Conrad Vaughn despised the sound of his name. Not that many people called him by it, or for that matter, even knew what it was. His last boss—sanctimonious bastard—had insisted on addressing everyone formally, and since the guy had also been a mouth-foaming sociopath, Vaughn hadn’t really felt the need to push the issue. Of course, now Julian DuPree was a dead mouth-foaming sociopath, which really just validated the shit out of Vaughn’s current plan.

He needed a career path that didn’t involve having a spectacular fuckwit for a boss. The problem was, nearly every person he’d ever met fell squarely into that category. The rest? Well, they were even dumber.

Kicking his worn-out black Converse sneakers over the cracked concrete beneath them, he let his always-racing mind take the thought and spin. In truth, Vaughn had always had a hate thing for working for the highest bidder. While the revenue stream of setting up security and counter-surveillance for Remington’s underbelly didn’t necessarily suck, it wasn’t enough to set him up in a tiki bar on Kauai, either—and the job security wasn’t exactly cement when chances were high that your employer could end up in cement. Not that Vaughn really minded the criminal activity, because playing for Team Dark Side sure beat the hell out of all that work-hard, honest-living bullshit most sheeple did.

But each of his bosses had shared the same flaw; namely that they were all dumb enough to lead with their emotions rather than their gray matter. Which meant that at a certain point, shit always went tango uniform. DuPree was case in point. That motherfucker had been so far away from his happy place that he’d nearly gotten Vaughn caught in a raid by RPD’s finest. He’d been able to escape, of course, but only because the intelligence unit’s Head Geek In Charge had once been his partner in crime—literally and figuratively. As decent a hacker as James Capelli was, he was also as predictable as high tide. But even after eight years of total radio silence between them, Vaughn had still been smart enough to know the guy’s every move before the first neuron even fired to turn it into an action.

No honor among thieves, really. Rapists or murderers either. But between hackers least of all.

Still, James might be calculable to a fault, but he also didn’t have his head lodged quite as far in his colon as the rest of the RPD. After the whole DuPree debacle, Vaughn had needed to spend three goddamn months bouncing all over the grid in order to be absolutely sure he’d escaped his old buddy’s detection, all while staying off the grid in various flophouses and cesspools. The sabbatical had provided him with a much-needed reality check, as well as the time to come up with the perfect plan to fix his problem.

After all, he was far more intelligent, more calculated and intuitive, than anyone he’d ever met, let alone worked for. Why earn their money like a chump when he was smart enough to just take it instead?

Good old-fashioned extortion might not be glamorous, but it was making for a hell of a payday. And on the rare occasion his former employers hadn’t bucked up and wired him the money he deserved for outsmarting them, he was all too happy to follow through on his threats to make them pay in other ways.

Liiiiiike setting all their shit on fire and laughing while it burned.

A grin slid over Vaughn’s face, his chest filling with satisfaction at the thought. Sinking lower in his hoodie, he took a sip of the sixty-four-ounce slushy in his hand and lowered himself over his favorite park bench. Okay, so ‘park’ might be a bit of a stretch for this section of Atlantic Boulevard, especially considering how many blow jobs and dime bags had likely been traded here in the last twelve hours, but really, he wasn’t about to alert the grammar police. It was the perfect spot for him to take care of business—solid visuals on all four arms of the compass for fifteen feet, three separate exit points in case he needed to ghost, no cops dumb enough to wander this far down the wooded path and no criminals likely to linger if they saw that the space was already ocupado.

Which was stellar, since killing people in public was such a pain in the ass to cover up.

And, hey, speaking of murder…

Vaughn set his drink aside and took the burner phone he’d bought for this very occasion out of his back pocket, keying in a number from memory. The call wasn’t necessary, per se, but since he hadn’t been able to extract a payday from Raymond Allen, a.k.a. Little Ray and the leader of the Scarlet Reapers, a little payback was the next best thing.

The phone on the other end rang only once, and outstanding—Ray was keyed up enough to give him the upper hand right out of the gate.

“Who the fuck is this?” the guy demanded, and okay, rightfully so. It’s not like gang leaders gave out their private cell numbers like Halloween candy.

Which was exactly why Vaughn had called it. “Now, now. Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

And three, two, one...Yahtzee. “You little piece of scrawny, no-good shit! I’m going to rip your goddamn head off and piss down your neck,” Ray snarled, and Vaughn gave up a soft tsk.

“Such nasty profanity. I’m hurt, Little Ray. Truly.”

“Not yet, but you’re gonna be, Shadow.” Even covered in venom, the name Vaughn had earned made him smile as Ray hissed it into the phone. “After what you did today, you’re a dead man.”

“Actually, I’m alive and kicking,” Vaughn told him, slapping a bored-as-hell expression over his face as he scanned the park around him in a covert three-sixty. All clear, exactly as he’d predicted. Duh. “Heard you had a pretty bad afternoon, though.”

The silence humming over the line was so loaded, Vaughn could’ve used it to make a kill shot from fifty feet away, and finally, Ray bit out an answer. “A bad afternoon? You blew up my business. Killed Malik and the L-Man. Cut Malik’s throat from ear to ear.”

Yeah, that had been irritating. Vaughn had always hated wet work. The stink of blood and piss and pure, primal fear didn’t wash off for fucking days. He’d tried to just tranq the guy into next week like he had the L-Man. At least that way Vaughn would’ve been able to let the smoke do the job and keep the shoes he’d put on this morning. But the sufentanil he’d jammed into Malik’s neck hadn’t knocked the dude out fast enough to just leave him there to die from smoke inhalation, and no way was Vaughn dumb enough to chance letting him survive. He’d been forced to go with his backup plan, i.e. actually using the scalpel he’d pressed to Malik’s jugular when he’d stealthed up on him from behind. But at least the hack job he’d done afterward would be some added fun for the cops to try and (not) figure out.

“To be fair, I told you I would,” Vaughn said, his pulse moving faster in his veins even though his words remained perfectly metered. “Or did you think I was bluffing when I said you could either pay me two hundred thousand dollars or I’d torch you to the ground?” He paused just long enough to let the salt sink into the wound before he topped it off with rubbing alcohol. “Oh, you did. That’s so unfortunate for you. Ah, well. I guess now you know.”

“You think I’m just gonna stand by for this?” Ray spat into the phone. “Nah, man. I’m gonna find your skinny ass, and when I do, you’re gonna wish your momma had never spread her whore legs for your old man in the first place.”

The insult struck unexpectedly, swift and deep, and anger beckoned from the place in Vaughn’s belly where he kept it well-buried. But emotion was for pussies, and the anger would only make him weak and impulsive, so he stuffed it back with a smile. “To be honest, I’d rather you’d just paid me like I told you to. But it looks like neither one of us is going to get what he wants, so we might as well call this a draw.”

Ray let out a lungful of disgust. “After what you just did, you want me to let you walk?”

Shifting his weight over the cold, rickety slats of the park bench, Vaughn sighed. Emotions made people so fucking stupid, honestly. “I’m sure you won’t, but the reality is, you should. Look at the facts. I ran the Scarlet Reapers’ security for six months. That makes me pretty much the high lord of your dirty laundry. Add in the harsh reality that me and my skinny ass managed to singlehandedly kill two of your most loyal associates and turn your biggest operating center into a giant pile of ash, and it’s not really a logic leap to know you shouldn’t keep messing with me.”

“You ain’t the high lord of a goddamn thing. How do you know I didn’t change all that security shit up after you left?” Ray asked, and oh, look. Vaughn’s favorite bluff.

“Because while you may be a bottom-feeding Neanderthal, you’re surprisingly not a terrible businessman. You hired me because I’m the best. And even on the off chance you did change the security system you paid me to implement after I left”—of course he knew the guy hadn’t, because he’d left loopholes in the Scarlet Reapers’ system like any halfway decent hacker would and should—“you don’t really think I didn’t keep my own records, do you?”

The string of nasty swear words that followed led Ray exactly where Vaughn wanted him. “You little fuck! I’m going to take you apart, one limb at a time.”

“No you’re not,” Vaughn said with a laugh he actually felt. “I’m the Shadow, remember? I could be right behind you and you wouldn’t know it until I tapped you on the shoulder.”

He waited out the obligatory five seconds it would take the guy to check his surroundings out of paranoia before continuing. “This is your endgame, Little Ray. You can’t exactly file an insurance claim against your losses, so you’re out all that product, your biggest and most productive meth lab, and the personnel.” Vaughn ticked each one off on his fingers even though the bare trees around him were his only company. Oh, the numbers were so fucking beautiful, though, constant and predictable and precise. “You can’t go to the cops for the murders without them looking at everything about you, right down to what you ate for breakfast. And while you can spend all your time and energy trying to get revenge, it’ll only be a waste of both.”

Vaughn pushed to his feet, and this time, his heartbeat did accelerate, his mouth curling into a smile. “I’m a shadow. You’re not going to catch me, man. No one ever does.”

Popping the lid on his slushy, he didn’t even bother pressing the button to end the call before dropping the burner phone first into the cup, then into the nearest trash can on his way out of the park.

* * *

After forty minutes in the shower and half a bottle of vanilla-scented body wash, Shae gave up trying to get the stench of that afternoon’s call off of her. It was figurative, of course—although between the second victim’s blood and the giant cocktail of toxic fumes in the air at the scene, she hadn’t exactly smelled like posies when they’d finally returned to Seventeen. She and her engine-mates had filed back into the fire house without conversation or fanfare, although she’d definitely caught the severity of the frown and side-eye combo Gamble had pinned her with as he’d handed over a replacement coat from the equipment room.

Blowing out a breath, Shae cranked the lever for the shower farther toward “hot” even though her skin already stung from the heat of the spray. She was well-acquainted with the symptoms of adrenaline letdown, along with the best methods to compartmentalize the grislier aspects of her job so as not to go nuts on toast. Sadly for her personnel file, Shae was also rather cozy with her emotions writing her an engraved invitation to the hot seat. Between Gamble and Captain Bridges, the censure she surely had in her immediate future was going to smart like a sonofabitch.

Not that she wouldn’t pull on her big girl panties and take it. After all, no matter how much of a no-brainer her actions had been, she had disregarded a direct order when she’d gone back into that house for Slater, which meant she’d earned every syllable of the ass-chewing waiting for her outside the shower door.

But hot seat or not, she wasn’t going to change the way she did her job. Yes, she’d been tenacious (and okay, maybe a teensy bit insubordinate), but she hadn’t put anyone but herself in possible danger, and she hadn’t signed on at the academy because she’d wanted a thumb-twiddling nine to five. She’d learned the life-is-short lesson the hard way, and God, if her number could be up at any moment, she was going to make all her moments count, risks be damned.

It just seems like a pretty reckless decision…

Capelli’s words echoed in her ears, hiking her chin to attention beneath the shower spray. Reaching out, Shae stopped the water with a swift turn of her wrist, her heart beating faster even as she took a deep breath to counter it. She might jump in with both boots first most of the time (okay, fine. All the time), but she was still a damn good firefighter. She wasn’t going to make any apologies for that.

No matter how much she felt like Capelli had examined the facts and only the facts, then completely dismissed her and the reason for her actions with that one little melted chocolate stare.

“Now you really are losing your marbles,” Shae muttered, snapping her towel from the hook outside the shower stall. Sure, Capelli was more methodical and observant than most—and seeing as how her closest friends were a bunch of first responders of varying specialty, that wasn’t exactly small potatoes. She wouldn’t expect the guy in charge of tech and surveillance for Remington’s most elite police unit to be a dumbass, though, and anyway, his eyes weren’t all that melty.

Okay, right. She officially needed a giant fucking Hershey bar and a pair of orgasms, stat.

Finishing up her dry off/get dressed routine, Shae shouldered her duffel and headed out of the shower room. The house was fairly quiet, although after a really pear-shaped call, that wasn’t unusual. Her boots called out a series of soft thumps on the linoleum as she made her way to the locker room to stow her bag, then another as she redirected herself to the laundry room with this morning’s sweaty and smoky uniform in tow.

She clattered to a stop on the threshold at the sight of Slater with his hands braced on either side of the washing machine and his head hung low over his chest.

“Hey,” she said quietly, and although he lifted his chin, he didn’t turn to look at her.

“Oh, hey. I was just, ah, you know. Doing some laundry.”

Although a pile of navy blue cotton sat directly in front of Slater on top of the washer, the machine itself was silent, the plastic container of detergent next to his hand sealed up tight. Something shifted behind Shae’s breastbone, and she stepped up next to him to put her clothes on top of the dryer.

“Popular choice. You want to combine forces? We can probably fit all of this into one load.”

“Yeah, sure.” Slater nodded. But instead of stepping back on the linoleum to move his clothes and open the washing machine door, he stuck to his spot and said, “I really fucked up today.”

Usually she was the one surprising people, so it took her a second to recalibrate. “You didn’t fuck up, Slater.”

He arched a black brow toward his nearly shaved hairline in a clear expression of doubt. “I froze, McCullough. I heard the captain’s order on the radio. I knew what I was supposed to do when I found that victim, and I couldn’t make myself do it. There was so much blood, and the guy’s neck was just”—the color drained from Slater’s normally light brown complexion—“I’ve never seen anything like that. I knew I was supposed to call in directly to Bridges for orders, but I didn’t. Instead, I panicked.”

Shae knew she could give him a bunch of there-there platitudes like any regular person would. Hell, the call had been hairy enough to warrant a bucketload of them. But since she was about as far away from regular as a girl could get, she gave in to the wry smile tempting the edges of her mouth instead. “I hate to break it to you. That just means you’re human.”

“Yeah, but I can’t afford to let my emotions railroad me on a call.”

“No, you can’t,” she agreed, because as much as she didn’t want to kick the guy when he was down, she wanted to bullshit him even less. “But you also can’t forget you have them, because you do. And if you ever aren’t scared on call, that’s when you need to hang it up.”

Slater’s chin snapped to attention. “You were scared today?”

Shae laughed, and judging by the rookie’s expression, she’d reclaimed the upper hand in the surprising-people department. “I saw exactly what you saw, Slater, so in a word? Hell yes. I have emotions all the time—especially on calls. The only difference between me and you is that I’ve learned how to manage mine during a fire. You think I never need backup?” she asked. “Or that Walker or Gamble don’t?”

“Well…no. I guess not,” Slater admitted slowly.

“That’s exactly why we do everything in pairs.” She softened her voice, but not her resolve. “Because ninety percent of our job is unpredictable, just like today. Any given call could go about a thousand different ways. This one was rough. One of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. But you’ll figure out how to manage your emotions on calls. Good firefighters always do.”

The sound of a feminine throat clearing captured their attention from behind them, and Shae’s stomach tilted a little bit closer to her knees at the sight of their fire house administrator, January Sinclair, standing in the open doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said the petite blonde, tucking the stack of file folders in her grasp against the hip of her dark gray pencil skirt. “Captain Bridges would like to see you in his office, Shae.”

Even though she’d been expecting the request, her pulse still pushed a little faster in her veins. Slater opened his mouth—presumably to make a protest of some sort—but this wasn’t exactly Shae’s first rodeo, so she gave up a tiny headshake to let him know she’d be fine. Turning to follow January down the long stretch of hallway that connected the two wings of the fire house, she straightened her shoulders and smoothed a hand over her fresh uniform before stepping over the threshold of Captain Bridges’s office. He sat stiffly behind his desk, his normally calm demeanor painted over with a serious layer of I’m-not-happy, and Gamble looked equally twisted out of shape from his spot in one of the two chairs across from the captain.

“McCullough. Shut the door,” Bridges clipped out with a tight nod. Unease filled Shae’s stomach—nothing good ever came from the old shut-the-door request that wasn’t a request—but she did as she was told before moving to stand beside the empty chair next to Gamble.

Bridges didn’t tell her to sit before folding his hands over his desk, and okay, wow, he really was mad. “This is familiar territory for you, so I’m not going to go through any pleasantries. Disobeying a direct order from a superior officer is not only unacceptable, but it’s completely irresponsible. Your actions were dangerous and made without regard for your engine-mates.”

Shae’s cheeks flamed with indignation. He couldn’t be serious. “I went back into that house specifically for one of my engine-mates,” she protested.

“And what if someone else had to go in after you because you’d recklessly run into a situation you couldn’t handle?”

The thought made her pause, but only for a millisecond. “But I did handle it. Slater and I were just fine.”

Funny, that little fact didn’t make a dent in Bridges’s anger. “You’re far from fine. You dove headfirst into a snap decision that wasn’t yours to make instead of standing down while I assessed the situation and handled it accordingly. You acted foolishly, without one iota of thought or respect for the chain of command,” he said, and the words arrowed all the way through Shae’s chest, rocking her heartbeat and her waning calm.

She managed to inhale, although she had no fucking clue how. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not stupid.”

“You may not be, but your actions were.” A frosty silence filled the space of his office for a minute, then another, before Bridges added, “Do you think Slater doesn’t learn from you?”

If he’d asked her to stand on his desk and sing show tunes, it might’ve shocked her less. “No, sir.” Her conversation with Slater two seconds before she’d arrived in this room was case in point that the rookie was paying attention, and well.

Gamble triple-knotted the you’re-in-deep-shit factor of the conversation by leaning forward in his chair to chime in. “I could’ve kept Slater with me on lines, or I could’ve waited for a different call to send him on S&R with Walker. But I didn’t. I picked you, McCullough. I trusted you to take him in there and show him how to be a good firefighter.”

The implication that she wasn’t slid over her like an ice bath. “How does having his back at all costs not teach him exactly that?” she asked, but Bridges knocked her question down, hard and fast.

“Because you disobeyed a direct order, Shae. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have Slater’s back. I’m saying you should let me have yours and trust that I’ll do my job, which is to make the best choices to keep all of you safe.” He paused, his voice growing quieter but no less intense. “This is a dangerous profession, McCullough. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that we lost a firefighter in this house nearly four years ago.”

The words stunned her so thoroughly that for a second, she couldn’t speak. Of course she remembered Asher Gibson. He’d been their candidate before Kellan had arrived from the academy and Dempsey had moved over to squad, one of her engine-mates and a part of the Seventeen family just like everyone else. The day he’d died in that house fire had leveled them all. Including Shae.

“Yes, sir,” she managed, her mouth dust-dry, but Bridges didn’t scale back on his censure.

“There’s no room for freelancing in this fire house. You might’ve gotten Slater out of that house today, but what you taught him was that it’s okay to fly by the seat of your bunker pants and break the rules. Now I have to worry about you and him going commando every time the all-call goes off.”

Shae’s breath jog-jammed, squeezing her lungs as Bridges’s words sank deep under her skin. “You don’t have to worry about me, Cap. I’m a good firefighter.”

“I’m afraid that’s not what I saw today,” he said, sitting back in his desk chair to spear her with a stare. “I’ve got no choice but to write you up and take you off active duty for two weeks, effective immediately.”

No. No fucking way. She’d go crazy in the first two minutes. “You want me to sit on my hands for two weeks?”

At least here, Bridges gave up a pause, albeit a microscopic one. “Not entirely. You’re on restricted duty for the rest of today’s shift, helping January here in the office until she goes home for the night. Then first thing Monday, you’ll report to the arson investigation unit and let them put you to work there for two weeks.”

“Arson investigation,” Shae repeated. On one hand, it was better than two weeks’ worth of being benched completely. On the other… “You’re sending me to the place where paperwork goes to die?”

Now Bridges didn’t hesitate. “They do solid work over there, and clearly, you need to slow down and be reminded what proper protocol looks like. Two weeks of procedure and paperwork will do you some good.”

She opened her mouth, the impulse to argue sparking on her tongue. But the hard set of the captain’s jaw told her he wasn’t going to budge, and Gamble’s dark, serious stare only reinforced her shitty odds.

No matter what she said, she was going to be wrong. Too hot-blooded. Reckless. Impetuous.

So as much as she hated it with the intensity of a thousand burning suns, Shae had no choice but to scrape up what little was left of her pride and say, “Great. I’ll go find January and get started.”