Reckless Page 2

  “I’m going into that warehouse to do a search,” he said, and what do you know, it wasn’t a question. He’d have plenty of time to make nice with McManus later. Right now, he needed to do his job. His way.

  No hesitation.

  “Your level of fuck-uppery knows no bounds, Donovan. You’re not going anywhere.” McManus refused to budge, crossing his arms as if awaiting an argument. But Alex was done yapping, and he moved to just sidestep the guy so he could get on with what mattered.

  “I said stand down, you little punk,” the captain spat, matching Alex’s lateral movement as he poked a finger into his chest. Although the sensation barely made it past all the reinforced protection of his turnout gear, the contact sent a hot, unrelenting pulse of oh-hell-no all the way through his blood.

  He dropped his gaze toward the offending digit for only a split second before returning it to McManus’s beady eyes. “Take. Your hands. Off me.”

  Testosterone collided with the uncut adrenaline coursing through Alex’s veins, creating a whoosh of white noise in his ears. He was vaguely aware of the thud of boots over pavement, another voice adding to the distant, muffled sounds beyond the anger making a spin cycle out of his gut. But the only thing he heard with any clarity was the irrefutable challenge of Captain McManus’s reply.

  “Or what, son?”

  His body went subarctic despite the heat rolling off the building in front of him. “What did you call me?”

  McManus’s upper lip curled, his finger pressing harder as he hissed, “I said stand down. You’re out of your league. Son.”

  In one scissor-sharp instant, Alex’s last thread of control spontaneously combusted.

  His stiff-arm found McManus’s center mass in less than a breath, reopening the direct avenue of daylight between him and the warehouse’s closest point of entry. His legs made quick work of the distance, while a punishing kick eliminated the barrier of the door. Heat and smoke met him in a one-two punch of hot and nasty, and he yanked his mask over his face with a swift tug.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s less cordial than McManus is used to,” Cole said in a half holler, and Alex wheeled around just in time to see his best friend pull his own mask into place. Shock took a potshot at his rib cage, but the sensation didn’t last. Station Eight’s golden rule was to have each other’s backs above all else. Of course Cole hadn’t broken ranks. Just like Alex wouldn’t have if the situation were reversed.

  After all, there was no I in team.

  “I’ll deal with that weasel-faced asshat later,” Alex said, pointing to the dimly lit corridor in front of them. “Right now, we need to make sure this place is empty, from the top down.”

  “Copy that.” Cole snapped on his flashlight, jerking his helmet at the rusty door marked STAIRS. “Let’s go to work.”

  Alex flipped directly to go-mode, the echo of his boots on the concrete steps alternating with his deep-lunged shouts for anyone within earshot to call out. He and Cole divided the third-floor office space down the center of the smoke-stained hallway, checking the offices at the far end with an economy of movement. The first few rooms turned up enough discarded food wrappers and empty liquor bottles to send Alex’s hackles into high alert, and he slammed the doors shut in his wake to hold off the spread of heat and smoke pushing up from below.

  Someone was in here. And time was running out to find them.

  “Fire department! We’re here to help you. Call out!” He tore a path to the next office, swinging his flashlight over the littered floor. The beam caught on a pile of rumpled fabric in the corner, and Alex’s heart knocked against his ribs like an MMA fighter in a cage match as he raced over the dirt-streaked linoleum.

  A stuffed rabbit the color of grime tumbled from the empty sleeping bag.

  “Command to Donovan,” crackled the radio on Alex’s shoulder, and shit. Guess Crews had gotten the news flash on his whereabouts. “Get your ass out of that warehouse. Now.”

  “No can do, Lieu.” Alex stuck as much respect as he could to the words, but no way was he leaving this party with only half his dance card punched, especially now. He scanned the rest of the office, pulling the door snug within its frame as he moved back into the hallway. “We’ve got definite signs of squatters in here. I’m finishing this sweep.”

  Crews switched tactics on a dime, although his tone was no less pissed. “Command to Everett. I want you both to fall out immediately, if not sooner. Do you copy?”

  “Affirmative, sir,” Cole said, swinging his flashlight back toward the stairwell door as he signaled to Alex that his side of the floor was clear. “But with all due respect, if Donovan’s finishing this search, I’ve got his six.”

  Crews unleashed a string of upper-level curse words through the radio before continuing. “You’re in a world of goddamn hurt when you get out of there, Donovan.”

  But as much as getting chewed out by Crews was going to suck in Technicolor 3-D, taking the hit in order to do his job right was worth every syllable.

  “Copy that. But I’m not leaving ’til the rest of this building is clear.”

  Alex double-timed it to the second floor with Cole on his heels. Smoke clogged the hallways and larger storage rooms, turning their visibility to jack with a side of shit. In the handful of minutes they’d been in the building, the flames had rolled out to cover the entire north side of the second floor. Damn it, this scene was getting sketchier by the second.

  “Fire department! Call out!” Alex’s bellow thundered past his lips. Sweat trailed between his shoulder blades and over his eyebrows, his breath tearing a path through his lungs in spite of the mask regulating his air flow from the SCBA tank on his back. He repeated the yell in every door frame, searching each smoke-filled corner with growing despair.

  No one answered.

  “Donovan!” Cole hunched at the waist in the main hallway, planting himself in Alex’s line of vision with a tight shake of his head. “Looks like anyone who was in here took off. Squad’s gotta be close to done venting the roof, and this fire’s getting out of hand, fast.”

  Alex squinted through the haze of smoke and soot, sweat pouring down to sting his eyes beneath his mask. Shit—shit—Cole wasn’t wrong. Alex might jump the gun and the rest of the arsenal along with it sometimes, but that didn’t mean he had a death wish.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s hit the ground level and make sure no one got lost on their way to daylight. Go.”

  He and Cole pivoted toward the stairwell in tandem, their boots competing with the whooshing rush of the flames as they carved an exit path. They retraced their steps to the first floor, and Alex swung the beam of his flashlight through the thick waves of falling ash in a quick check of the cavernous ground-level space before following Cole through the front door. Sunlight blasted his retinas, momentarily French-frying his vision as he clambered back into the full reach of daylight, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the brightness overload.

  When he opened them a few seconds later, the first thing Alex saw was his boss, Captain Robert Westin.

  And the man was downright furious.

  Alex reached up, relieving himself of his helmet and mask combo as his gut plummeted toward the cracked and dusty pavement of Roosevelt Avenue. Although Captain Westin was a pretty hands-on boss—not to mention an extremely dedicated firefighter—he almost never showed up when another captain had already called the ball at a scene.

  Which meant someone had radioed him in. And Westin stuck to protocol hard and fast. Christ, Alex was going to need to work up more damage control than he’d thought in order to get out of this.

  “Cap, I—”

  “Do you need medical attention, Donovan?” A muscle pulled tight over Westin’s clean-shaven jaw, telling Alex in no uncertain terms to offer nothing but an answer to the question.

  “No, sir.”

  “Good.” The captain shifted to look at Crews for just a split-second’s worth of eye contact before pile-driving Alex with a cold, flat star
e. “Then store your gear in the engine and get in my vehicle. You’re going back to Eight with me.”

  Just like that, damage control became the understatement of the millennium.

  Alex unshouldered his SCBA tank, the blast of cool air that accompanied the removal of his hood and coat barely registering as he replaced his gear in his allotted storage space. He walked a straight line to the captain’s red and white department-issued Suburban, parking himself in the passenger seat as he shut the door and braced for impact.

  It didn’t come.

  The entire fifteen-minute drive back to Station Eight was filled with nothing but the intermittent squawk of the radio on Captain Westin’s shoulder and the low, rhythmic rumble of the Suburban’s engine. Although Alex was tempted to jump in and rip the Band-Aid off the conversation just to get it over with, he trapped his tongue between his teeth instead. Westin might be a great captain—one of the best, even—but he could be a salty old guy when he set his mind to it. Alex had seen Westin pissed enough to swear at, suspend, even sanction his firefighters if the spirit moved him.

  But only once in eight years had he seen the guy go for the full-out silent treatment, and yeah. Alex was going to have to play things just right in order to keep this little come to Jesus meeting from leaving a mark.

  Westin pulled the Suburban into the oversized garage bay on the far left of the two-story brick building, his precision barely a half step from surgical as he got out and shut the door. Alex ran a hand first over his helmet-matted blond hair, then the sweat-damp T-shirt he’d worn beneath his turnout gear, the impenetrable bite of smoke clinging to the bunker pants and suspenders he still had on over the rest of his uniform. His stomach knotted as he followed a still-silent Westin through the equally quiet hallways of Station Eight, passing the locker room and the house’s common space before cutting across to the back of the building where the captain’s office stood.

  Captain Westin pushed the door shut with a snick, finally breaking the silence. “Tell me, Donovan. In your eight-year tenure as a firefighter, have you ever been told that the chain of command is optional?”

  Alex cemented his feet to the linoleum to stand at complete attention, despite the fact that his vitals had just spiked up to oh-shit territory. “No, sir.”

  “Really?” Westin’s gray-blond brows winged upward, his arms flexing tight as he knotted them over the front of his crisply pressed uniform shirt. “Did you get a recent promotion I don’t know about, then? Because last I checked, both Captain McManus and Lieutenant Crews outrank the shit out of you.”

  “I can explain,” Alex started, but Westin cut him off with no more than a single shake of his head.

  “You shoved a superior officer to the ground before disregarding his command to stand down at the scene of an active fire, and then you disobeyed a direct order from a lieutenant in this house to fall out. You are going to have to do a hell of a lot more than explain to get yourself out of this.”

  Shock combined with realization to form a cocktail of fuck-me in his veins. “I didn’t mean to knock McManus down.”

  “Your intentions don’t mean a thing in the face of your actions,” Westin popped back, his stare going thermonuclear and wedging the rest of the story in Alex’s throat. “Every time you try to clean up a mess, the only thing you do is end up filthy. And it is getting harder and harder for me to keep hosing you off.”

  Anger snapped up from Alex’s chest, and it blew past his already questionable brain-to-mouth filter in one swift gust. “I only wanted to get around the guy, and anyway, he put his hands on me first.”

  “But you upped the stakes when you retaliated, not to mention when you ran into that building. McManus wants your head on a Thanksgiving platter, Donovan. But since I’m pretty sure he’ll settle for your job, you might want to change your tune.”

  Icy fingers of dread slithered between Alex’s ribs, digging in hard. “You can’t be serious,” he breathed. Being a firefighter was the axis that had kept his world spinning for the last eight years. The job wasn’t what Alex did, it was who he was, as much a part of him as his blood or breath or bones. He could not—under any circumstances—lose it.

  This house was the only family Alex had.

  “There has to be a way I can get around this,” he said, channeling all his effort into a level voice even though his pulse had surpassed warp speed. “I might not always go by the book, but come on, Cap. I belong here. I’m a good firefighter.”

  “You are a good firefighter,” Westin agreed, the surprise in Alex’s chest morphing quickly into trepidation as the captain added, “But lately I’ve got to wonder if you’re forgetting the difference between bravery and recklessness. We lost a good man from this house two and a half years ago.” His gaze shot through the window to the wall outside the office door, where a framed photo of Mason Watts hung in silent memorial, and Alex’s gut went for the full free fall. “I won’t lose another, especially not over something that can and should be controlled.”

  He scraped in a breath, unable to keep his exhale from going hoarse over his words. “I can’t lose this job, Captain Westin. You know I can’t. . . .” He broke off. Sucked in a breath. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Westin paused for a minute that lasted a month. “According to the personal conduct policy, there is one option.”

  “Name it.”

  “As your captain, I can recommend you for a remediation program. You’d have to agree to perform four weeks of community service, done concurrently with an unpaid leave of absence from the house. After that, the fire chief will review your case and decide whether or not to reinstate you to active duty.”

  Alex’s jaw took a one-way trip south. “You want me to ride the pine for four weeks?” Christ, those rule-writing desk jockeys knew exactly how to send the slap shot where it would hurt the most.

  Westin measured him with a brows-up frown, the gesture pulling the angry red scar that ran from his neck to the back of his ear into sharp relief. “You may be a good firefighter, but your personnel file reads like an adrenaline junkie’s guide to firefighting. Even if none of those sanctions stuck before, your actions today are a clear sign your mindset needs a redirect. McManus is gunning for your job. Now do you want to get your shit together, or do you want to get fired?”

  Shit. Shit. As much as it ripped at Alex’s gut, Westin was right. He needed damage control, no matter how pointless the community service would be. “Okay, okay. How fast can you get me into this . . . whatever. Volunteering thing?”

  “I’ll call the chief’s office to get you into the first placement they have available. But, Donovan? Do me a favor.”

  Right about now, he’d name his firstborn kid after the man. At least, he would if he were ever going to have one. “Anything.”

  “I run a tight house with even tighter rules, and your blowback ends up on my desk. Don’t make me sorry I went to bat for you.” Westin’s light brown stare flickered once before turning back to stone, but Alex met it with all the certainty he could muster.

  “I won’t, Captain. I swear.”

  Chapter Two

  Zoe Westin hustled from her aging Toyota Prius to the even more aging back entrance of the Hope House Shelter and Soup Kitchen with no less than two dozen thoughts marching an orderly line through her head. She had just enough time to make it through prep for today’s breakfast service before she’d have to inventory and organize the color-coded produce bins to get ready for their weekly perishables delivery. Then she’d move on to the dry goods inventory, write up next week’s volunteer schedule, oversee food preparations for lunch....

  Yep. Just another day in paradise, feeding people and making a difference, one meal at a time.

  “Okay. Let’s warm some bellies,” Zoe murmured with a grin, turning the heavy-duty dead bolt with a hard click. Returning the building keys to their assigned pocket in her messenger bag, she flipped on the lights to illuminate the back of Hope House’s kitchen. Her black and si
lver kitchen clogs echoed a determined rhythm over the floor tiles as she cut a path toward her office, but reality took a swipe at both her mood and her best-laid plans before she could even shrug all the way out of her jacket.

  Just got the paperwork on a new volunteer. He’s doing four weeks of full-time community service, and the city says he’s all yours, starting in the morning. Enjoy! T

  Zoe reached for the note that the shelter director, Tina, had left front and center on her desk, crumpling the oversized purple Post-it with a curse-laden sigh. Her plate was full enough without having to babysit another one of these community service yahoos—she’d already been through three in as many months. They were never serious about anything other than biding their time by doing the bare minimum. Damn it, she was never going to get Hope House’s soup kitchen all the way off the ground and make a difference without good, steady, reliable help.

  And failure wasn’t an option. Not when this soup kitchen was the only truth she had left.

  Trying to ignore the watermelon-sized chunk of dread making a new home in her gut, Zoe smoothed out the hem of her fitted black T-shirt and set her sights on the kitchen, grabbing an apron from one of the hooks by the deep-bellied stainless steel sinks. Although they only had the stock and capability for limited breakfast service on most mornings, feeding Hope House’s residents—along with anyone else who arrived in need of a meal—was her number-one priority. She’d have to figure out a way to deal with her latest risk-taker-slash-rule-breaker later.

  Right now, Zoe had food to prepare.

  Recalibrating her thoughts back to the task at hand, she pushed past the twin swinging doors leading from the back of the kitchen into the bare-bones dining room. Pale, early-morning daylight filtered in through the oversized windows at the front of the long, rectangular space, offering just enough visibility for her to make her way behind the dinged-up cafeteria-style counter set up along the rear wall. Not wanting to add injury to the insult she’d already racked up this morning, Zoe hit the panel of light switches by the commercial grade coffeemaker. She turned to grab the filters from the adjacent storage drawer and let the rhythm and the smells and the simplicity of the food soothe her like they always did.