Chapter 3
Garrett
Rodriguez stood at the head of the common room table, a stack of documents in front of him, and the kind of tension in his shoulders that meant brass had been calling.
The crew filtered in with coffee cups and tired eyes. Martinez yawning from an overnight call. Kowalski complaining about the vending machine eating his dollar. Shane leaning against the wall with his arms crossed—the posture that said he already knew this wasn't going to be good news.
"Serial arson." Rodriguez passed the folders down the table. "Five fires in three months, all suspicious, all matching a specific MO. Fire marshal is coordinating with NYPD. We're to report any patterns we notice on our calls. Anything that seems connected."
I took my folder. Flipped it open.
Crime scene photos. Incident reports. Property records showing the same thing I'd noticed weeks ago when the first fire made the news: every building belonged to a slumlord. Every property had a history of code violations.
Someone was sending a message.
"Great," Shane said flatly. "Because that worked out so well last time."
The room went quiet.
Everyone knew what he was talking about. The Tommy Vickers case.
Four years ago now, but some memories don't fade. Maya—though she wasn't Shane's wife yet—had reported cigarette burns on a student's arms to CPS. She thought she was saving him. Instead, she set off a chain of events that destroyed a troubled kid and nearly got her killed.
Tommy Vickers had spent years in the foster system after Maya's report.
Group homes. Facilities. His mother died while he was away, and no one told him until it was too late.
The rage built slowly, the way it does when you're a kid and the world keeps proving it doesn't care about you.
By the time he aged out of the system, he had a plan.
Let the system burn.
He targeted public schools. Empty at night, mostly—except for teachers who stayed late grading papers. Teachers like Maya. He was building toward her specifically, fire by fire, until his final target: PS 147. Maya's school.
Shane wasn't on shift that night. He showed up anyway. Grabbed gear from the rig over Captain Okonkwo's direct orders and ran into a burning building for the woman he loved.
He found Maya. He found Tommy.
And somehow, impossibly, everyone walked out alive.
Shane married Maya a year later. Tommy was in a psychiatric facility upstate, getting the help he should have gotten nineteen years earlier. And Engine 295 learned that serial arsonists always had a story underneath the flames.
"So who's pissing off serial arsonists this time?" One of the newer guys—Henderson, maybe three months on the job—asked with the bravado of someone who'd only heard the stories, never lived them.
"Check with Torres," Martinez said. "His wife has a talent for making powerful enemies."
Brian flipped him off without looking up from his folder.
I stayed quiet. Watched the crew joke and deflect the way firefighters always did when the job got heavy.
But my mind was already running patterns. Serial arson. Targeted buildings.
I knew those buildings.
I'd been documenting them for seven years.
Rodriguez called us into his office after the briefing. Shane, Brian, and me.
The senior crew.
He closed the door behind us. The click of the latch sounded heavier than it should have.
"I got word from the brass this morning." He didn't sit down.
That was the first sign this was bad. Rodriguez always sat for difficult conversations—said it put people at ease. Standing meant he was too wound up to pretend.
"The department is looking at budget cuts. Consolidating resources. Closing firehouses."
My gut tightened before he said the next words.
"Engine 295 is on the shortlist."
Silence.
The kind that fills a room when something unthinkable has been spoken out loud. I could hear the clock on Rodriguez's wall, the distant rumble of traffic outside, and the creak of the building settling around us.
"That's bullshit." Shane's voice was flat. Controlled in a way that meant he was furious. "We have the best response times in Queens. We've trained half the probies in the borough—"
"I know." Rodriguez held up a hand. "I'm fighting it. But the pressure is coming from high up. Higher than I've ever seen for a routine budget review."
"What can we do?" Brian asked.
"Your jobs." Rodriguez's jaw was tight—I could see the muscle jumping. "Be the best. Document everything. Give them no ammunition."
A pause.
"And hope that's enough."
Shane started asking about timelines, appeals, and union involvement. Brian was already strategizing about which council members might be sympathetic.
I stayed quiet.
I didn't believe it. Not for a second.
Budget cuts. Consolidation. Routine review.
Engine 295 asked too many questions. Reported too many violations. Pushed back when inspectors tried to sign off on buildings that should have been condemned. We were inconvenient to people who profited from cutting corners.
This wasn't random.
And I was going to prove it.
The office off the apparatus bay was technically shared space. Everyone knew it was my domain.
I'd claimed it three years ago, after Shane pointed out that my "filing system" was taking over the common room. Four filing cabinets now. A desk buried under folders. A system that looked like chaos but made perfect sense to me.
I waited until the others dispersed. Shane calling Maya. Brian texting Ava. Rodriguez locked in his office making calls to anyone who might help.
Then I slipped away.
The bottom drawer had a lock. I was the only one with the key.
Seven years of documentation spread across my desk.
Fire safety violations were reported and ignored.
Buildings that should have been condemned but kept passing inspections.
Falsified reports with signatures I'd learned to recognize.
A web of shell companies, political donations, and convenient oversights—all connecting to city officials and department brass who decided which firehouses stayed open.
It started with Emma.
I didn't let myself think about her often. The memories were a door I kept locked, in the same way I kept these files locked. Some things were too heavy to carry in the daylight.
But she was always there.
Underneath everything.
Eight years old. Blonde hair her mother had braided that morning—I learned that later, from the news reports, from the memorial service I attended without telling anyone.
Blue eyes full of terror when I found her on the fourth floor. Pressed against a wall already hot to the touch.
The building had seventeen code violations. Faulty wiring that sparked the fire. Blocked exits that trapped residents. Sprinklers that hadn't worked in years.
Every violation documented. Reported. Ignored.
I went in. Got close enough to hear her crying through the smoke. Close enough to reach for her.
The floor collapsed.
The sensation of falling. The impact that knocked the air from my lungs. The moment I realized I was in the stairwell below, alive, and she was still up there.
The sounds she made when the ceiling came down.
Then silence.
The official report called it a tragedy. Unavoidable. Wrong place, wrong time.
I knew better.
Someone had signed off on that building. Someone had looked at the inspection reports and decided a little girl's life was worth less than a landlord's profit margin. Someone had buried the violations, collected the checks, and slept fine at night.
While Emma Marsh died screaming in a fire that should never have happened.
I'd spent seven years finding out who.
The current arsons—I'd already checked. The buildings being targeted matched my files. Same shell companies. Same inspectors looking the other way. Same network of corruption that let Emma's building rot until it killed her.
Someone else had figured it out, too.
Someone angry enough to burn.
I thought about Sloane. Her articles. The way she tore through corruption like a force of nature, relentless and precise. She'd exposed the Lang family when everyone said it couldn't be done. Changed foster care policy across the state with the Vickers coverage.
She could blow this wide open.
I shoved the thought down. Locked the drawer. Went back to join the crew.
But the idea didn't leave me.
My mind pulled me back three months, to Brian's wedding.
The Conservatory Garden in Central Park had been transformed into something out of a dream.
Late afternoon light filtered through the wisteria pergola, catching the spray from the fountains, turning everything golden.
White chairs lined the central lawn, filled with everyone who mattered—the Engine 295 crew taking up an entire row, doctors and nurses from Queens General clustered near the middle, family on both sides dabbing at their eyes before the ceremony even started.
I stood at the front in my dress uniform, Shane beside me, flanking Brian at the altar. Collar too stiff, but I wasn't going to complain.
Brian's hands were steady. His eyes kept drifting to the end of the aisle.
When Ava appeared, his whole face transformed.
I knew that look. That absolute certainty. That moment when the rest of the world goes dim and there's only one person in the room. One person in the universe. One person you'd burn down everything to keep.
I'd worn that look once. Almost a decade ago, standing in a jewelry store, choosing a ring I knew exactly who I wanted to give it to.
I shook off the memory. This was Brian's day.
The vows were personal. Specific. The kind that made you feel like an intruder for witnessing them, even though you'd been invited.
Brian talked about the first day Ava moved in next door. 3 AM conversations on the balcony. Four years of showing up until she stopped waiting for him to leave. Ava talked about independence being survival until it wasn't. Finding someone worth letting in.
I stood at attention and tried not to think about the vows I'd never gotten to make.