Chapter Seven
Jude
And the calls are endless.
At the beginning of our first twelve-hour shift, Liam and I respond to a three-car pileup on the mountain road caused by a tourist from California who’d never driven in snow.
Nobody is seriously hurt, but one woman is hysterical about the damage to her brand new Mercedes, and her husband keeps threatening to sue the town for not salting the road enough.
Liam handles them with patience I don’t think I’d have had.
I direct traffic in the biting wind, grateful I listened to Liam and bought a bigger, warmer coat.
That same afternoon, we break up a fight at the Hawk’s Nest between two drunk snowboarders arguing over a pool game.
One of them has a bloody nose and the other has a torn jacket and a bruised ego.
The bar smells like sour booze and cigarette smoke that’s seeped into the wood over decades.
The floor is sticky under my boots. Liam wasn’t kidding when he called this place a dump.
The next day is more of the same. A lost hiker who wandered off a marked trail.
A shoplifting call at one of the souvenir shops on Main.
A noise complaint from a rental cabin where a group of college kids decided to throw a party at 2:00 a.m. Through all of it, Liam and I settle deeper into our rhythm.
He drives. I navigate. He talks people down.
I handle the paperwork. We trade off without discussing it, reading each other’s cues like we’ve been doing this for years instead of days.
I don’t even mind working such long hours because Liam and I are such a great team.
It scares me a little, how natural it feels.
By the fourth day of the season, I’ve stopped flinching when Liam touches my shoulder or nudges my arm.
I’ve stopped trying to maintain the careful distance I promised myself I’d keep.
It’s not that I’ve let my guard down entirely.
I’m still careful. But the wall I built has cracks in it, and Liam keeps finding them without even trying.
The bond I want so desperately to deny is growing stronger every day.
I do my best to fight my instinctive attraction to him, but it’s a struggle.
At the moment, we’re on an afternoon patrol, cruising through the residential streets on the east side of town.
The sky is a hard, brilliant blue, the kind you only get at altitude, and the sun glares off the snow so bright I have to wear sunglasses.
The heater in the SUV hums steadily, and Liam has Coldplay streaming.
The cab smells like his woodsy cologne and the coffee we grabbed from Happy Grounds this morning.
“You know what I’ve noticed about you?” Liam says, breaking a comfortable silence.
“That I’m smarter than you?”
He snorts. “No. I’ve noticed you have a great sense of humor.”
“Well, yeah. One of us has to be the funny one,” I say dryly. “Although, I’m also the smart one and the good-looking one. Damn, you really bring nothing to the table, do you?”
“See, look how funny you are.” He glances over, one hand draped over the steering wheel. “That first day, you barely cracked a smile. Now you’re making jokes all the time. It’s like when you first got here, you needed permission to have a personality.”
“Maybe you just provide me with a lot of material for jokes.”
He grins. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. You’re a whole different guy than the one who showed up at the station last week.”
“Obviously I feel more comfortable with the job now.”
“And with me.” He says, looking over confidently. “I’m pretty much your favorite person, right?”
Yes.
I shift in my seat, uncomfortable that he knows that. “I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t dislike you as much as most people.”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. You hate everyone, but you like me.”
“I don’t hate everyone,” I murmur. “I just don’t trust people. They can be so disloyal. Why bother trying to get to know them? They’ll eventually let you down.”
I expect Liam to argue, but he doesn’t. Instead he sighs. “Yeah, shifters and humans can be really disappointing sometimes.”
I adjust the heater vent because I’m getting too warm. “I’m surprised you’d say that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You usually have a positive attitude about everything and everyone.” I stare out the window at the snow-covered trees that line Main Street. “You have no reason to be jaded. Everyone likes you. Your life seems pretty perfect.”
He glances at me like I’m an idiot. “Nobody’s life is perfect, including mine. I have problems.”
I laugh. “Like what? You’ve got the job you want and the girl you want. Your family adores you. You live in a place you love and you have a million friends.”
“I don’t have a million friends.” He smirks. “I have maybe a couple hundred at most.”
“The number of people who care about me in this world wouldn’t even take up one hand,” I mumble. “I don’t see what you’d have to complain about.”
As I finish speaking, a radio call comes through from dispatch.
“All units, structure fire reported at 74 Cedar Lane. Blue Pine Apartments. Multiple callers reporting smoke and visible flames on the second floor. Fire and EMS en route.”
I’m startled when I hear the address of the fire. The blood drains from my face and I turn to Liam. “Did she say Blue Pine Apartments?”
“She did.” His voice is grim as he flips on the lights and siren and he accelerates.
“Shit,” I say hoarsely, praying we heard dispatch wrong.
I stare through the windshield without seeing the road. All I can think about is the fact that everything I own is in that apartment. I don’t have much, but it’s still mine. I just got here. I just started clawing together the faintest outline of a life. Is my luck already turning bad?
We turn onto Cedar Lane, and my stomach drops.
I see thick, dark smoke billowing from the second floor windows on the east side of the old Victorian.
A few windows are shattered, and orange flame licks outward, blackening the white trim.
The big pines closest to the building have caught, flames spreading fast through the branches.
Even inside the SUV, the acrid, chemical scent of old insulation and burning wood can be smelled.
People are gathered on the sidewalk. Some are huddled together, a few are on their phones, one woman is sitting on the curb with her face in her hands. A man is pacing near the street, shouting at no one in particular about his belongings still inside.
Liam pulls to the curb and we’re out of the SUV fast. My instinct is like that of any other person who sees their home on fire.
I want to run and save my things. It’s only natural that those thoughts flit through my brain.
But fortunately, my training takes over before my emotions can.
What I need to do is secure the scene. Account for residents. Keep people back from the structure.
“I need everyone to move across the street,” I call out, using my command voice as I approach the group on the sidewalk.
“Away from the building. Let’s go.” A few of them stare at me blankly, so I guide them with my hands, firm but calm.
“Come on, folks. I know you’re upset, but I need you away from the structure and these trees. ”
Liam is moving through the group, asking names and apartment numbers. “Who’s still inside?” he demands. “Does anyone know if all the tenants are out?”
An older man holding a cat carrier speaks up. “I haven’t seen Ellie come out yet. She was in her office when I came down the stairs.”
“I saw her heading to the second floor with a fire extinguisher,” a young woman says, eyes wide. “I tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listen.”
That gets my attention, but I stay focused on moving people away from the building. Sirens are closing in from the south as fire and EMS approach.
“Anyone else besides Ellie unaccounted for?” Liam asks.
A few people shake their heads. The same young woman who saw Ellie responds, “I think everyone on the first floor got out. I’m not sure about the second floor.”
Liam and I exchange a look.
“We should check it out, right?” Anxiety eats at me although I manage to keep my voice steady. “We need to find Ellie anyway.”
Liam hesitates, and I don’t blame him. We’re not firefighters. We don’t have gear or oxygen. Running into a burning building isn’t exactly safe even for a shifter.
“I can go up on my own,” I offer.
He scowls. “No, that’s not happening.”
“Okay, well if you’re coming with me, we need to go,” I grate out. “If Ellie is up there we don’t have much time.”
“I agree,” he says grimly. “Let’s move.”
We run across the street and push through the front door.
The foyer is thick with smoke, the air heavy and gray.
Visibility drops to a few feet. The heat is worse than I expected, pressing against my skin, building as we move deeper.
I pull my shirt over my nose and mouth but it barely helps.
My eyes sting and water as I scan the space.
Through the haze, I can just make out the staircase.
“Ellie!” Liam shouts. “It’s the police. Are you up there?”
A voice from above, thin and strained. “Yes, I’m here.”
We take the stairs two at a time. The second floor hallway is bad.
Smoke rolls along the ceiling in dense waves.
The fire is concentrated at the east end, I can see the glow of it through the haze, hear the crackle and pop of old wood giving way.
The heat radiates from that direction, intense enough that I feel it on the exposed skin of my face and hands.
We need to find Ellie because we can’t stay here very long.
Thankfully, we locate Ellie near the middle of the hallway, leaning hard against the wall.
She’s got a fire extinguisher in her hands that looks like it weighs half as much as she does.
Her eyes are streaming and she’s coughing, but there’s a stubborn set to her jaw that doesn’t surprise me one bit.