Page 4 of Igniting Her

Ellie stopped. Every station had ghosts. Some lived in framed photographs or black bands kept in lockers. Some appeared whenever a crew repeated a joke whose origin nobody remembered. This one had been placed where every firefighter passed before climbing aboard.

Teak came through the bay carrying two bottles of water.

Ellie nodded toward the plaque. “Who was Calloway?”

Teak’s easy expression changed. Not much. Just enough. “One of ours.” She handed Ellie a bottle. “Come on. I’ll show you which shower doesn’t turn arctic when someone flushes upstairs.”

“That sounds deliberately evasive.”

“That sounds like plumbing information that could save your life.” Teak was already walking away. Across the bay, the captain’s office door stood open. Cassie sat at her desk with her head lowered, one hand motionless on the page before her.

That night, Ellie lay in the unfamiliar bunk room listening to five other people breathe and the harbor foghorn sound somewhere below the hill. Her body was tired. Her mind kept returning to the same details: the transfer packet beneath Cassie’s scarred hand, the one-sided smile at dinner, the plaque Teak wouldn’t explain. Most of all, she replayed the moment in the office when the captain’s perfect stillness had shifted.

Ellie had made a life out of pretending closed doors were invitations. She turned onto her side and pulled the thin blanket to her shoulder. Captain Cassie Everett had looked at her like trouble she intended to contain. The thought shouldn’t have sent heat through Ellie all over again.

She was going to make that woman react if it killed her.

2

CASSIE

The tones dropped at 2:07 a.m. Cassie was awake before the overhead lights came on. “Commercial structure fire, Santa Vera Harbor, Pier Four. Multiple callers reporting smoke and visible flame.” Around her, curtains snapped back and boots hit the bunk-room floor. The dispatch voice repeated the address. Cassie pulled on her station pants, stepped into her boots, and took the stairs two at a time.

Downstairs, the crew stepped into their turnouts with the practiced economy of people who had learned which motions wasted seconds. Pants up, suspenders over shoulders, coats fastened, radio straps on. Mo climbed behind the wheel. Cassie took the officer’s seat. Priya, Teak, Jamie, and Ridge secured themselves in the rear cab.

Ridge reached for the seat she’d been assigned without asking where to go. Good. Cassie disliked that the thought came with relief.

The bay doors lifted. Engine 12 rolled into the dark in eighty-four seconds, red light washing over the sleeping storefronts as they descended toward the harbor. “Warehouse is supposed to be vacant overnight,” Priya said from the rear-facing seat. She had the tablet open across one knee. “Marine repair supply. Solvents stored on-site.”

“Confirmed occupancy?” Cassie asked.

“Security guard called it in. Says he’s outside. No other employees on the roster.”

Beside Priya, Ridge pulled her hood into place. She didn’t look like a woman who had been asleep five minutes earlier. Her chin was lifted, her attention fixed, her warm hazel eyes dark beneath the pulsing lights. Cassie had reviewed every page of her available record after the station quieted. The commendations had been easy to find. So had the news footage: Ridge emerging from a burning apartment building with a bloodied civilian over her shoulders, both of them dropping into the arms of the crew outside. Hero Firefighter Saves Trapped Man. The kind of headline written by people who never had to order anyone back through the door.

The disciplinary envelope remained sealed. Cassie didn’t need it opened to recognize a pattern.

Smoke erased the stars above Pier Four before the engine turned through the harbor gates. The warehouse was a corrugated-metal block at the end of a service road, fire showing through three windows on the east side. Black smoke rolled low beneath the roofline and pushed toward the water. A security guard waved both arms beside the open vehicle gate.

Cassie keyed her radio as Mo positioned the engine beyond the corner of the building. “Engine 12 on scene. Single-story commercial warehouse, approximately one hundred by two hundred, heavy smoke showing, fire visible east side. Engine 12 establishing Pier Four Command. Engine 12 Search, Teak and Priya: force entry, hydrant, primary search. Engine 12 Attack, Ridge and Jamie: stretch an inch-and-three-quarter for a limited interior attack. Start a second alarm and notify HazMat.”

Once she had named the assignments, the scene became something she could control.

Mo set the pump. Priya caught the hydrant, then joined Teak at the loading-bay door. Ridge took the nozzle, Jamie at her back. Cassie met the security guard long enough to confirm what dispatch had given them: no employees scheduled, no one seen inside. The bulk paint thinner and marine adhesives were secured inside a rated storage room with a self-closing door on the east wall; the fire had started in the adjacent work area. The roofline remained straight, with no visible distortion in the steel frame. With protected chemical storage, clear egress, and a second alarm approaching, Cassie had a defensible window for a limited interior push to cut the fire off before it reached the rated room.

“Captain.” Ridge’s voice came over the radio, stripped clean of humor. “Engine 12 Attack at the entry. Charged line. Ready.”

Cassie looked at the smoke banking down as the loading door rose. Thick, fast, ugly. “Engine 12 Attack, advance ten feet and hold while Search checks the overhead.”

“Copy. Ten feet and hold.” Cassie heard the answer. Then she watched Ridge disappear into the dark. The fireground expanded around her. Second-alarm units announced their approach. Search reported the overhead steel visible and holding. Priya confirmed water supply. Wind pushed sparks off the east windows toward stacked pallets in the yard. Cassie assigned the arriving engine to exposure protection, requested the utility company, and tracked every voice on the channel. Every voice mattered. Ridge’s was the one Cassie kept listening for, though she told herself it was only because she was new.

“Engine 12 Attack, conditions.”

Jamie answered. “High heat, zero visibility. Moving toward the seat.”

“Your assignment was ten feet and hold.”

A beat of radio silence. Then Ridge: “Fire’s running the ceiling toward us. We can cut it off from here.”