Kellan’s lieutenant, Ian Gamble, slid his huge frame into the officer’s seat in the front of the engine at the same time Station Seventeen’s rookie, Luke Slater, scrambled into the back step to sit behind Shae. Gamble turned to pin the rookie with a you-got-lucky-you-weren’t-last-in stare, hooking his headset over his ears and jutting his darkly-stubbled chin at Shae in a nonverbal “let’s go.”
Both Kellan and Slater grabbed the headsets hanging over their respective seats, because between the hundred and thirty decibel sirens and the rattle and whoosh of cabin noise inside the engine’s boxy interior, they didn’t have a prayer of hearing their lieutenant otherwise.
“Okay you guys, buckle down because this looks like the real deal,” Gamble cut out into his mic, the scraped-up edges of his voice a perfect match for his gruff demeanor. He leaned forward to look at the screen built into the dashboard that connected them with Remington’s emergency services system. “Dispatch is reporting flames showing at a residence on the north side of the district. Nearest cross street is Woodmoor,” he said, mostly for Shae’s benefit.
Of course, she probably didn’t need the assist. Shae had operated Engine Seventeen since before Kellan had even set his baby toe in the firehouse for his first shift. She knew Remington’s streets as well as she knew her own reflection.
Case in point. “That’s up in North Point,” she said. “The neighborhood’s not pretty.” While the fact didn’t matter an ounce in terms of how hard they’d fight the blaze, it could have an impact on the scene.
“Mmm,” Gamble acknowledged. “Well, if we haul ass”—he paused to slide a glance at Shae, whose resulting grin Kellan could just make out in profile from his spot in the back step—“we’ll be first on-scene, so gear up and be ready to look alive. Squad and ambo are on our six, and Captain Bridges is along for the ride.”
“Copy that,” Kellan said, tugging the headset from his ears. Continuing the smooth circuit of his inhale/exhale, he reached down for his bunker pants, pulling them over his uniform in one methodical move.
“Must be a hell of a fire if all hands are on deck, right?” Slater’s dark eyes flashed wide and round from his spot next to Kellan in the step, giving away his jitters despite the guy’s obvious attempt at a poker face.
Ah, rookies. Still, while some guys might be tempted to haze a newbie for being a little rattled on his first big fire call, giving the kid shit for turning out to be human after only three weeks on the job seemed a touch indecent.
“Not necessarily,” Kellan said, trying to lead by example as he got the rest of his gear into place. “Bridges is a hands-on kind of captain, and squad goes on all the fire calls in the district no matter what.” Those guys weren’t elite for shits and giggles, that was for damn sure. “But it’s not a drill, so keep your head on a swivel and stay on Gamble’s hip. And Slater?” He didn’t wait for the candidate to acknowledge him, because Christ, the kid looked two seconds away from stroking out. “Breathe in on a three count and out on a five. You’re gonna need your legs under you all the way. You copy?”
Slater nodded, his stare turning focused, and what do you know, he actually took Kellan’s advice. Good goddamn thing, too, because they were about T-minus two minutes from rolling up on the scene of this fire, and if the thick column of smoke Kellan had spotted through his window was anything to go by, something was burning pretty good.
Time to go to work.
“Bridges is calling the shots on the two-way,” Gamble hollered into the step, five seconds before Shae pulled the engine to a stop in front of a two-story detached row home heavily blanketed by smoke. “Listen up for assignments and watch your backs. And each other’s.”
“Copy that,” Kellan said, his response weaving around both Shae’s and Slater’s as they gave up the same answer at the same time. Doing one last lightning-fast systems check on both his gear and his composure, he shouldered his SCBA tank, his muscles squeezing at the familiar burden of the extra thirty pounds as he hustled his way out of the back step to put his boots on the ground.
Whoa. A sheen of sweat burst between his shoulder blades despite the cool September weather. His pulse knocked hard against his throat at the sight of the thick gray smoke and angry orange flames licking upward from the first and second-story windows on the front of the row home, and even though it was tempting as hell to stare at the fire alone, Kellan was all too well-versed on how danger could spring from the most unexpected places. After cataloguing the immediate no-shit threat posed by the fire itself, he took a swift visual inventory of all of his surroundings.
Fairly well-kept house, although not so much on the neighborhood. Only a handful of onlookers, which would be a plus for securing the scene. No obvious entrapment—no one stumbling from the blaze in a panic about someone still inside and nobody shouting their guts out from a window or the roof. And wasn’t that another win, because with the smoke and flames funneling from the Alpha side windows, getting anyone out of the place would be a bitch and a half.