a disaster waiting to happen.
“Shit. Evan, get me the thermal camera,” he ordered. “I want to check every wall in this place.”
As he grimly moved through his preliminary inspection, he caught glimpses through the windows of Maggie and Cade still managing the situation outside.
They’d set up a clear perimeter, and were doing a great job keeping people back from the building and maintaining order.
No hysteria, no chaos, just calm efficiency and lots of excited people filming the scene on their phones.
By the looks of the electrical nightmare Ward had uncovered, Gabriel was going to be delivering a whole raft of bad news to the club’s owner.
He caught sight of her waiting outside with the expression of someone calculating the cost of the damages and not liking the answers she was coming up with.
He’d seen that look too many times during his career as a professional firefighter and fire marshal back in Granite Gap. It was the mental arithmetic of disaster.
What she couldn’t know—what he’d have to tell her later—was that the fire was only the beginning of her troubles. The fire code violations he was seeing on just his quick, preliminary inspection by flashlight twisted his gut.
He’d come to Bearpaw Ridge for a fresh start, not to find a mate. And now he was going to be the bearer of bad news to the woman his cat desperately wanted to court.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He’d be lucky if she even said hello to him after this.