Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 (2 page)

From the living room she heard Caz roar, “What’s going on in there?”
 

“Don’t worry!” she yelled back. “I’ve got this!” Then she drummed her legs against the floor in a quick wordless fit, took a moment set her lips into a determined and very firmly closed line. Then she lunged at the pipe.

CHAPTER TWO

It was Caz’s turn to cook, his first night at Station One. Seeing as he’d already gotten crap from two of the guys for browning the meat too well on the industrial stove’s huge burners, it wasn’t going great so far. Not that he cared that much. He wasn’t here to make friends, after all.
 

Tox Ellis, the engine’s captain, leaned over his shoulder. “That’s too many onions. Coin is gonna throw a fit.”
 

Caz didn’t respond. It was usually the best course of action, he’d found.
 

“You gonna take some out or what?”
 

Did the guy actually think he was going to redo dinner because of someone’s preference? “No.”
 

“Coin
really
hates onions.”
 

“Then I guess he can make his own damn dinner.”
 

Tox grunted. “You came from Los Robles FD, right?”
 

Caz nodded. Was he going to have to talk right up until the food was on the table? Was that a requirement here? The way Bonnie Maddern chattered on the ambulance, it might well be.
 

“You worked with John Martini?”
 

He nodded again. Hopefully, the guy would get the hint. He didn’t want to be out and out rude—next to the battalion chief, it was clear that Tox ruled the roost around this station. It wouldn’t do to get on his bad side. But when Caz cooked, he liked doing it in silence.
 

Heck, he liked doing just about everything in silence. He thought of Bonnie again. Never quiet, except after that last run when she’d been covered in toilet water.
 

Tox popped a piece of red pepper in his mouth.
 

Caz
hated
it when people messed with his cooking. “Do you mind?”
 

The man’s thick eyebrows rose? “Not really. I like peppers. You got plenty. So, you and Martini get along?”
 

Martini had been a blowhard engineer with britches that were about a mile too big for his five-foot-nothing frame. It was better not to answer. “Is anyone going to mind garlic?”
 

“Nah. What about Horton, is he still a battalion chief there?”
 

“Yeah.”

“Good guy, huh?”
 

Horton was one of the most boring people he’d ever met in his life. But he wasn’t bad. “I guess.”
 

“You’re a tough nut, huh?”
 

“Look, I just want to cook these carnitas and get it over with. That okay with you?”
 

“What’s your problem?” Tox’s voice didn’t seem to carry the normal venom that went with those words. He seemed honestly curious. And no way was Caz going to confide in him.
 

“Hand me the cayenne?”
 

Tox sighed and gave over the Costco-sized container. “Whatever. You don’t have to have friends here, man, but a forty-eight hour shift is long. It goes easier if you play well with others.”
 

“I hear you.”
 

“There anything else you want to say?”
 

Caz stopped and looked directly at the man. “I have no idea what you want from me.”
 

“Man,” said Tox, clearly at the end of his friendly tolerance. He’d lasted longer than most. “How about chill the freak out?” He stalked out of the kitchen.
 

Caz focused on the blade of his knife. Pineapple, instead of making the meat sweet, tenderized it. And it was satisfying to chop. He thunked off the top and the bottom, then whacked at the sides of it.

“What’s that?” His next kitchen intruder was the tall engineer named Hank Coffee. He seemed nice enough, more mellow than Tox, but he was part of the house’s noise and bluster, too.
 

“A pineapple,” said Caz simply.
 

“I’m allergic.”
 

“Okay.” He didn’t stop chopping.
 

“Are you really going to put that in dinner?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“Even though I told you I’m allergic?”
 

Caz’s knife slowed and he looked up. “I figured Tox told you to say that. Are you really?”
 

Hank blinked. “No.”

“Okay, then.”
 

Hank leaned against the counter easily, as if he had nowhere better to be. “So tell me about yourself.”
 

Caz hated open-ended questions that weren’t really even questions at all. “Nothing much to tell.”
 

“You married?”
 

He also hated yes or no questions. “Nope.”
 

“Kids?”
 

“Nope.” Caz finished chopping the pineapple and dumped it into the pork shoulder on the stove.
 

“You live nearby?”
 

“Nope.”
 

“Dude. You make it hard to talk to you, anyone ever tell you that?”
 

“Heard it said.”
 

Hank didn’t give up, though. “Okay, then, where do you live? Exactly?”
 

Maybe if Caz answered a couple of questions, he’d go away. “About fifteen miles outside town, due east out 119.”
 

“There’s nothing out there.”
 

Well, on one hand that was true, there was a whole lot of nothing near Caz’s ranch. But that was the best part of it. Nothing and no one. “We raise horses. My dad does.”
Did.
 

“Well, that’s something.” Hank looked cheered. “You’re a cowboy. That explains the hat in your truck.”

“What were you doing looking in my truck?”
 

“I was snooping,” said Hank cheerfully. “I do that. Who takes care of your horses while you’re at work?”
 

“My foreman.”
 

“Fancy! You got a foreman! Is it a dude ranch? Can I come out and ride?”
 

“No.”
 

“Why not?” Just like Tox, Hank seemed curiously friendly.

And Caz was tired of avoiding the question. “I don’t like people very much.”
 

“Firefighters? Citizens? Men? Women?
All
people?”

Caz slid the pre-chopped onions into the pot and turned the heat to high. “Pretty much all of ’em.”
 

“Yeah, see, I don’t believe that.”
 

“You should.”
 

“Nah,” said Hank. “I talked to your field training officer, Bert.”
 

Caz’s FTO at Los Robles FD had been a man who never, ever,
ever
shut up. “Huh.”
 

“Yeah. And he said that when it comes to patient care, you’re right up there with the best he’s seen.”
 

Caz just added more cayenne. Maybe he could burn his new coworkers’ chit-chat buds right off.
 

“And what I think is that goes directly against what I’ve seen from you in this house. You don’t talk, you don’t smile, you don’t laugh. But Bert says you make people feel safe. And that’s not a thing that someone who doesn’t like people does.” Hank paused as if he thought Caz might say something. When he didn’t speak, Hank went on, “So that makes me feel better, at least, because you’re kind of acting like a tool around here. I’m willing to put that down to nerves.”
 

That’s not what it was. Not at all. Caz added a healthy dose of cumin to the pot.
 

“Do you even want to be here?” Hank’s voice was tighter now.
 

“I do.” That was the simplest answer to a complex question.
 

“Did you like your last department?”
 

“Not really.”
 

“Why did you leave?”
 

Caz sighed. “I didn’t get along with staff.”
 

“Surprise, surprise. Do you like it here better, so far?”
 

“No.” Especially not if he was going to have to put up with Bonnie Maddern as a partner for the next year. How was he supposed to ignore someone as pretty and
pushy
as she was? But what could he do? It seemed like the woman could talk the hind leg off a donkey, and probably would if given half a chance. It didn’t help that she was so dang pretty sometimes he forgot to mind that she was talking. Her short blond bob was always a little uneven, as if she’d woken up and just run her fingers through it to smooth it—yeah, her hair bothered Caz, mostly because he found his fingers itching to see if it felt as soft as it looked.
 

He hadn’t d taken the Darling Bay job in order to meet a woman, though.
 

Paying for his father’s care was why Caz had applied for and accepted the higher-paying job, even as far away from his cabin as it was.
 

Caz knew himself. He could put up with just about anything. They could pair him up with Tox (talk about someone who
never
shut up) or make him clean the bathrooms every day. He was the FNG, after all, the freaking new guy. Caz just wanted to come to work, do his job, collect his paycheck, and go home. That surely couldn’t be too much to ask.
 

Hank laughed. “So you seriously don’t like being here? Jeez. Why stay then?”
 

“Because I think it’s a good department. I think I can learn to like it. Or at least tolerate it.”
 

“You always this dang honest?”
 

“Yes.”
 

“Why not just stay on your ranch and raise horses?”
 

“Not enough money in it.” That was the sad truth. For Dad’s full-time care, Caz needed a full-time job. That was the bitter catch-22.
 

Hank’s eyes were bright. He was enjoying this give and take, even if Caz wasn’t. “Do you like
horses
, at least?”
 

“Not really.” Caz was a woodworker, not a horse man. But where did these guys get the idea that you got to like what you did for a living?
 

“You are a cranky sum-gun, ain’tcha?”
 

“I’ve heard that on occasion, too.”
 

Hank rapped his empty plastic cup against the counter firmly. “Well. I’ll let you alone, then.”
 

Finally.
 

“But I gotta say one thing. There’re good men in this department. Good women, too, just outnumbered. You got one riding in your ambulance with you. There’s no reason you can’t make friends here. But you gotta want to.”
 

Caz knew that. He turned up the heat again and poked the meat with a wooden spoon.
 

He heard the kitchen door swing shut behind Hank. Alone again.
 

Good.

CHAPTER THREE

The nice thing about the women’s bathroom at Station One, the thing that the men’s didn’t have, was a glazed window in the shower. It was always closed for safety, of course. You wouldn’t want a random drunk citizen hauling himself in and roaming the station halls in the middle of the night. But when Bonnie was in the shower, there was no harm in her sliding the window open. Like a dog propping a chin on a car windowsill, Bonnie rested her chin on the tiled ledge, resting her eyes on the long swathe of green grass behind the station. It was marred a little by the big concrete driveway that ran through the apparatus bay, but that was a necessary evil. On the other side of the drive was a stand of eucalyptus trees that went right down to the creek that was still rushing with the March rains. Around dinner time, the frogs who lived on its banks started their deafening chorus. The wild California poppies that dotted their edges of the station lawn had shut for the night even though twilight hadn’t fully settled.
 

It was her favorite time of night. And this was her favorite thing to do—to stand in the hot shower, watching the quiet riverbank. At any moment, the tones could go off in the station, and four minutes later—still damp under her hastily-thrown-on uniform—she might be on the road, bouncing up and down in the tech seat, racing for whatever disaster (or stubbed toe) had prompted one of the Darling Bay citizens to dial 911. But the tones stayed blessedly quiet. The frogs chirruped. A soft breeze sighed in the tall eucalyptus, and Bonnie, her body and hair newly sewage-free, closed her eyes in happiness.
 

This was, truly, the life. She couldn’t be any luckier. She heard her mother’s voice in her head, “Everything is good when you look at it from the right direction.” Heck, even getting doused by disgusting toilet water meant that she got to hang out in the shower at a time when she wasn’t keeping any of the other women in the station from taking theirs. All the other women in the station, of course, were dispatchers, since Bonnie was the only female firefighter on A shift. The dispatchers tended to take their showers as soon as they woke up in the morning, and since their hours were more tightly scheduled, Bonnie tried to stay out of their way as much as possible.
 

The water beating against her back was gloriously hot. She redirected it so that it hit more of her as she turned so she could rest her cheek against the window’s ledge. The cool air of the spring night blew on the crown of her wet hair. She kept her eyes closed and sighed in pleasure.
 

The breeze got stronger. Huh. Warmer, too. She waited for the evening air to shift, but instead, she smelled mint.

Mint gum. Spearmint, to be exact. Like someone was standing outside blowing on her head.
 

She opened her eyes and jerked her head upright, but she didn’t quite avoid the light slap aimed at her cheek. Tox, standing outside in the flower border, roared with laughter. She slammed the window shut and yelled through it, “You jacknut! I could have died! I could have slipped and
died
and then you’d be back on the ambulance and you’d be
so sorry
!”