“Well, well! Look what the breeze blew in.”

“Ah, hell. There goes the neighborhood.”

“Damn, they’ll let every last troublemaker into this place!”

Holy shit, it was good to finally be back at work.

Swinging her duffle bag from her shoulder to the locker room bench in front of her, Shae didn’t even bother trying to check her grin.

“Yeah, yeah. I missed you too.” She spun a look from Kellan to Faurier to Hawkins before adding, “You jackasses.”

“Glad to see you’re back where you belong, McCullough,” Dempsey said, pulling a battle-tested navy blue RFD baseball hat over his dark brown hair with a smile. “We were beginning to worry you might’ve gone over to the dark side and decided to become a cop.”

“Not a chance,” she said, although there was no disguising the pride in her chest or the weariness in her mind at having already put in over fifty hours this week, and it was only Friday morning. “Don’t get me wrong. Working in intelligence was exciting and everything, but I’ll take bunker gear over bullets any day. Plus”—her belly squeezed as she thought of the last six days she’d spent working tirelessly at the Thirty-Third, then did an outright flip at the thought of the corresponding nights she’d spent in bed with Capelli—“the team has a really good handle on the case I was assisting them with now. My hours at arson are complete, A-shift is up here at the fire house today, and…what can I say? I missed you Neanderthals.”

Shae turned toward her locker, going through her pre-roll call routine as everyone around her joked and laughed and did the same. Okay, so the story she’d just given up had been technically accurate, but it had also definitely been the Cliff’s Notes version of the truth. While the intelligence unit had amassed enough background information on Conrad Vaughn this week to have a pretty decent picture of his handiwork from the last five years, the only traces they’d been able to find of his actual location or his next possible target had been just that. Scraps. Details outdated enough to be useless. Information that was either scrambled or incomplete. She’d researched and investigated as much as she could on the arson end, but without evidence linking Vaughn to the scenes, she’d hit a standstill. The guy had lived up to his nickname, giving them only brief, shadowy glimpses before leading them to dead-end after dead-end.

Shae closed her locker, smoothing a hand over her RFD T-shirt and navy blue uniform pants. Yes, they’d been investigating two serious crimes, and hell yes, Vaughn was definitely the living embodiment of All Things Purely Evil. But he’d been church-mouse quiet all week, and while that sucked in terms of trying to pin him down, Shae couldn’t deny her relief at the underlying facts.

They might not know where Vaughn was, but he hadn’t threatened her again, and he hadn’t burned anything to the ground this week, either.

And if he tried, this time they’d be ready for him.

“McCullough! You’re back.” Slater’s blue-gray eyes went wide, his boots shuffling to a stop on the locker room linoleum just an instant before he broke into a smile.

“That’s the rumor,” she said, but not even her wry comeback could keep her genuine grin at bay.

Slater’s expression slipped into more serious territory, and he lowered his voice even though everyone else had cleared out of the room. “I heard you were working on a pretty nasty case over at arson. Is everything okay?”

A pang centered itself behind Shae’s sternum, fading to a dull thud as it spread out over her rib cage. Protocol dictated that she not discuss the particulars of the case with anyone other than members of the intelligence unit or fire department brass. Of course brass included Captain Bridges, and also Gamble, who had checked in with her in that quiet yet utterly badass way of his all week long. The truth was, there wasn’t much—if anything—to check on now. All that was left was to wait for Vaughn to turn up so intelligence could tie him to the Denton/Lawrence murders and put him away forever, then arson could close the two cases they had against him, to boot.

And that would happen. Shae was one hundred percent certain of it. Because she and Capelli and everyone else in the intelligence unit had worked far too hard for it not to.

Covering any seriousness her pause might have given up, Shae looked at Slater and nodded. “Working in arson is definitely an eye-opener, but somebody’s got to keep you guys on your toes around here. So tell me. What’d I miss?”

“Let’s see,” Slater said, leaning a shoulder against the bank of lockers beside him. “A half dozen fire calls that were more smoke than substance, a hit and run that turned out to be a mannequin that fell off the back of a truck, and a healthy baby girl delivered in the back seat of a Chevy Malibu.”

“Ohhh, please tell me Gamble had to take point on the baby.” While she could count on one hand the number of things that freaked the big bad lieutenant out, squirming, squalling infants were so at the top of the list.

Slater’s soft laugh said he knew it, too. “Nah. Parker and Quinn made it with plenty of time. Speaking of which”—he shifted, just a small straightening of his spine and shoulders, but it was enough to snare every last bit of Shae’s attention—“I thought about what you said. You know, about managing the stuff that scares you. And I guess it turns out I’m not too crazy about blood.”

“You wouldn’t be the only firefighter with that phobia,” she said. God, she’d heard dozens of stories of first responders who were terrified of blood, just like she’d been front and center at enough trauma scenes to know that in most cases, the fear was legit.

Funny, the glint in Slater’s eyes looked far from scared, though. “Well, I decided to do something about it. I’m going to train as a paramedic. You’ll still be stuck with me on Engine during A-shift,” he added, likely in response to the fact that Shae’s jaw had just dropped down for a meet and greet with the floor tiles. “But the best way for me to conquer my fear is to face it head-on. Plus, if I’m trained in both fire and EMS, I can pick up more extra shifts, and Quinn has already been really cool about giving me some pointers.”

An expression moved over the rookie’s face, something odd that Shae couldn’t readily name. But before she could be sure she’d seen it, let alone identify what it was or what had triggered it, Gamble cleared his throat from a few feet away.

“McCullough. Slater. Roll call is in five. Thought you might not be interested in Bridges’s bad graces until at least lunch time.”

She’d give him this—he’d delivered the words with edge to spare. But then his mouth curved just the slightest degree, and she couldn’t help it. Her grin came charging back at full steam.

“Aw, you missed me,” Shae said, but of course, the big guy didn’t budge.

“You’re pushing your luck.”

She turned what wanted to be a snort into a cough, just in the nick of time. “You’re not really surprised, are you?”

One nearly black brow arched up over an equally dark stare. “Roll call’s in four now. And McCullough?”

“Yes, sir?”

Gamble turned on his boot heels to face the doorway leading into the fire house, looking back over one gigantic shoulder just briefly as he said, “Good to have you back.”

“No place I’d rather be, Lieutenant.”

Shae’s cheeks warmed with happiness, but it was a sentiment that wouldn’t last if she didn’t make it to roll call on time. After a quick “let me know if I can help” to Slater on the paramedic training, she aimed herself down the hallway leading to the main hub of the fire house, including the meeting room where they held their shift-change meeting every morning at oh-seven-hundred, sharp.

But she got no more than six strides from the locker room when her phone buzzed in her back pocket, and her cheeks warmed with something a whole lot naughtier than happiness at the sight of the text message on her screen.

You make it to Seventeen okay?

The words were ordinary. Ones any member of intelligence might use—God knew she’d gone the check-in route more in the last week than she had in all her years as a teenager combined. But the name next to the message sent a flutter through her like she was chock-full of butterflies, and okay, yeah. Fine. It was a little crazy, and a lot impulsive, but Shae didn’t care.

She had it pretty bad for James Capelli. And his sort of bad was so. Very. Good.

Sliding her cell phone more firmly against her palm, she texted back, Come on, Starsky. It’s a ten-minute drive. Even I have a tough time getting into trouble in a timeframe like that.

I doubt it, came the quick reply, and oh, she liked him more than a little. But I’ll take that as a yes.

It’s a yes, Shae thumb-typed back. But you don’t have to check up on me. I already texted Hale when I walked in the door.

I know, and I know. Have a good day.

Despite their simplicity, Shae knew the cadence with which he’d speak the words, could hear in her mind the serious care that would go into them, and suddenly, they weren’t simple at all.

Shit, she was going to be late.

Hustling down the hallway, Shae made it into the meeting room T-minus three seconds before Captain Bridges shut the door. Roll call became morning duties (okay, so she hadn’t missed mopping the floors) which then became three fairly minor back-to-back calls and some ladder drills (ah, but she had missed looking down at the city from a hundred feet up on the aerial.) Shae moved from one thing to the next, falling back into her routine with ease until the afternoon coasted into dusk, then dusk into full-on darkness…

The all-call blasted her awake just shy of eleven P.M.

Engine Seventeen, Squad Six, Ambulance Twenty-Two, Battalion Seventeen, primary units, Engine Nine, Ladder Forty-Two, Ambulance Nineteen, secondary units, structure fire, nineteen hundred block of Winding Ridge Terrace, requesting immediate response.

Shae shook the sleep from her brain and stumbled in the direction of the bunkroom door, but after two weeks of uninterrupted sleep at night, she had to admit, clarity was a tough nut to crack.

“You good, McCullough? Because this one sounds like it ain’t a Tupperware party,” Hawkins said, and she nodded, chucking her hair into a close approximation of a ponytail as she beat feet toward the engine.

“Yes, sir,” she said, her heart kicking into fifth gear. There was decidedly less banter during calls that hauled them out of bed, for sure. But for two houses to be called to a scene, right off the bat like that?

Shae would bet her paycheck this wasn’t some yahoo burning leaves in his yard.

Stepping into her turnout gear, she yanked the heavy weight of her bunker pants over the sweats she slept in when she was on shift. The process jump-started her focus, the order of the steps oddly honing her adrenaline into sharp, streamlined calm.

Coat, helmet, breathe in. Hood and gloves at the ready, breathe out…

Her SCBA and mask were already in the rig, and anyway, they needed to get gone. Her muscles squeezed with familiar tension as she pulled herself into the operator’s seat, sending the engine into a diesel-fueled growl with one hand while hooking the other under her seatbelt and snapping the thing into place.

“Address is in the GPS, McCullough. We’re a go,” Gamble clipped out, jerking his headset into place while she did the same.

Shae’s inhale was surprisingly smooth considering how hard her adrenal gland was trying to commandeer her lungs. “Copy that. Engine Seventeen is a go.”

She pulled out of the bay, her eyes on the road and her mind mapping out the path in front of them, and Gamble’s hands moved briskly over the dashboard unit that displayed real-time updates from the city’s dispatch center.

“Okay, boys and girls. Let’s see what we’re dealing with here. Dispatch has multiple nine-one-one callers reporting heavy smoke and flames showing at a large residence in South Hill. Looks like it’s under construction.”

“At least there won’t be any entrapment,” came Kellan’s voice over the headset, but Gamble eighty-sixed the guy’s silver lining with a grunt.

“Not so fast, Walker. Looks like one of the call-ins was from a construction foreman who had a crew at the site. He told dispatch two of his guys are unaccounted for.”

“Are you kidding me?” Kellan asked at the same time Shae’s pulse snapped in surprise. “It’s twenty-three hundred, for Chrissake. Who works construction in the middle of the night?”

“That’s not even the worst part. Looks like this place is huge, and it’s already showing flames on the Delta, Charlie—shit. Everywhere. This fire sounds like a serious cluster fuck.”

“Wait.” Finally, the fog lifted all the way off Shae’s brain and she lined up the location on the GPS with the map of the city in her head. “This is in the most upscale section of South Hill. Over where the mayor is…”

Oh shit. Shit.

“This is the exact location of that monstrosity the mayor is building,” she breathed, her voice tight with shock as it echoed through the headset.

“The mansion that takes up the entire freaking block?” Slater asked.

Shae made a hard left onto Madison Boulevard, her foot pressing harder over the accelerator as she passed the Plaza hotel and the swanky shopping district that accompanied it.

“Affirmative.” It was also the mansion currently burning down at a very hot, very unnatural rate of speed with two people trapped inside, and something hard and cold turned over in Shae’s gut.

“Gamble,” she said, channeling all her effort into keeping her lungs steady. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in… “I need you to tell dispatch to call the intelligence unit at the Thirty-Third. Tell them we’re all fine,” she added before she even inhaled again, because God, the last thing she needed was for Capelli or Moreno or anybody else on the team to lose their minds when they’d need them most. “But they need to get out to this scene ASAP.”

Gamble’s brows shot toward his hairline. “I get that this isn’t exactly a grease fire, McCullough, but the cops? There’s no evidence this is a crime scene.”

Shae knew it was a flyer. A gut feeling. A guess.

But she also knew she wasn’t wrong. A fire this big, burning this fast, with two men trapped inside?

It had Conrad Vaughn’s fingerprints all over it.

“I need you to call Capelli. Please.”

Whether it was the polite word or the decidedly impolite way she’d just bit it out, Shae had no idea. But something grabbed Gamble’s attention enough to make him lift the handset on the dashboard radio.

“We’ll need to radio Bridges too,” she said, certainty and dread combining into a ball in the pit of her stomach. “I’m telling you, there’s something very wrong about this fire.”

Any doubt to her claim was obliterated when they pulled up to the scene a few minutes later, and sweet Jesus, this fire was huge.

“Gamble. McCullough.” Bridges was on the asphalt beside the engine the instant Shae had it in park. “Intelligence is on the way. But we need to find those two men trapped inside this house and start knocking down these flames, and we need to do it now.”

“Copy that,” Shae and Gamble replied in unison. Her heart pushed her blood on a circuit so fast, each beat pressed against her eardrums in a thump of white noise. The “house” in front of them was more Taj Mahal than actual residence, with its white stone façade and endless windows, porticoes, and columns. The power had clearly shorted out, although searing orange flames were already showing in more than half the smoke-clogged windows, and seriously, how were they supposed to find anyone in these conditions?

Analyze, then hypothesize.

The words anchored her calm into place. Buckling her helmet with suddenly steady fingers, Shae shouldered her SCBA unit, waiting for orders from Bridges as he moved back to his command post in front of the scene.

“Engine Seventeen and Squad Six, this is Command. We have reports of two men still inside the structure, last known location Bravo side. Hawkins, this place may be under construction, but it’s also fully under roof, so we’ll need a vent. Take Dempsey.”

Shae craned her neck to look up at the roofline, her shoulders tightening at the sight of the slate tiles, the multiple gables and turrets, and the dramatic pitch.

But all Hawkins said was, “Yes, sir,” turning to grab the circular saw from its compartment in the squad vehicle before he and Dempsey fell out in a clatter of boots on pavement.

“Engine Nine just arrived, and they are on lines,” Bridges continued, his eyes never leaving the house, carefully scanning and assessing the scene. “The rest of you are on search and rescue. Gamble, take point. Time is an issue. Go.”

The lieutenant didn’t pause. Just moved, and Shae forced her legs to copy his strides as best she could with their nine-inch height differential. She had to analyze. Focus. Help find the men trapped inside before the roof collapsed or the fire flashed over.

They had minutes. If they were lucky.

“Alright,” Gamble said, eyeing up the gigantic expanse of stone and glowing flames in front of him as they cut a path over the ridiculously long, ridiculously ostentatious stone-paved walkway. “We’ve got a ton of ground to cover, and visibility is going to be for shit. I’ll radio Cap and see if he can get some spotlights going from the engine.”

“Fuck. This place has to be twenty thousand square feet,” Faurier murmured, his eyes sweeping over the house in front of them. Shae nodded in agreement—between the thick cover of smoke, the eerie shadows being thrown off by the emergency vehicles, and the sheer size of the house itself, she was struggling to keep up with her own scene assessment.

Doubt panged at her breastbone in a demand for re-entry, but oh no. No way was she scaling back on this call. “We can tether ourselves to anchor points to keep from getting turned around,” she said.

Gamble nodded, just once in agreement as they reached the bottom of a set of stone steps leading up to two mahogany and stained-glass doors that looked like they belonged on a cathedral. “Good call,” he answered, shifting forward to advance.

But Slater’s arm shot upward, fist closed in the universal sign for hold. “Wait! Do you smell that?”

The unmistakable chemical scent pinched at Shae’s senses, her gut dumping toward her knees. “That’s gasoline,” she said, and oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. “This is arson, Gamble. This fire was set deliberately.”

Gamble swore in acknowledgment, radioing Bridges with the find. “We still have two men to find, so mask up and watch your backs. McCullough, you’re with me on floor one, Bravo side. Walker, you’re with Gates on second floor Bravo. Faurier, take Slater and sweep first floor Charlie side in case these guys tried to escape out the back and got jammed up. Copy?”

Without so much as a nanosecond’s worth of a pause after their affirmative replies, Gamble smashed through the stained glass with his Halligan bar, reaching in to release the deadbolt he’d rightly assumed would’ve been a pain in the ass to breach any other way. The door—which had to be four inches thick—thumped inward on a heavy swing, and Shae followed Gamble into the near black depths of the foyer while everyone else fell out on their S&R assignments.

“We’ll have to split up,” Gamble shouted past his mask. “I’ll take the rear section down this hallway, you take this part of the house right here. And Shae?” He spared her only a lightning-fast glance before continuing, because truly, it was all they had. “Do not do anything stupid.”

“Copy that, Lieutenant.”

Turning on her helmet-mounted spotlight along with the one clipped to the front left side of her coat, Shae stepped farther into the part of the house she’d been assigned to search. Sweat popped over her forehead in a near-immediate physical reaction to the blast of heat coming from the interior of the house, and her heart went from a steady rhythm to an out-and-out brawl beneath her gear.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Analyze. Make a plan.

Her voice flew out, clear and strong. “Fire department! Call out!”

She surveyed the room as quickly as possible for any potential hazards, cursing inwardly as she realized the whole fucking place was a potential hazard. Stacks of building materials, the unfinished sheet rock panels of all four walls, the rafters and sub flooring above her, all of them were covered in the deep glow flames.

Still, she wouldn’t be deterred. Attaching the nylon tether she carried specifically for calls like these to the anchor on her coat, Shae wrapped the opposite end around the only support beam she could find that wasn’t actively burning. Her muscles screamed beneath the weight of her gear and the heat swamping her from all sides, but still, she hollered, “Fire department! Is anyone here?”

Shae made her way into the space one step at a time. Although she hadn’t thought it possible, the fire grew even stronger, the smoke and lack of daylight making it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her even with her helmet lamp going full blast. A section of the rafters broke off and fell to the floor with a spark-filled crash, and okay, yeah. Shit had just gone from zero to pear-shaped.

Just as she reached for the two-way on her shoulder, though, Kellan’s voice broke through the whoosh of the flames. “Command, this is Walker! We have two men down, Bravo side, floor two.”

“Walker this is Command,” came Bridges’s voice. “Are you clear for the primary exit?”

The pause was excruciating even though it lasted only seconds. “Affirmative. Gates and I are a go for the primary exit.”

“Copy that. Command to all units, fall out immediately. Gamble, McCullough, Slater, Faurier, I want you out of there right now.”

God, Shae didn’t need to hear the command twice. Pivoting on her boot heels, she reclaimed her tether, tracing her strides—ten, eleven, twelve—back to the spot where she’d started. She sent a quick glance around the foyer to make sure there weren’t any new hazards in her path before she reached for her tether to release it, goose bumps chasing the sweat on her skin and freezing her movements at the sound of Gamble’s voice crackling over the two-way.

“Command, this is Gamble. I’m on floor one, Bravo side…I think. There’s zero visibility in here, and I lost my anchor…”

He trailed off. Ice slid over Shae’s spine despite the hell-hot conditions around her as she registered his tone, strung tightly with something she’d never, ever heard in his voice in the entire five years she’d known him.

Fear.

“Command, this is McCullough. I’m still in position, first floor, Bravo side, and I’m already tethered to an anchor point. Requesting permission for search and rescue.”

“McCullough—” Gamble cautioned, and frustration welled in her throat.

“I’m the closest person to you, Gamble, and you’re wasting time by arguing! Give me sixty seconds, Cap. I can do this. I can.”

Bridges paused, but only for a breath. “Copy that. Gamble, hold your position and set off your PASS device. McCullough, you have sixty seconds. Go.”

Shae was in motion before he’d even started sentence number two. With swift, methodical movements, she double-checked her equipment, forging a path down the hallway toward the screeching signal coming from Gamble’s personal alert safety system. The hall branched off in what looked like two identical passageways, both equally twisty and clogged with smoke and flames. God, no wonder the lieutenant had gotten turned around back here—

Shae could barely see a foot in front of her. But that alarm on Gamble’s PASS device was cranking out ninety-five decibels of Olly Olly Oxen Free, and she swung toward the noise blaring from the left-hand passage.

Damn it, she’d have to do this the hard way.

Hitting her knees, Shae crawled her way deeper into the house. Sweat stung her eyes, her breath impossibly loud in her ears over the hiss of her respirator, but still, she pressed forward carefully, hand over knee, until—fifteen, sixteen—yes! Her heart surged up toward her throat at the sight of the high-powered strobe light on Gamble’s alarm flashing through the ashy haze. Like her, he had crouched down low for better visibility, and two more crawl-paces had her within arm’s length of him.

“Hey, big guy. Fancy meeting you here,” she said, her pulse spiking even faster as he jerked to attention as if he’d been trapped in a trance, eyes wide behind his mask.

“I told you not to do anything stupid, you know.” The words were oddly quiet. In that scissor-sharp instant, Shae recognized the depth of the fear embedded in his stare, and she forced herself to speak even though she wasn’t certain her throat would obey.

“I’m happy to see you, too, Lieutenant.” Flames danced up both sides of the hallway over Gamble’s shoulder, reaching toward the ceiling Shae could no longer see, and yeah, they could hug it out later. “Now what do you say we get the hell out of here?”

He focused his stare on the light attached to the front of her coat, his nod coming back stronger than his voice had been only seconds before. “Copy that.”

She reached down to lock the snap hook on Gamble’s coat to her secondary line, then reached for the radio at her shoulder. “Command, this is McCullough. Gamble and I are tethered and clear for the primary exit. Repeat, we are clear for the primary exit.”

“McCullough, this is Command. The primary exit is unimpeded. Fall out.”

Pushing her boots to the subfloor, she crouched down low while Gamble did the same. They needed the speed of their feet to cut a fast path to the exit, and anyway, now they had a lifeline. Getting out would be a hell of a lot easier than getting in. Shae turned, wrapping her gloved fingers firmly around the tether while Gamble fell in at her six.

They made it exactly four steps down the hallway before everything above them erupted in an over-bright flash, then faded instantly to black.