Deep Burn (Station Seventeen Book 2) Read online

  Deep Burn

  Kimberly Kincaid

  Kimberly Kincaid Romance

  Contents

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Untitled

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  More Station Seventeen

  Copyright page

  DEEP BURN

  © 2017 Kimberly Kincaid

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  This book is dedicated to Rachel Hamilton,

  who is the biggest cheerleader a

  girl could ever ask for. Capelli is

  all yours, doll!

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book is always a team effort, particularly so with DEEP BURN. This book wouldn’t be in y’all’s hot little hands if it weren’t for the following people.

  Nicole Bailey with Proof Before You Publish, whose patience is unending (I really mean this!), and Jaycee DeLorenzo with Sweet n’ Spicy Designs, who knows just where to place a photograph to get maximum ab exposure, thank you for being my dream team. Geoff Symon, who is just brilliant and never bats an eye when I send him messages like, “Exactly how much blood is in the human body, anyway?”—thank you for guiding me toward the proper forensics. Any mistakes or liberties are solely mine (and I took a few!), but all the knowledge is Geoff’s.

  Robin Covington and Avery Flynn, there isn’t enough gratitude for the plot sessions in the minivan, the phone calls that kept my hero and heroine (and villain!) in line, and all the support you give me on a daily basis. Huge thanks to Skye Jordan, who pushed me through the early stages of this book. I’m also grateful for the guidance and kindness of Laura Kaye and Cristin Harber, whose praise for the Station Seventeen series humbles me and makes me giggle.

  To my family—Reader Girl, Smarty Pants, and Tiny Dancer, who really earned an ice cream party for this one. And an extra-special shout out to Mr. K, who helped me write a computer expert hero with a whole lot of gadgety toys and online cloak and dagger. If I’d been left to my own devices, Capelli would’ve barely been able to figure out DropBox. Thanks, honey!

  Lastly, to my readers, who always have room for more firefighters (and cops and paramedics and chefs and Army Rangers and and and) Thank you for making my job possible.

  A note to the reader about time warps

  If you’ve been with Station Seventeen from the beginning, you may note a timing issue in this book. If you haven’t, that’s okay. The stories all stand alone, and this passage won’t spoil anything for you!

  This book picks up a few months after the last one, SKIN DEEP, left off, and it follows chronologically. But many of you know, I wrote a novella, DEEP CHECK, that is labeled “1.5” in the order of things.

  Funny thing about that. DEEP CHECK was part of an anthology that was released between this book in your hands and SKIN DEEP (thus, the 1.5) But since DEEP CHECK had to happen according to the end of the hockey season, as our hero there is a hockey star, I had to write it out of chronological order with the Station Seventeen timeline.

  DEEP BURN takes place in January-February, where DEEP CHECK is actually June of the same “year.” So while you got DEEP CHECK first, the events in the book don’t actually happen until after the events of DEEP BURN take place.

  All of that is to say that’s why you won’t see Finn Donnelly in this book. Because he hasn’t come back to Remington yet! But I couldn’t pass up a chance to bring you his and January’s story in the anthology, which had a specific release date and timeline, so…I time warped a bit in order to do that.

  Thanks for letting me bend the rules!

  Chapter 1

  Shae McCullough wanted exactly three things: a long, hot bath, a heaping plate of chicken Parmesan, and her bed occupied by a very sexy man looking for an equally sexy time. But since she was a mere five hours into her twenty-four hour shift as Station Seventeen’s only female firefighter, she’d have to settle for a three-minute buzz through the house shower, a slab of meatloaf that could probably stunt-double as a brick, and a bunk full of co-workers who she’d never see as anything other than the brothers she’d never had.

  Thank God she got to run into burning buildings for a living. That made all the other shit worth the price of admission.

  “You done in there, Princess? Walker and Slater came out like ten minutes ago,” she called, balancing her towel and her bag of toiletries in one hand as she placed a sharp knock on the shower room door with the other. After five years of hauling hoses and fighting fires, Shae was used to rotating in for showers at Seventeen.

  Just like she was used to a double dose of side-eye from her engine lieutenant, Ian Gamble, when she got brash enough to do things like call him Princess. Which—admittedly—was pretty often, but come on. Was it really her fault she got just as sweaty during their training as everyone else, or that the lieutenant in question took longer showers than a fifteen-year-old girl? She needed a scrub-down like nobody’s business, and she wasn’t going to get one by meekly waiting.

  “McCullough.” Gamble opened the shower room door, a frown etched over the already hard line of his jaw, and while the expression probably would’ve tempted most people to tuck tail and run, Shae just returned it with a bright smile.

  “Hey, boss. You thinking about finishing up anytime soon, or were you going for some sort of record with your loofah?”

  One dark brown brow arched all the way up. “You know, I’d give you more drills for being a pain in my ass, but the problem is, you’d probably fucking enjoy them.”

  “I do love me a good obstacle course. Or—oooh!” Shae paused, her pulse doing a hop-skip in her veins. “If you want to send me out with squad next time they practice rope rescue from the tower, I won’t complain. Or even—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it, you little adrenaline junkie,” Gamble said, and although Shae knew he was fighting like mad to look mad, a hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Anyway, I’m done in here now. Obviously.” He dropped his black-coffee stare to his ridiculously muscular body, which was covered in a sheen of shower water, a half-dozen inky black tattoos, and—thankfully—a towel.

  In truth, Shae’s gratitude had nothing to do with embarrassment or impropriety. If Gamble had decided to trot out bare-assed to ration up shit for cutting his shower short, she’d have responded with the same smile/sarcasm combo as if he’d been wearing a full set of turnout gear. Not that he wasn’t a good-looking guy, because hey, the truth was kind of hard to miss when it was standing in front of you in nothing but a scrap of cotton and a scowl. But Shae’s normally hyperactive libido didn’t so much as twinge for Gamble, or anyone else whose name got yelled out
at A-shift’s roll call. Work relationships, even ones that stayed strictly between the sheets (or in the back seat of a car…or up against a wall…or…) were one of the very few things firmly in her “never” column. She had to trust the guys at Seventeen with her life, and they had to trust her with theirs. Fucking that up with a bunch of more-than-friends feelings?

  So not on her agenda. After all, hot guys could be found damn near anywhere. But guys she could really trust when the world went pear-shaped?

  Not so much.

  Shae grinned, straightening to her full five foot eight as she reached up to clap Gamble’s shower-damp shoulder. “Awesome, because after those ladder drills you just put us through, I need a threesome with my soap and shampoo.”

  She’d no sooner nudged past him, though, than the high-pitched blare of the all-call sounded off from the overhead speakers, and the karma of being a smartass came back to bite her square on the seat of her sweaty, seen-better-days uniform pants.

  “Engine Seventeen, Squad Six, Ambulance Twenty-Two, Battalion Seventeen, structure fire, four hundred block of Crestridge Drive, requesting immediate response.”

  “So much for that threesome,” Gamble said, making a quick grab for his uniform pants as Shae dropped her toiletry bag on the counter like a bad habit and turned to haul her cookies toward Engine Seventeen.

  “Ah, it’s all good,” she called over her shoulder, even though she really did need the lather/rinse/repeat. “I’d rather get down and dirty with my helmet and Halligan bar anyway. See you in the rig.”

  The words barely made it past the shower room door before Shae heard the thing thump closed. Moving briskly and tempering her breath against the inevitable press of her pulse in her ears, she locked her focus on the fastest path to the engine bay. Her five years of tenure as a firefighter had earned her the operator’s spot on Engine Seventeen, and God, if there was anything that came close to the rush of running into a burning building, it was driving the big-ass vehicle that would get them all there in the first place.

  “Hey, hey, McCullough,” came the twangy Southern drawl of Seventeen’s rescue squad lieutenant, Gabe Hawkins, less than a second after he entered the hallway from the common room with more than half the house on his boot heels. “You ready to drive that engine like you stole it?”

  Shae channeled her adrenaline into a laugh, because it was either that or redline on the stuff, and she was none too interested in letting the natural response of her brain veto all the hard-fought training she’d put to her body. “That all depends.”

  “On…?” Hawk asked, blond brows raised.

  “Your goals,” Shae said. “If initiative is what you’re after, then my answer is yes with hell yes on top. But if you’re asking as a rescue squad lieutenant, then my answer is no, sir. I wouldn’t even dream of doing such a reckless thing with a department-owned vehicle.”

  “You would too, you little kiss-ass,” joked Kellan Walker, her fellow engine-mate, who also just so happened to be a former Army Ranger and the current live-in boyfriend of one of the toughest female detectives in Remington.

  Not that his badass résumé kept Shae from stepping up to the plate to answer him with a ball-busting grin. “Haters never prosper, Walker.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s cheaters,” Kellan flipped back, giving her shoulder a friendly nudge with his own as they hoofed it to the double doors at the end of the hall.

  “Oh, please.” Shae nudged him in return. “If we’re going to dwell on semantics, I prefer to think of myself as an opportunist instead of an apple polisher.”

  Hawk’s pop of laughter echoed off the cinderblock walls of Station Seventeen’s triple-wide engine bay as he headed for the squad vehicle on the far side of the room. “Opportunist it is. If squad needs extra hands on search and rescue for this call, you’re in, McCullough.”

  Freaking yes. “Thank you!” Shae called out, hustling over the buffed concrete floor toward Engine Seventeen. Her excitement at the chance to run headlong into potentially grave danger—along with the banter that seemed laid back on the surface—probably seemed odd or even callous to most outsiders, she knew. But much to the chagrin of her parents and the bewilderment of her two older sisters, Shae just wasn’t a day-jobber. God, the mere thought of all that staid routine gave her the fucking sweats.

  From blood to backbone, all she wanted was adventure. If she had to shred a little convention to find it?

  All the better. She’d never been much for propriety anyway.

  Clattering to a stop beside the bright red and white engine, Shae methodically slowed her breathing even though her movements kicked into double-time. As Engine Company’s operator, she didn’t have the luxury of being able to gear up on the way to the scene like Gamble and Walker and their rookie, Luke Slater, which meant she had about six nanoseconds to Houdini her way into the turnouts she’d left prepped and ready to go next to the front of the vehicle.

  “Hello, baby,” Shae murmured, toeing out of her running shoes and skinning into her bunker pants with one swift slide. “Come to momma.”

  Another seamless move had her suspenders in place over the shoulders of her navy blue RFD T-shirt, then the comforting weight of her coat on top of that—breathe in—and another still put her behind the wheel of the engine—breathe out. Shae’s heart thudded against her sternum in a solid bid to get her brain to give in to the triple-dog-dare coming from her central nervous system. But giving in to her physiology would only get her the world’s fastest tap-out, so she tightened her belly along with her seatbelt and kicked the engine into a low, diesel-fueled growl.

  Gamble stealthed his way into the officer’s seat next to her, which was downright goddamn freaky considering he was roughly the size of a professional wrestler and a lumberjack combined, and Shae grabbed her headset from its resting spot over her right shoulder. By the time she’d maneuvered the thing into place, Gamble had put eyes on both Walker and Slater in the step behind them and given up a clipped, “fall out” over his own headset, and hell if he had to tell her twice.

  “Okay, let’s see what we’re dealing with here,” he said, turning his attention toward the dashboard monitor that gave them updates from emergency services as Shae steered the engine from the fire house garage into the deceptively sunny January afternoon. “Dispatch has report of a house fire at four ninety-two Crestridge Drive.” With a few keystrokes, he clacked the rig’s GPS to life. “Looks like the nearest major cross street is—”

  “Glendale,” Shae supplied, her brain mapping out the city blocks of their call area that she’d long since memorized.

  “That’s in North Point.” Walker’s voice was slow and full of caution as it filtered over the shared channel. “I know the neighborhood from the Julian DuPree case.”

  Shae’s stomach squeezed. Kellan had been a somewhat inadvertent part of the police investigation that had taken down one of Remington’s nastiest criminals a few months ago, and he had the literal scars to prove it.

  “It’s a rough part of the city,” Slater agreed quietly into his mic, and Shae nodded to turn the assessment into a trifecta. Run-down houses with poor construction and even poorer upkeep, all crowded together like a mouth full of crooked teeth? It was a five-star recipe for Very Bad Things, especially when fire joined the party.

  “Well, wherever it is, it’s burning pretty good,” Gamble said. “This report from dispatch has flames showing on Alpha, Bravo, and—shit. Charlie sides of the residence.”

  Unable to help it, Shae gasped, the sound of her shock mixing in with the soft static on the line. “Already?”

  It wasn’t as if burning houses didn’t attract attention, and dispatch never sat on their thumbs when someone called 9-1-1 to report a fire. How the hell could a house—even a small one—burn that fast? Unless…

  Gamble leaned in for a closer look at the update flashing over the monitor and bit out a top-shelf curse. “And to put the frosting on this little cupcake, the 9-1-1 caller is reporting the
house to be a known meth lab.”

  “Oh, hell,” Shae murmured. They knew better than to take call-ins as gospel—after all, civilians could run the gamut from mistaken to malicious. But the solvent-based chemicals used to cook crystal meth were highly flammable, not to mention highly toxic. A fire could definitely start and spread more quickly than usual with those sorts of extra-curriculars going on.

  “Alright. Gear up,” Gamble said gruffly, the same thoughts doubtlessly going through his head. “Squad will take point if there’s a hazmat situation, but it looks like this one’s gonna be all hands on deck, so have your masks ready to go. And McCullough?” He spared her the briefest glance from across the front of the engine, but God, she felt every inch of his seriousness as he added, “Don’t dawdle getting us there.”

  “Copy that, Lieutenant.” Locking down her focus even further, Shae stared through the engine’s windshield and dropped her foot a little harder over the accelerator. Maneuvering through traffic oddly soothed her nerves—right turn on Hamilton Avenue, breathe in. Cut over to Queen Anne Street to save a few seconds, breathe out—and by the time she pulled up to the dilapidated two-story house at the end of Crestridge Drive, her mind was as lasered in as her body.

  Which was great, because the scene in front of her was a pure shit show.

  “Radios on,” Gamble called out amidst the heavy thump of bootsteps on the pavement as they all clambered out of the engine damn near simultaneously. Shae flipped the switch on the two-way at her shoulder without looking, taking in her surroundings instead. Her gut filled with dread as her gaze swept methodically from left to right, and the sensation didn’t get any better when she reversed it for a lightning-fast double-check, just as she’d been trained to.