Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROBBIE
The call comes when Lissa and I are walking back to my truck from a local club where we were scouting out an acoustic jazz duo for our wedding reception.
I have not been stellar company tonight, and I know it. Since that session with Dr. Colburn this afternoon, my brain’s been caught in a riptide, searching for daylight, and it’s hard to focus on wedding minutiae.
In fact, my first thought when I hear the distinctive dispatch ringtone is gratitude for the distraction…
Then Ravi starts talking.
“Chief Wojcik?” Ravi’s voice is steady but urgent. “Axford asked me to inform you there’s a structure fire at Sullivan Timber. Multiple units responding. Per his request, I’ve already contacted the Mabel Fire Department and asked them to send units as well.”
“Good call,” I say, trying to ignore the pinch of fear I get whenever Ames is responding to a call without me. “How bad is it?”
“According to James and Porto, it’s nearly full structure involvement in high winds.” Ravi hesitates. “Pretty bad, sir.”
Fuck. And my guys—Ames—are out there. Adrenaline shoots through me, and I feel my brain coming online again, pushing aside all the tangles I’d been trying to unravel.
“Thanks, Ravi. Gotta make a quick detour to the other side of Winsome, but I’m on my way. ETA twenty minutes.”
“Got it.”
I end the call and glance at Lissa, who’s sitting stiffly in the passenger’s seat, not looking at me. “Sorry, Liss. It’s a bad one. I have to go.”
She huffs out a breath. “You’re always sorry,” she tells the windshield. “But you always leave anyway. Nice that dropping me at home is a detour .”
I blow out a breath, already shifting the truck into gear and heading out of the parking lot. “You make it sound like I do this all the time. You know I don’t.”
“What I know is you’re always covering someone’s shift when they’re sick, or out until the middle of the night. Sometimes I don’t hear from you for hours or even a whole day.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed my job. In fact, it comes up a lot. We don’t argue, exactly, but then we never do.
Lissa expresses her frustration, and I nod and say I understand her point of view—because I do. Then I remind her why things are the way they are and try to make it up to her. Make sure she feels prioritized in other ways.
We seem to be okay… until the next time something co mes up.
Tonight, it’s pretty clear we’re not on the same page at all. So with Dr. Colburn’s words from my session earlier echoing in my head, I decide to take a more direct approach.
“Lissa, I lead a volunteer fire department in a small town. You know this. The stuff you’re talking about—canceling plans, needing to be flexible—is a nonnegotiable part of my job and always will be.
And even if I could negotiate them, I wouldn’t.
I don’t work all the time. But when someone’s out sick, when one of the volunteers can’t come in, when we have a fire like tonight’s—which is all hands on deck, and we’re literally calling in people from other towns to help—I need to be there. ”
“No, you don’t! You’re not on call.” She turns her head, and her eyes pin me. “ Your shift ended hours ago. And we had plans. We’re supposed to go back to my parents’ house and finalize wedding arrangements. They’re waiting for us.”
“Ravi wouldn’t have called if they didn’t need me?—”
“And what about what I need?” She folds her arms over her chest and shows me her profile again. “Isn’t your wife supposed to be your first priority? It gets tiring, coming in second, you know. I bet if Ames needed you, you wouldn’t leave him .”
I set my jaw so hard my teeth hurt. But I’m driving fast, and the wind’s trying to get under my truck, so I keep my focus on the road.
“Ames has nothing to do with this. You really think I should be having martinis with your parents while my crew’s out there in danger?” I shake my head. “I can’t. I won’t. ”
She sniffs. “Well, I guess that says it all, doesn’t it?”
The drive to Lissa’s parents’ enormous house on the southern side of Winsome doesn’t take long at this time of night. As soon as I pull into the driveway, she hops out and slams the door hard enough to make me flinch, then hurries up the wide front steps without looking back.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
I’m sure I could have handled that better somehow, but I can’t think about it now. I push Lissa’s angry face from my mind to worry about later and focus on getting across town to the Sullivan mill fast.
I turn on my radio and put on my emergency light, doing seventy in a forty-five as I speed down the road. I even grab my gear from the back seat and pull on as much of it as I can while still driving, which is a skill I’ve picked up over the years—one that Ames hates.
I take the back roads that skirt the center of town, and I’m still a couple of miles away from the mill when I see an orange glow shifting against the black sky and thick columns of billowing smoke being smeared by the wind.
Ravi was right. It’s bad.
My radio crackles with updates. The crew from Mabel, Winsome’s neighbor to the north, is three minutes out, putting them just a minute behind me, coming from the opposite direction. Hugh—fucking Hugh, who’s supposed to be out sick—is on scene somehow and has taken the lead.
“ Structure’s a total loss. First team cleared it.
Priority now is containment. Wind’s gusting— ” He hacks and coughs, and I feel my blood pressure rise.
“ Thirty miles per hour out of the west, so watch for spot fires and flying debris. Engine 1 crew, we’re taking the western exposure.
Standard defensive operation. Keep the exterior wet, protect the tree line. Understood ?”
I tear up the driveway to the lumber mill and screech to a stop beside Engine 1. When I hop out, the heat of the fire is a solid wall, blocking out the cold wind.
Engine 1 and Tanker 2 are already positioned, hoses flowing, and the first person I identify through the smoke and darkness is Ames.
From this distance, I can’t read his jacket, but I recognize the shape of him and the way he moves as he and someone I assume is Greene saturate the east side of the structure.
“Chief on scene,” I bark into the radio on my shoulder. “I have command. James,” I say to one of the guys who arrived with Tanker 2 and was first on scene. “Situation report.”
While I’m listening to James’s report—which is pretty much exactly what I’d heard from Hugh a minute ago—I find Hugh standing twenty feet away and shake my head with clenched teeth.
Hugh’s older than me and more experienced. He knows being here while he’s not at a hundred percent makes him a liability, and I know he knows that because he was the one who taught me, damn it.
The look he gives me in return—stubborn defiance—tells me he refused to be left behind… probably for the same reasons I couldn’t ignore tonight’s call.
“Axford,” I yell. Ames’s eyes meet mine, and I gesture him over. “C’mere.”
“Yeah?” He lopes over with his usual easy confidence, stubbled jaw and high cheekbones already covered in flecks of sweat-smeared ash. His blue eyes study me, head to foot, in concerned appraisal, like he wants to make sure I’m all in one piece… though I haven’t even gotten close to the fire.
It does weird things to my stomach, noticing that look. I wonder if he’s always looked at me that way and, like so many things about Ames, I’ve simply never noticed until now.
Then I force myself to stop thinking about that stuff entirely.
Christ, Robbie, do your job .
I clear my throat. “That stubborn fucker should be home.” I glance at Hugh.
Ames nods. “I told him that.”
Just as I figured. “Keep an eye on him, Ames. If he’s flagging, you tell me.” I drop my voice lower. “I’ll get him out of here if I have to club him over the head and cart him out.”
Ames flashes me a grin. “Understood.”
When he turns back to the fire, I can’t stop myself from calling after him, needing to have his eyes on me again. “And Ames?”
“Yeah?” He glances over his shoulder.
I freeze. Words bubble up in my throat—none of them thought out, none of them relevant.
“Stay safe,” I manage, and he nods.
I move away and spend some time coordinating with James and Porto on the eastern exposure, and checking in with the new arrivals from Mabel.
But part of my attention is on Ames the whole time.
Tracking where he is, making sure he’s safe.
It’s something I do all the time, but it feels different today. More… intense or something.
I tell myself not to be ridiculous. To focus on the big picture. To do my damn job, like I told Lissa I would. But when I’m talking to the deputy chief from Mabel, I hear Ames yelling, and I tune back in immediately.
“Greene!” he yells. “Stay exactly where you are, you hear me?”
I hold up a hand and step away from the conversation. “What’s going on? Axford, Hugh, report,” I demand into my radio.
“Hugh’s out. Taking a breather. I have eyes on Greene,” Ames says, “but?—”
Across the scene, I see Greene shouting and pointing at the building. I can’t see Ames or Hugh anywhere.
“It’s abandoned! Hugh said the first team cleared it! You heard him. Whatever that noise was, it wasn’t a person.” I can barely make out the words because I’m too focused on the fear in Ames’s voice. “Hold the line!”
As I watch, though, Greene drops the hose and runs toward the structure until he disappears around a corner of the building.
“Firefighter Greene approaching the structure.” Ames’s voice is tight and tense, and I’m already moving in his direction before I see him emerge from the shadows on the other side of the building. “Repeat, firefighter approaching—no, fuck , entering the goddamn structure on the western side.”
“Do not enter,” I order. “Greene! Axford! No one enters that goddamn building. Do you hear me?”