10. Derek
DEREK
The town hall meeting room hadn't gotten any less overheated, the radiator along the far wall clanking through its same tired argument with itself.
The whiteboard at the front was new, though, rows of numbers marching across it in Digby's handwriting, so neat and square it looked less like arithmetic and more like a warning label.
I took my usual seat near the door, the one that let me leave fast if a call came in, and watched Digby uncap a marker like he'd been waiting all week for the chance to use it.
"Let's not waste anyone's evening." Digby tapped the board without looking at it, already having memorized whatever numbers he'd written there.
"The county board has finalized the performance threshold for continued funding.
Winterfest needs to clear eight hundred verified attendees and forty thousand dollars in documented vendor and sponsorship revenue.
If those numbers hold, the second engine funding renews automatically.
If they don't, the board revisits the allocation. "
"Revisits meaning what?" I already knew the answer. I wanted to hear him say it anyway.
"Revisits meaning Pinewood Ridge operates with a single engine going into next year, pending review." Digby said it the way he said everything, flat and procedural, like weather reports didn't come with opinions attached. "I don't set the formula, Chief. I apply it."
"Define verified." I wasn't going to let him hand me a number without also handing me the fine print underneath it. "Eight hundred bodies through a gate, or eight hundred people who actually spent money in this town."
"Verified means logged. Ticket scans where applicable, vendor receipts, parking counts cross-referenced against traffic cameras on Main.
" Digby said it like he'd anticipated the question and resented having to answer it out loud anyway.
"We're not interested in enthusiasm, Chief.
We're interested in numbers that survive an audit. "
"And the revenue figure. Gross or net?"
"Gross vendor and sponsorship revenue, documented. What the town does with its margins afterward is the town's business, not the county's." He tapped the board again. "I'd have thought you'd appreciate precision, given your line of work."
"I appreciate precision. I like knowing exactly what I'm being held to before I sign off on it."
"And the deadline?"
"The second day of the new year." He circled the date on the board, precise, unhurried, like he enjoyed the shape the numbers made together. "Documented. I don't make the formula, Chief, I just apply it."
He'd said the same sentence twice inside thirty seconds, which told me exactly how much he expected somebody in this room to argue with him, and exactly how little he cared if they did.
Mayor Judy Whitfield sat up straighter at the head table, her usual brightness dimmed down to something more careful. "The town is fully behind Winterfest succeeding. I want that on record."
"Being behind it and actually pulling it off are two different line items, Mayor." Digby capped his marker. "I trust the department understands the stakes."
I understood the stakes better than anyone in that room, and not the way Digby meant it either.
A second engine wasn't a number on a spreadsheet to me.
It was Priya reaching a chimney fire out past the county line eight minutes faster than she would with one truck stretched thin across the whole district.
It was the difference between two crews responding to two calls at once instead of choosing which fire got the truck and which one waited.
It was Tomás, Sarge, every name on that roster, having backup instead of hoping the math worked out in their favor on the worst night of somebody's year.
It was also, if I let myself think about it, the only place I'd ever been any good at anything. Losing half of it felt less like a budget cut and more like giving up ground I'd spent my whole career holding onto.
I thought about the call out to Ida Kowalski's cabin, how close that would have been with one truck already committed elsewhere.
A chimney fire on a bad night could turn into a structure fire in the time it took a second crew to clear across town.
I pictured this town getting unlucky twice in one evening, and how thin the math would run if the county got its way.
"The department understands the stakes," I said.
"Good." Digby gathered his papers with the same brisk efficiency he brought to everything, a man who billed the county by the hour and intended to prove it.
"I'll want weekly attendance and revenue figures from whoever's managing festival logistics, starting this week.
I don't care who compiles them. I care that they're accurate. "
"That would be Ms. Bennett," Judy said. "She's been extraordinarily thorough."
"Then I'll want her figures cross-checked by someone on the department side.
Whoever that is needs to own accountability for this from the safety and operations angle, given the funding is tied to public safety infrastructure.
" Digby glanced around the room like he expected somebody to volunteer a name.
"Sergeant álvarez, I assume, given his role. "
Sarge opened his mouth, already halfway to taking it on, the way he took on most administrative tasks that didn't involve actual fire.
It made sense on paper. I'd been the one signing off on Leah's permits and burn plans since the day Judy assigned me to her, but the county wanted somebody auditing raw numbers against receipts, line by line, a job that had always belonged to whoever Sarge delegated it to.
"I'll handle liaison duties personally."
The room went still in the specific way rooms go quiet when somebody says something nobody expected them to say, myself included, if I was being honest about it, which I generally tried to be even when it cost me something.
"You?" Digby said it like the word itself was a question he needed answered before he'd write anything down.
"Me. Directly. Through the full run of the festival, not just sign off at the end.
" I kept my voice even, the same voice I used for scene assessments, like this was a purely operational decision and nothing else was riding on it.
"If funding's tied to public safety compliance, the department should have direct oversight, not a filtered report from whoever compiled it last. I'll coordinate with Ms. Bennett myself, daily if needed, through New Year's. "
"That's a significant time commitment for a department head," Judy said, not quite hiding her surprise. "You're already running this whole operation, Chief. This is a lot to add on top of it."
"I'm aware. I'll manage it."
"I don't doubt that you'll manage it." Judy's eyes moved between me and Sarge with the sharpness of a woman who noticed considerably more than she let on in public meetings. "I just want it on record that nobody asked you to take this much of it personally."
"Noted."
Digby studied me for a second, the same flat, unreadable study he gave every number on that board, and apparently decided I was either telling the truth or not worth the effort of doubting.
"Fine. I'll note the department's direct involvement.
It reflects well, frankly. Shows commitment.
" He made a small mark on his sheet, already moving on to the next line item, already finished caring about a decision that had just rearranged the next month of my life without my permission.
I did not look at Sarge. I could feel him looking at me anyway, the specific quality of his attention that meant he was filing this away for later, probably for the rest of my natural life.
The meeting rolled on through salt budgets and a dispute about snowplow routes that Digby handled with the same joyless precision as everything else, and I kept my eyes on my notepad and did not write down a single thing that mattered, because none of it did, not compared to the number circled on that whiteboard and the date underneath it.
It came down to eight hundred people, forty thousand dollars, and one date the county intended to hold everyone to: the second day of the new year.
I told myself, sitting there in a folding chair in a room that smelled like burnt coffee and old radiator heat, that this was about the crew.
It was about Priya getting backup on a call that shouldn't have to wait for a truck to free up.
It was about Tomás and every rookie who came after him having two engines instead of one stretched too thin to matter.
It was about the job, which was the only thing in two years I'd let myself actually care about without flinching.
I almost believed it completely.
When the meeting finally broke, chairs scraping and Digby gathering his papers with the efficiency of a man already mentally billing his next appointment, Sarge fell into step beside me on the way out, and he waited exactly as long as it took to clear the door before he said anything.
"Since when do you personally handle anything that isn't on fire?"
"Somebody has to own it."
"Somebody. Sure. And by somebody, you mean you, specifically, for a month, doing a job three other people in that building could've done without breaking stride.
" Sarge shoved his hands in his pockets, watching me with the patience of a man building toward a point he already knew he was going to make.
"I've known you two years. You don't volunteer for meetings. You barely volunteer for lunch."
"Uh-huh." He drew the sound out longer than it needed to be, which from Sarge was its own kind of accusation. "And it had to be you. Personally. Daily. Through New Year's."
"The funding's tied to public safety. It made sense for the department head to take it."
"It made sense." Sarge nodded slowly, like he was testing the sentence for weak spots and finding several. "Priya could've cross-checked those numbers in her sleep. I could've done it standing on my head. You know who else could've done it?"
"Don't."
"Literally anyone in this building who isn't currently required to see Leah Bennett every single day for the next month."
"That's not why I volunteered."
"I didn't say it was why. I said it's what's happening." He held the door for me with the look of a man who'd contributed nothing to the conversation except commentary and knew it. "I'm just observing the outcome. You're the one who has to live with the reasoning."
Outside, the cold hit hard enough to sting, the parking lot lit up under sodium lights that turned everything the color of old honey, and I walked toward my truck telling myself the reasoning was solid on its own, that I'd have made the same call if Leah Bennett had never crossed my path.
This was about engines and crews and budget math, I told myself.
Not the way she'd looked standing in a firehouse kitchen with a rescued casserole in her hands.
Not the way she'd sat next to me on a tailgate in the cold and let a silence be exactly what it was.
That argument might have held up better if I hadn't already been running the calendar in my head before Digby finished capping his marker, counting the days between now and New Year's the way other men counted paychecks.
I did not fully believe myself, and Sarge, jogging a few steps to catch up, looked far too satisfied about that fact.
"You know you just signed up to see her basically every day till New Year's," he said, clapping me once on the shoulder before peeling off toward his own truck, grinning the whole way like a man who'd just watched his best investment pay out early.
"Shut up, Sarge."
It came out low and rough, exactly the growl I intended it to be, and it was not nearly as annoyed as it should have been, which we both knew, and which neither of us said out loud as he climbed into his truck still laughing and I stood there a second longer than necessary in the cold, watching my own breath fog up in front of me and doing absolutely nothing to talk myself out of the decision I'd just made.