“—and I’m treating you for smoke inhalation.”
On that note, Emilio tried to put the oxygen mask back in place, but Danny was having none of that. Shoving the guy off of him, he braced his dirty hands on his knees and triangulated his torso to give his lungs more space to inflate. The wheezing was not something he could hide, and to cut off conversation, he stared at the steaming pair of houses. They looked like a bomb had been dropped between them, the kitchen side of the one on the right and the living room side of the one on the left all blackened, dripping, ruined.
As 499’s pumper pulled out, he cursed. That was his ride.
Emilio gave the mask another shot. “Come on, Danny. You’re wheezing—”
“No, I’m not—”
The coughing jag that hit him put liar to that one pretty good, but he was done with this. Getting to his feet, he yanked his turnout suspenders back on his shoulders and leaned down for his insulated jacket.
“Mind if I catch a ride on the ladder?” He clapped the other guy on the shoulder. “Great. Thanks. I’ll ride in the back—”
“You’re not going to the stationhouse.”
“The hell I’m not. Fire’s out and I’m—”
“Heading for the ER.”
“Amy, don’t be codependent. It makes your ass look big.”
“Don’t argue and I won’t have to be.” Chavez pointed off to the side. “Besides, you got to deal with him now. Have fun with that.”
Danny closed his eyes. And then faced off at what was coming on the attack.
Chief Tom Ashburn was bull-in-a-china-shop pissed off, his too-much-like-Anne’s eyes glaring, his prematurely gray hair standing up straight as if he’d been dragging a hand through it, his target site trained on Danny and Danny alone.
“Don’t even start,” the chief snapped as he arrived with all the subtlety of a grenade going off in a fireworks factory. “You will be seen at the ER. And now, not later.”
God, he reaaaaaally wanted a cigarette. “You can’t force me to do anything.”
Tom ignored him. “Chavez, place the patient on a gurney and head to University’s ER with him.”
As Amy dropped an f-bomb, Danny shook his head. “I’m not going—”
“Yes, you are—”
“I’m fine—”
From under his arm, the chief brought out a singed folder. “No, you’re off duty and on probation pending a psych evaluation.”
Okay, that got his attention. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The yellow folder swung right up to his face. “You went back into that building for this. You risked your own life for papers—”
“It’s her math homework. So I had to go and get it—”
“You risked your fucking life for nothing after you dumped your oxygen supply with her—”
“She’s asthmatic! She couldn’t breathe!”
“—and I’m tired of telling you the rules just to have you fuck them off because you have a death wish.”
Danny dropped his voice and leaned in. “My roommate Jack has been out to this house twice in the last three months. And you know damn well he’s fucking SWAT, not a beat cop. That kid has nothing but her homework, do you understand? Her father is in jail, and her mother’s been skating the system. So hell yeah, I went back in and got it—and I would do it again.”
“There’s always a reason.”
“That girl has nothing!”
“And you are out of a job unless you go get eval’d and are cleared.”
Danny narrowed his eyes. “Look, why don’t you just be a man about this, okay.”
There was a beat of silence. And then Tom stepped forward and met Danny eye to eye. “Excuse me.”
Danny glanced at Chavez, but the guy was no fool. He was shaking his head and backing off so fast, he tripped over his own feet.
Making sure his voice didn’t carry, Danny said, “You’re still pissed about what happened with Anne. Why don’t you just admit that to my face instead of playing this backdoor-game shit.”
The chief looked down at the ground, his jaw tightening. When his eyes lifted, they were cold. “I will not have a firefighter on my service that is a danger to himself and others. You will get that fucking psych eval or you can walk. Those are your two choices—and after that little crack about my sister, I care even less about the outcome. Chavez, get this fucking patient in the can!”
Abruptly, Danny blinked and saw only white, that rage of his coming back online with a hard-on.
The next thing he was aware of was Moose’s bearded face. His old roomie was up close and personal, and he was speaking, that mouth moving.
Danny couldn’t hear shit. It was like he was underwater, everything muffled.
“—come on now. I’m riding with you.”
There was a pull on Danny’s arm, and he glanced down, seeing Moose’s hand grip his biceps and urge him toward the interior of the ambulance.
“Play the game,” Moose said quietly. “You got too much to lose if you don’t. You don’t want to go out like this.”
Chavez stepped up. “Come on, Dannyboy. The ER will fast-track you and then we’ll be at Timeout. Okay?”
“Work with us,” Moose added. “As much as I’ve wanted to kick your ass since eight this morning, I don’t want you taking a shot at the chief. You can’t trust that voice in your head, Danny. I know that firsthand. The one that’s talking to you now always steers you wrong.”
? ? ?
Anne left work at five p.m., taking the stairs from the third floor down to the first. As she funneled across the lobby to the glass doors, she joined a cue of fellow municipal employees, everybody walking out into the late afternoon sunshine and finding their cars in the maze of the parking lot. On the way back to her house, she stopped at Papa Joe’s Pizza, a locally owned joint that she’d been going to since she’d moved into the neighborhood six years ago.
With her pepperoni-and-onion in the passenger seat, she continued on to Mapleton Avenue and hung a left. Her house, a nine-hundred-square-foot Cape Cod, was halfway down the street. Her garage was detached, and she parked in front of its single closed door.
Pizza in her good hand. Bag on her left shoulder. As she came up to her front door, she used the forefinger on her prosthesis to punch in a numerical code on the new lock she’d had installed a month after the fire.
When you had only one functioning hand, keys were a thing.
Inside, it smelled like home, a combination of Tide washing detergent, lemons, and something that was intrinsically 1404 Mapleton.
Kicking the door closed, she was abruptly exhausted.
The trip through the living space into the kitchen was a whopping twelve steps, and she ate the pizza standing up and next to the sink because she always washed her hand first and it seemed pretentious to set her Crate & Barrel table for one. She made it through half of the medium pie, put the rest away for tomorrow night’s reheat in the oven—never the microwave, because that made the crust spongy when it was hot and tough as nails when it was not—and then she just stood there.
God, her place was quiet.
And the only good news was that it wasn’t a Friday or a Saturday night. A random Monday was no big deal to be home alone with no other options than a CrossFit class, Big Bang Theory reruns, or cleaning a perfectly clean house. The weekends, on the other hand, were bad. All her buddies had been firefighters, but that was gone now—and it wasn’t that they didn’t liked her anymore, far from it. Even though she’d been the only woman in the boys’ club, they’d never treated her as anything other than equal.
The trouble was, after things had changed for her, she’d become a reminder of the risk pool they lived in, a downer through no fault of her own. And besides, over at Timeout, the boys spent their time trading in-jokes, bad stories, and shit that had happened at work.