Chapter 10 Sloane
Sloane
The fire was out by the time I arrived.
Smoke still curled from the building's gutted frame, but the flames were gone, replaced by the steady work of crews picking through wreckage. Dawn was starting to break over the city, painting the sky in shades of ash and amber.
I ducked under the tape, flashing my press credentials at the officer on perimeter duty, and made my way toward the command post.
Engine 295 was on scene. I spotted Garrett near one of the rigs, talking to Rodriguez, his face streaked with soot and exhaustion. He looked like he'd been here all night.
Then his eyes found mine across the scene.
His whole face changed when he saw me. The tension draining out, jaw unclenching, shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch.
The look of a man who'd been running calculations in his head and just got the answer he needed.
He said something to Rodriguez, who glanced my way and nodded, and then Garrett was walking toward me.
"Hey." The word was soft. Almost private, despite the chaos around us.
"Hey."
I fell into step beside him as he guided us away from the worst of the activity. "Long night?"
"You could say that." He wiped soot from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a darker streak across his skin. I resisted the urge to reach up and wipe it clean. "But this one's different."
"Different how?"
"The building was vacant. Condemned six weeks ago, tenants already relocated. The demo crew was supposed to start next month." He stopped walking and turned to face me. "Nobody was inside. Nobody was supposed to be inside. The arsonist knew that."
"They waited until the building was empty."
"On purpose. They could have hit it a month ago when there were still tenants. They didn't." His gray-blue eyes held mine. "This confirms it, Sloane. Whoever's doing this, they're not trying to hurt people. They're going after the landlords and the buildings the city refused to fix."
"Vigilante justice." The words tasted strange. True, but strange. He glanced back at the smoking wreckage.
It made a terrible kind of sense. Someone who'd watched the system fail. Someone who'd decided that if the city wouldn't tear down the death traps, they'd do it themselves.
We watched the crew move through the wreckage.
"I should let you finish up here," I said. "Diaz is going to want a statement."
"I'll come to your apartment after shift. We can go over everything then."
I nodded. "I'll be there."
He didn't move. Neither did I.
The noise of the scene faded, the radios, the idling engines, the voices of the crew. It was just us, standing too close, the space between us charged with something neither of us was willing to name.
His eyes dropped to my mouth.
My breath caught. My whole body leaned toward him without permission, pulled by a gravity I'd stopped trying to fight.
Kiss me. Just do it.
The distance between us had been shrinking for weeks. And right now, in the smoke and the dawn light, it felt like nothing at all.
But he didn't.
Something flickered in his expression, want warring with restraint. Then he stepped back.
"Be safe getting home." His voice was rough.
He turned and walked back toward the rig.
I watched him go. Heart pounding. Aching for something I wasn't sure I deserved to want.
The drive home was a blur of empty streets and red lights. I parked, climbed the stairs to my apartment, and went through the motions on autopilot—keys in the bowl by the door, shoes kicked off, blazer draped over the back of a chair.
The smell of smoke clung to my clothes, my hair, my skin.
I stood under the shower until the water ran cold. The smoke. The dawn light. The moment he'd stepped back instead of stepping forward.
I toweled off, pulled on an old t-shirt, and crawled into bed. The sheets were cool against my damp skin.
Sleep felt impossible
I was staring at the ceiling when my phone buzzed.
Garrett.
"Hey," I answered, settling back against my pillows. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Just got out of the shower." His voice carried that bone-deep exhaustion that came after a long call. "Couldn't sleep."
"Me neither."
I heard him shift, the creak of what sounded like a bunk. He was still at the firehouse, probably lying in the dark the same way I was, phone pressed to his ear.
Both of us alone. Separated by miles of city. Connected by nothing but voices in the dark.
"We had another equipment issue tonight," he said. "Thermal imaging camera glitched out halfway through the search. Had to go manual."
My stomach tightened. "That's dangerous."
"It's fine. We handled it."
"Garrett."
"I know." A pause. "Rodriguez filed for a replacement last week. Response came back today. Denied. Budget constraints."
I sat up. "They can't just deny safety equipment."
"They can. They did." His voice was flat. Resigned in a way that made my chest ache. "We're borrowing from Engine 302 now. Forty minutes away on a good day."
He paused.
"What happens when we need it, and they're on a call?"
The donations. The shell companies. The systematic strangulation of a firehouse that refused to stop asking questions. They weren't just trying to close Engine 295. They were trying to cripple it first.
"We're close," I said. "The story is coming together. Marianne's ready to run it the moment we have everything locked down. Engine 295 isn't going to get shut down. I won't let it."
Silence. Then, quietly, "I hope you're right."
"I am." The confidence in my voice surprised even me. "Trust me."
I could hear him breathing. Could picture him in his bunk, staring at the ceiling the way I was staring at mine.
The last voice I heard before sleep. How had that become his again?
We used to do this. Talk until our voices went hoarse, then just breathe together, neither of us willing to hang up first.
"I should let you sleep." His voice was quieter now. "You need rest."
"So do you."
"Tomorrow evening? After you get home from work?"
"Yeah. I'll be here."
Silence. "Good night, Sloane."
"Good night, Garrett."
The line went dead.
I set my phone on the nightstand. Thermal imaging cameras and budget denials and the way his voice wrapped around my name—all tangled together in the dark.
Trust me.
I was going to earn it.
He showed up at my apartment the next evening with Thai food and his laptop.
We fell into our routine, files spread across the coffee table, containers of pad thai and green curry between us, the case consuming us the way it had for weeks. Garrett sat close enough that our knees almost touched. I'd stopped pretending I didn't notice.
I was cross-referencing the arson targets with the victim list when something clicked.
I sat back. Stared at my screen.
"What?" Garrett looked up from his own laptop. "You found something?"
"Maybe."
I pulled up an old file, one I hadn't looked at in years. The memory surfaced slowly, like something rising from deep water.
"The MO. The accelerant signature. The timing." I stared at the screen. "I've seen this before."
"Where?"
"Ten years ago. One of my first big stories." I turned my laptop toward him. "David Crane. He was setting fires in buildings owned by slumlords. Same targets. Same precision."
Garrett scanned the article.
"He's in prison. Has been for a decade."
I hated myself for not remembering sooner.
The case had been buried under a decade of other stories—Crane's targets in Brooklyn, not Queens. I hadn't thought to look for the connection until the MO matched exactly.
"But what if they're connected? What if our arsonist learned from him? Or knew him?"
"You think he had an accomplice?"
"I think it's worth asking." I closed the laptop, my mind already racing ahead. "Crane was meticulous. Obsessive about choosing targets. If someone was working with him, or if someone studied his methods…"
"They'd know exactly how to replicate his work."
"And improve on it." I stood. Started pacing. "Crane got caught because he escalated too fast. Our arsonist is patient. Controlled. They learned from his mistakes."
Garrett watched me pace, that crease between his brows deepening.
"I could request an interview, see if he'll agree to meet." I grabbed my phone, already composing the email in my head. "He's at Sing Sing. I've done prison interviews before—they know me there."
"You want me to come with you?"
The question was casual. The look in his eyes wasn't.
"I'll be fine." I managed a small smile. "Not my first prison interview. Besides, you'd have to take time off shift."
"Right." He nodded slowly. "Okay."
But I could see it, the protectiveness he was trying to tamp down.
Part of me wanted to let him.
But I'd been doing this job alone for a long time. I could handle one prison interview.
We worked for another hour, building the connection between Crane's old case and our current investigation. By the time Garrett's phone buzzed, we had a solid theory and a list of questions I'd ask when I got to Sing Sing.
Garrett glanced at the screen, and his expression eased.
"Crew's going out for drinks tonight," he said. "You should come."
His crew. His people. The family he'd built in the years I'd been gone.
"It's just drinks," he added, reading my hesitation. "Brian and Ava will be there. Rodriguez and Maria. Shane and Maya."
"I don't want to intrude—"
"You're not intruding." His voice was soft. Sincere in a way that made my chest ache. "They want to meet you. Properly. Not just at fire scenes and crime scenes."
I thought about it. Stepping into his world. His life. The spaces he'd filled without me.
"Okay," I said. "I'll come."
The bar was a firefighter joint through and through.
Flags on the walls. Photos of crews going back decades. A jukebox in the corner playing something country. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone, where the bartender started pouring your usual before you made it to your seat.
Garrett's hand found the small of my back as we walked in, guiding me through the crowd. The touch was casual. Automatic.