Always on My Mind
Page 7

Kevin quieted and sat, glaring at the crew for startling him.
No one looked apologetic. There was senior firefighter Ian O’Mallery, and Sam and Emily—both five-year veterans—one of whom was always partnered with their rookie Tim, also present. And then there were two paramedics, Cindy and Hunter.
All still grinning at Jack.
“Lieutenant’s gotta girlfriend,” Cindy sang. She’d made breakfast and was dishing out egg sandwiches.
Jack snatched one and scowled. “Don’t believe everything you see on Facebook.”
“How about everything we see with our own eyes?” Tim asked. “’Cause I saw you two at the pancake breakfast.”
“Yeah?” Ian said, curious as a sixteen-year-old girl. “What did you see? Anything good?”
Tim shook his head. “I saw that I’ve got more game than our LT. And I’m pretty sure I have a shot at his girl too. She smiled at me. She’s got a really hot smile.”
“Which reminds me,” Jack said. “You’re heading to the senior center in fifteen minutes for their fire extinguisher training.”
Everyone laughed but Tim, who scowled. “Hey, I’m tired of being the dickhead who gets all the grunt work.”
“Then don’t be the dickhead,” Emily suggested and handed him her empty plate.
“Oh hell no,” he said. “I’m not doing dishes again. Hey!” Tim called after her as she walked away.
“New guy always does dishes,” she called back.
Their day started with a woman who’d run her car into her own mailbox and gotten trapped, and ended with rescuing a stoned-off-his-ass guy from up a tree—not that they ever figured out what he was doing in the tree.
The next morning, they were woken by a two-alarm fire, and everyone hit the trucks.
At the scene, Tim fought to the front to jump down first, but Ian grabbed him by the back of his shirt. “Remember this time, you’re still on probation. Stay back. Observe.”
“Come on,” Tim said. “You all take turns being point. Let me do it for once.”
“No.”
The convenience store attached to the gas station was on fire. The building, as old as the rest of town, ignited.
Ian and Emily—with Tim allowed to shadow and assist—rescued two smoke-dazed victims from the store before it was fully engulfed—the clerk and a customer. But when everyone looked around, only Ian and Tim had come out. No Emily. Then they all heard the alarm bell on her gear going off. Her breathing apparatus was running out of air. She’d gone to a window to try to get out, but her air pack was stuck on the window seal. Jack got to her, yanking her out from the outside.
“Close call,” Emily said when the flames were out, giving Jack a big thank-you hug from her perch on the back on the ambulance, where she was being treated for a few second-degree burns on her knees.
Too close. He was still sweating.
During the pickup, Jack made his usual walk around the site and found a vagrant in the back of the building, huddled between a smoking shrub and a concrete pillar, suffering from a minor head injury. They treated him at the scene, and then he was transported to the hospital.
Deputy Chief and Fire Marshal Ronald McVane was about a decade past retiring, but still sharp. He was on site taking pictures and making a post-incident analysis.
“Got a few cigarette butts in the lot,” Jack told him. “Not surprising given that it’s a convenience store. There’s other material there, and what looks like it might have been a bucket of rags. Point of origin was there. The contents of the Dumpster went up like timber, catching the siding on the building.”
“The vagrant?”
“Maybe,” Jack said. “But he says he didn’t start a fire. But he also swore that he saw Santa Claus smoking crack on the roof before the fire ignited.” Jack shook his head. “Something about this whole setup seems too neat and smart.”
“And the vagrant isn’t either of those things,” Ronald said and sighed. “Hell.”
“This fire was set on purpose,” Jack said.
“Hell,” Ronald said again.
Back at the station, everyone was on decon duty, decontaminating their masks and regulators and refilling the air tanks. Most of them also used the opportunity to wash their gear, though some guys like Tim liked to leave it dirty to show how tough they were.
Tim was prowling the living room. “That f**king dog!”
The dog in question was sitting on the couch like he owned it, the tatters of a leather wallet scattered around him. There was a good reason he hadn’t made it as a station dog the first time around. He didn’t listen, he was the Destroyer of All Things Expensive, and he was smarter than all of them put together.
Tim snatched up the biggest piece of leather and thrust it under his nose. “You ate the cash and left the leather? You’re killing me.”
“Aw,” Cindy said. “Don’t yell at him.”
“Did he eat your money?” Tim demanded.
“I don’t have any,” Cindy said. “Chill, dude.”
“If you keep yelling at him,” Jack said, “he’s going to shit in your shoes later.”
“He already did that!” Tim glared at Kevin. “Bad dog!”
Kevin’s ears lowered, and he blinked as slow as an owl, looking a little confused.
Jack patted him on the head. “He has some separation anxiety that we’re working on. We left him behind.”
“Because it was a day call and too hot to keep him in the truck.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But he doesn’t understand that.”
“Then he should have eaten your wallet.” Tim blew out a breath, calming down. “He has an eating disorder. He eats everything.”
“It’s called being a Great Dane.”
Tim threw his hands in the air and plopped on the couch. “Just do something about him.”
Jack turned to Kevin, who straightened hopefully, like maybe there was another wallet in his near future.
“Hear that, Kev?” Jack asked him. “I need to do something about you.”
Sensing he wasn’t going to be getting a doggie biscuit anytime soon, Kevin sighed, strode to his bed—right next to the couch—where he turned around three times and plopped down with a heavy “oomph.”
Tim pointed at his own eyes and then at the dog. “Watching you,” he said.
Kevin closed his eyes, set his head on his paws, and farted.
Jack went into his office. Writing up his report on the convenience store fire, he came upon something interesting. The building was in escrow. This always changed things. It was shocking how often a property owner became an arsonist, and he made a note for Ronald and their investigation.
Before bed, he checked his phone. Not a word from his pretend girlfriend. He fell asleep wondering if that was a good or bad thing.
The next day, the entire platoon once again ran ragged from start to finish. The first call came early. A drunk twenty-year-old idiot had set a fire at his parents’ home, lighting a cigarette on the kitchen stovetop and leaving the flame on before falling asleep. The house had been built in the 1930s and had a balloon-frame construction, in which there was a gap between the inside and outside wall. They tried using a thermal imaging camera to find the hot spots, but that proved ineffective, forcing them to use a hook to pull out whole chunks of heavy plaster walls to check for flames.
The guy’s elderly parents were pulled safely from the structure, but “Baby Al” was out cold. Until they tried to move him, and then he started yelling and pitching a fit. Jack and Ian went in and dragged the screaming guy out. Still drunk, he fought them tooth and nail, making it a real struggle to save the jackass’s life. Jack took a punch to his left eye that pissed him off and ached like a bitch.
From there, they had a few medicals, a few regulars—people who called for attention—and a report of smoke at a house on the south side of town. The smoke was centralized in a bedroom that could have been on that TV show Hoarders. When they shoveled the furniture and debris clear, they found a myriad of wires: phone, clock, computer, and so on, all crisscrossed and frayed.
And also a giant vibrator. Like eighteen inches giant.
The entire platoon managed to remain professional until they were on the engine, and then as a collective whole they completely lost it, laughing all the way back to the station.
When the next episode of Sweet Wars aired, Leah hadn’t planned on watching, but her grandma insisted, which was how she ended up staring at herself as she created a three-tiered lemon meringue tart as if her life were a DVD. She tried to remain distant from it, but though she was good at the distance thing with others, she’d never really mastered it for herself. So she took in her relaxed, smiling self whipping a meringue under the pressure of cameras, the other contestants, and the exceedingly tough, hard-assed celebrity judges.
Go her.
“I don’t like the panel. They yell too much. But that host, he’s a cutie.”
Rafe Vogel was also the producer of Sweet Wars, and while he was most definitely “a cutie” on the outside, he more resembled a snake on the inside.
“And look at you,” Grandma marveled. “I can’t get over you,” she said, as on screen Leah moved quickly and efficiently in spite of Rafe walking around stirring up angst and tension as he barked out the clock’s countdown. “You’re the doll of the season.”
“No.”
Elsie scoffed and reached over, picking up the current issue of TV Guide. Spread across the front of it was the entire cast, with Leah front and center.
Leah pointed to the woman next to her. “Suzie’s good too,” she said.
“Not as good as you.” Elsie set the TV Guide down on the coffee table and clapped her hands in glee. “You won it. I know you did. So when do you leave? The prize was one hundred grand and your own bakery, right? In the place of your choosing? You going to give me a hint?”
“You know I can’t tell you who won,” Leah said automatically, thinking how in the hell was she going to do this? How was she going to get out of Lucky Harbor before everyone saw the finals? How could she just leave the bakery, Elsie, Ali…Jack.
“I’m just so proud of you, honey. I’ll admit, you had me scared for a few years there. Switching colleges and career paths like other women switch hair color. I know your daddy didn’t help, making you doubt yourself all the time. He wasn’t a good man, Leah. Watching you suffer…” She shook her head. “I should have done more for you.”
“No, Grandma,” Leah said gently, putting her hand over Elsie’s. “You did everything you could. You were always there for me.”
“Always will be.” She turned her hand over in Leah’s and squeezed her fingers. “You’ve made something of yourself.”
If only that were true…
Chapter 7
Jack followed up his seventy-two hours on shift with a day of sleep for recovery. Then he and Kevin hit the park for Jack’s weekly baseball game.
Kevin was an old hat at baseball. He had a routine. Tied to the dugout bench in the shade, he usually dozed through the first few innings, and then by the bottom of the fifth he’d be nosing through the guys’ bags for snacks. If he played his cards correctly and gave the right player the puppy dog eyes, he might find a good lap to cuddle in.
No one had ever told him that he wasn’t a lap dog.
Today when Jack arrived, Luke and Ben were already on the bench lacing up their cleats. The three of them went way back. Luke had spent summers in Lucky Harbor at his grandmother’s house. Ben had lived with Jack and his mom when his family had detonated early on. After Jack Senior’s death, Dee had raised both boys—and also Luke—as if they were brothers.
And they were brothers, in all the ways that counted, which meant that they were a perpetual pain in each other’s ass.
Ben looked up as Jack and Kevin walked toward them. He took in Jack’s obviously careful gait—his knee was hurting like a sonofabitch—but didn’t say a word.
Luke was much more blunt. “You look like shit,” he said and held out a fist to Kevin.
Kevin lifted a paw and bumped Luke’s hand. It was his one and only trick.
“I’m not the one with the flu,” Jack said. “Sam’s out, which leaves us without a backup pitcher.”
“And…,” Luke said.
“And what?”
“And you have something else to tell us,” Luke said.
Jack looked at Ben, then back to Luke. “What else would there be?”
“I don’t know, maybe the fact that you and Leah are getting hitched.”
Jack, who’d just taken an unfortunate sip from his water bottle, choked.
Ben patted him on the back. Actually, it was more like a pounding that sent Jack forward a few steps.
“So, when’s the big day?” Luke asked.
Jack swore, swiping a forearm over his chin to mop up the water he’d just spit out. “Ali tell you?”
Luke grinned. “You mean it’s true?”
“No, it’s not true. Jesus.”
“There’s a whole Pinterest thing on you two,” Ben said, sitting on the bench. Kevin immediately leaped into Ben’s lap. For years, Ben had been closed off, not wanting to be close to anyone. He was gone for months at a time, and when he came back, he rarely talked about the things he’d seen and done. Jack and Luke had long ago given up revealing their worry to Ben; it just pissed him off.
And no one wanted Ben pissed off.