Faking the Heat (Firehouse 99 #6)

1. Smoke and Circumstances

Chapter one

Smoke and Circumstances

Mandy

The fire alarm in my apartment building has a personality disorder.

It can’t decide if it wants to mimic a dive bar jukebox, a dying seagull, or a toddler discovering the full glory of its lungs.

But this time, this time, it wakes me up with a kind of guttural howl that could only mean something is genuinely, irrevocably wrong.

I sit upright and grope for my phone, hand flailing over the tangle of sheets, and come up with nothing.

The clock on the nightstand isn’t helpful, just a blinking 1:27 A.M..

For a solid three seconds I just stare, waiting for my heart to catch up.

Maybe it’s a test. Maybe I’ll just… lie back down and let Darwin do his work.

But then Bowie yowls from somewhere under my desk, and that’s the only cue I need.

I drag myself to the edge of the mattress, stumble, and immediately stub my pinky toe on a box of unsorted art supplies, which have apparently mutated overnight into a land mine.

The pain is sharp enough to clarify my priorities: survival first, then bodily integrity, then maybe dignity if any is left.

I fumble for my glasses, miss, then finally snatch them from the nightstand and jam them onto my face.

The world snaps into marginally less blurry focus.

The alarm is so loud it feels personal. Like, did you ever really think your life would end in a building evacuation? Ass early on a Tuesday, in pajamas that don’t match because you never got around to laundry? Same.

The pounding is back, and this time there’s a voice to match. “Evacuate! Gas leak! Evacuate now!” It’s the superintendent, voice half strangled by panic and nicotine, his fists slamming the wood like he can scare the gas away by brute force.

I am now fully out of bed, one slipper half on and already performing a desperate, unchoreographed ballet through my studio.

The checklist starts in my head. Bowie the cat, laptop, phone, (where the hell is my phone?) wallet, and the battered sketchbook with three months of work crammed into its pages. Anything else is negotiable.

Bowie is crouched by the sofa, ears flattened, tail fluffed to bottle brush magnitude yowling as if he too, suspects his nine lives are about to get put to the test. I lunge for him, miss, and end up grabbing air as he darts under the coffee table.

“Bowie, get your furry ass out here, this is not a drill,” I hiss, dropping to my knees and wedging my arm under the table.

He slashes at me with a perfect blend of fear and spite, but I manage to get both hands around his middle.

He squeals, claws out, and I scoop him against my chest, where he immediately begins a low, continuous scream.

“That’s the spirit,” I mutter, giving his head a quick kiss before wrangling him, furious and unyielding, into his carrier with the resignation of someone who has done this before and knows it never gets easier.

The air is already edged with something sulfurous, the building’s warning system screaming in a dialect of urgency as I scan the room for my next must-save.

The laptop is on the kitchen counter, plugged in, the charger cable a tripwire just waiting for fate to find it.

The sketchbook is half under the couch, because apparently I am committed to leaving obstacles in my own way at all times.

I juggle the cat carrier under arm, laptop in one hand, sketchbook in my teeth and slam the door behind me.

It’s not graceful. If this were a movie, it would be a comedy, and I would be the tragic, pajama, clad punchline.

My phone vibrates, miraculously found, and then immediately dies, just one more metaphor for my entire twenties.

The hallway is worse than my apartment. The air feels thicker, as if it’s already soaked up half the gas from the broken main below us.

Neighbors are emerging like mole rats from their doors, some of them shouting, some just standing in paralyzed disbelief.

Mrs. Feldman’s ancient Yorkie is peeing a neat Morse code of terror all the way to the stairwell.

Someone is yelling in Spanish on the floor above me; I hear what I think is “explosivo,” which is not a word I was hoping to encounter pre-coffee.

There’s a guy in a bathrobe and nothing else, hunched protectively over his PS5 like a mother wolf defending her pups.

I barrel past them all, down the concrete stairs, nearly trip over a toppled IKEA end table that definitely wasn’t there the night before, and find myself on the curb in front of the building.

Outside, the world is chaos, but at least it’s open air.

The street is awash in flashing red and blue lights from the massive fire trucks and emergency vehicles, FIREHOUSE 99 stenciled across the front in bold block letters.

The colors from them dancing across the rain slick pavement like some kind of psychedelic crime scene.

The neighbors cluster together in little pods, some already on their phones, others just staring up at the building as if waiting for it to either explode or apologize while I stand on the sidewalk, vividly, mortifyingly aware that I still have only one slipper on.

Bowie is silent in his carrier, eyes luminous and wide as moon pies.

I set him down on the sidewalk and scan the windows, hunting for anything, smoke, flame, confirmation that this isn’t a drill or the world’s least subtle prank.

It’s the third alarm in as many weeks. I tell myself it’s probably nothing, a misfiring sensor or someone’s failed attempt to reheat day old pizza.

As if summoned by my anxiety, surrounded by woman, of course, is Sterling Hayes.

Full turnout gear, helmet under one arm, radio already clipped to his shoulder as he corrals people further away from the building.

Even from across the street, he looks like the answer to a multiple-choice question I never wanted to be asked.

I duck my head, praying the combination of unwashed hair and cartoon avocado pajamas acts as a kind of urban camouflage.

No such luck. Sterling is moving through the crowd like he’s rehearsed it, which, in a way, he has.

He’s spent half his life dashing into burning buildings and the other half extracting people, me, specifically, from social situations that made me want to die of embarrassment. Situations pretty much just like this.

He spots me instantly. If he’s surprised to see me, it doesn’t show.

“Sparkles!” he shouts, voice carrying over the alarm’s last whimpers and the half awake chattering of displaced neighbors.

I raise a hand, do an awkward little wave, and attempt to look busy by fussing with Bowie’s carrier.

Sterling crosses the road and does a quick up and down of my situation. His eyes pause, briefly, on the cartoon avocado pajama pants then the single slipper, then the frantic calico peering through mesh like a Victorian orphan in a Dickens novel. He grins, just a flicker, then composes himself.

“Still committed to the avant-garde, I see,” he says, his voice was a low, easy rumble, the exact same pitch he’d used to talk me through that disastrous karaoke night and the time I locked myself out on the fire escape.

I let out a sharp, nervous laugh. “It’s called asymmetrical fashion. You wouldn’t get it.”

“You’re not hurt, are you?” He moves closer, dropping his voice. His hands are gloved but he still radiates that quiet, overprotective energy that used to annoy me until the day I realized I was addicted to it.

“I’m fine,” I lie, which is easier than admitting my heart is racing and my knees feel like they’ve been replaced with Jell-O. “Bowie’s a little pissed but he’ll survive.”

Sterling surveys the scene: neighbors huddled under borrowed blankets, firefighters unspooling hoses and setting up floodlights, my apartment window two floors up, ominously dark.

“What about the rest of your menagerie?” he asks. “You got everyone out?”

“Unless you count my dwindling collection of succulents, that’s it. Some of us prefer low-maintenance companionship.”

He nods, accepts the verbal jab as his due, then gestures to the carrier and the half-open backpack dangling off my shoulder. “You have somewhere to go?”

This is a trick question, or at least it feels like one.

Technically, I have options. Kayla would absolutely let me come to her place if she didn’t just move in with her boyfriend and they had an actual couch.

Dana would make space for me in her micro-studio, if I promise to “vibe with” her boyfriend-of-the-week and ignore the ceiling mold.

My parents live a little more than an hour away in Michigan City but spending more than four consecutive hours in their house…

well let’s just say I’d rather sleep on the sidewalk.

“I’ll figure it out,” I say, channeling every ounce of my adult life skills into those four words.

Sterling does not look convinced. He’s never been able to leave a puzzle unfinished, or a stray pet unfed.

“I’m on shift for a couple more hours,” he says, nodding back at the engine. “But you can use the bunk room at the firehouse. Or, “ he hesitates, just a beat, “the spare room at my place. Your call.”

I’m about to protest, to say I don’t need charity but before I can answer, a thunderous noise erupts behind us: a wet, ugly *whump*, followed by a whoosh that sounds like the world sucking in breath.

I turn in time to see the front windows on the entire second floor, my apartment windows, explode outward in a gushing sheet of fire.

For a second, I can’t process it. The flames crawl up the brick like angry orange vines, and the glass scatters across the street, raining down in a sparkling arc.

The crowd lurches backward. Bowie shrieks, and I nearly drop him. The news crew swivels their camera with predatory speed, catching every second.