Page 3 of Igniting Her

“People do.” The answer caught Ellie off guard. It sounded personal, though there was no reason it should. Cassie slid the file to the corner of her desk. “Hydrant inspections. Supply inventory. Kitchen duty until I know what I’ve been sent.”

Ellie stared at her. “You’ve been sent a firefighter.”

“Then none of those assignments should exceed your capabilities.”

“Is there a particular reason you’ve decided I can’t be trusted before I’ve touched your engine?”

Cassie’s voice grew softer. “You want to reconsider that tone?”

Every smart answer Ellie possessed crowded forward. She swallowed all of them, which ought to have qualified as personal growth. “Yes, Captain.”

“Good. Mo will give you the hydrant list.” Dismissed.

Hydrants. Inventory. Dinner. Ellie filed away each assignment. If Everett wanted a contest, she could have one. Ellie stood, collected her dignity, and tried to make it to the door before Cassie spoke again.

“Ridge.” She looked back. The captain’s face revealed nothing. “Talent is not a substitute for judgment.”

Ellie’s fingers tightened on the doorknob. “Neither is a file.”

The crew’s eyes scattered with all the subtlety of pigeons. Mo found the hydrant maps. Jamie began explaining the inventory system in a tone normally used for unstable patients. Teak opened a cupboard, considered its contents, and told Ellie dinner was now her responsibility.

“Any allergies?” Ellie asked.

“Bad food,” Priya said.

“Authoritarian leadership,” Ellie added.

From the office, through a closed door, came Cassie’s level voice. “I heard that, Ridge.”

The table went silent. Ellie leaned sideways to look through the interior window. The captain was reading a report, apparently untouched by human amusement. “Excellent acoustics,” Ellie said. Mo coughed into his fist. Teak walked into the pantry and shut the door before her laughter escaped.

Mo drove the hydrant route in a department utility truck old enough that every hill produced a different complaint. The inspections themselves were familiar: caps, clearance, visible damage, water in the barrel, but the route wasn’t. They worked past stucco apartment buildings bright with bougainvillea, bait shops near the harbor, and gated homes perched above the ocean as though wealth could negotiate with gravity. Farther inland, houses pressed against slopes furred with sun-dried brush. “Canyon wind gets up,” Mo said, following her gaze, “everybody learns how close the hills are.”

Ellie marked a corroded cap for replacement. “Is that the official tourism slogan?”

“Captain writes the brochures.”

She laughed before she could stop herself. “How long have you worked with her?”

“Long enough to know that question has nothing to do with hydrants.”

Ellie bent over the inspection sheet. The paper had suddenly become fascinating. Mo spared her by starting the truck. He didn’t offer gossip or ask why Los Angeles had transferred a decorated firefighter up the coast with one duffel and no farewell party. Ellie liked him for both omissions, which was inconvenient. She preferred to dismiss people before they gave her reasons to miss them later.

On the return climb, Station 12 came into view above the roofs. The open bays looked almost welcoming. Ellie distrusted the thought on sight.

By late afternoon, Ellie had checked twenty-three hydrants, reorganized two shelves of hose fittings, and made a chicken-and-rice dinner good enough that Mo took personal offense. Cassie ate with the crew at the long table, listened more than she spoke, and thanked Ellie with the same grave courtesy she might have offered at a formal banquet. Once, Teak told a story about a gull stealing Jamie’s breakfast sandwich during a pier call, and Cassie’s mouth curved at one corner. The almost-smile changed her whole face.

Ellie looked down at her plate so fast her fork scraped the ceramic. No. Absolutely not.

She could survive an ice-queen captain who thought her personnel file was prophecy. She didn’t need to discover the woman had a hidden smile, careful hands, or gray eyes that caught the evening light.

After dinner, Ellie carried a stack of clean dish towels into the apparatus bay. The station had settled into its nighttime rhythm: low conversation from the day room, a television no one was watching, the faint tick of cooling metal. Engine 12 waited beneath the overhead lights.

That was when she noticed the plaque mounted on the wall beside it. The brass was polished more carefully than anything else in the bay.

FIREFIGHTER J. CALLOWAY

GONE, BUT ON EVERY CALL WITH US