“Jesus Christ, Hawkins. You really need to get a food truck and sell this magic. These home fries are off the chain.”

“Faurier, you ass. Stop hogging all the pancakes!”

“I’d listen to McCullough if I were you, dude. She’s got sharp elbows, and she’s not afraid to use them.”

“Go big or go home, Walker!”

“Come on, y’all. No need to tussle. There’s still plenty of grub to go ’round.”

Quinn sat on the outskirts of Station Seventeen’s common room, grateful as hell for the boisterous chatter going on around her. Not only did the conversations and the friendly jawing between her station-mates soothe her jagged nerves, but they served as proof positive that keeping her mouth shut had been worth the price of her shredded conscience.

Her family was safe. Even if she was still a hot freaking mess.

“Oh hey, Quinn. Glad to see you’re feeling better.”

The friendly, feminine voice at her side belonged to Station Seventeen’s office administrator, January Sinclair, and Quinn gathered up a nothing-doing smile for her good friend in reply. She really had to get over this and move on.

“Yep! Good as new.”

January smoothed the back of her light gray dress pants with one hand, tucking the stack of files she carried over her lap as she turned to sit next to Quinn on the end of the bench at the communal meal table. “We missed you at Girls’ Night In. Although honestly, if you were still feeling queasy, skipping it was probably smart. Kennedy made a batch of mojitos that knocked everyone sideways. Addison and Kylie may or may not have done a karaoke version of “The Tide is High” by Blondie, and Kellan and Capelli definitely had to taxi everyone’s drunk asses home.”

Quinn’s pulse tapped faster. “I was sad to miss it.” Truth. “But that stomach bug was pretty nasty.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Although she had craved the normalcy and comfort of hanging out with her girlfriends, she’d known far better than to put herself on display in front of a firefighter, a police sergeant’s daughter, two detectives, a professional bodyguard’s girlfriend, and a shrewd-as-hell bar owner so soon after what had happened in North Point. She normally shared everything with them—she’d never had any reason not to. There was no way they wouldn’t have seen right through her ugly-belly excuse, and since she couldn’t fess up, she’d spent a fitful night at home, trying like hell to blank her memory of everything that had happened during her last shift.

The ultra-embarrassing kiss-and-dis with Luke that had followed the next day? Just the icing on the great big cake of things Quinn wanted to forget right now. Had she really asked him to strip her naked and fuck her against her living room wall?

And despite the short duration and the patently unhappy ending, had it really been the hottest hookup she’d had in…God, who knew how long?

January squeezed Quinn’s forearm, zinging her back to the common room with a smile. “Ah, no worries. We’ll make up for it next time, girl. Anyway, I’m going to go grab some coffee and some of Hawk’s home fries before these vultures swoop in and finish them off.” January hooked a thumb over her shoulder, blond brows lifted in question. “Want anything?”

“Nah. I’m all good.”

Quinn exhaled slowly as January beelined for the coffeepot at the front of the kitchen, although it did damned little to relax her. Despite all her efforts to make the words true, her gut still prickled with unease she couldn’t explain, let alone loosen.

Which was honestly just plain stupid. She knew everyone here was fine. She’d seen every last firefighter at roll call thirty minutes ago—including Luke, who currently sat on the other side of the common room between Gamble and Dempsey, his expression as unreadable as ever. She’d spoken to Parker not once, but twice yesterday on the phone before he’d left for his brother’s cabin in Virginia for some R&R, and even though she’d skipped the gathering at Kylie’s, all of her girlfriends were clearly status quo. The last two days had been quiet. Calm. Completely normal.

So if she’d done the right thing, the smart thing, the safe thing, then why did she still feel so fucking rattled?

Pushing up from the table, Quinn grabbed her plate and headed for the sink. She’d forced herself to put bite after bite of Hawk’s legendary belly-buster breakfast into her mouth, to chew and swallow and chew again even though she’d tasted nothing. She wouldn’t be of any use if she keeled over from low blood sugar, she knew. But God, it had taken every ounce of her strength and sanity to clear even half the food on her plate. She needed to regroup, just long enough to get rid of this weird feeling still keeping her on edge.

Easy, came Luke’s voice in her mind, making her heart flutter even as her shoulders unwound. There. Breathe…

She needed to get out of this room before she went bat-shit crazy.

Kicking her boots into motion, Quinn struck a path from the common room to the fire house’s window-lined front lobby. Station Seventeen was made up of two main wings, one on either side of the lobby hallway and the common room, and she headed toward the side that housed the engine bay, the equipment room, and Captain Bridges’s office. The pressure in her chest subsided with each step over the linoleum, her pulse beginning to slow at the thought of finally, finally getting back to normal.

She could do this. She could.

Her friends were okay, Luke’s family was okay, and that was all that mattered.

“Hey.” A very familiar, very masculine voice rumbled through the silence of the engine bay, and jeez, speak of the devil had never looked so ridiculously sexy. Then again, between those criminally long eyelashes and the curve of the lean, light brown biceps peeking out from the sleeves of his just-snug-enough RFD T-shirt, Luke might as well be the devil, because good Lord, he was hot as hell.

“Oh! Hey,” Quinn said far too brightly. Easy, girl. “I was just coming out to, ah, do some inventory in the rig before we get too crazy with calls today.”

Luke nodded, falling into step beside her as she put the rest of the distance between herself and the ambulance in the past tense. “Yeah, me too. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” Ugh, there she went again with the F-word. She re-set her smile even though it felt tighter than a Salvation Army drum. “I mean, better. Thanks.”

Quinn reached for the heavy stainless steel latch on the back of the ambulance, but Luke reached out, his hand stopping just shy of hers but stopping her movements nonetheless.

“Before we get to work, I was hoping we could talk,” he said, his eyes taking a lightning-fast tour of the quiet engine bay before he added, “about some of the things that happened at your apartment the other morning.”

A flush heated the back of Quinn’s neck. But better to face their impulsive kiss head-on so they could move on. “You don’t have to say anything,” she murmured. At least they were surrounded by the buffer of Engine Seventeen on one side and Squad Six’s equally large rescue vehicle on the other. Even if someone did manage to tear themselves away from Hawk’s breakfast of champions and stumble their way out here, chances were nil that she and Luke would be seen or overheard without ample warning.

Luke’s eyes moved over her as he took a half-step forward. “I do,” he argued, but Quinn cut him off with a shake of her head.

“You really don’t. In fact, I should be the one talking. I owe you an apology. I was pretty hopped up on adrenaline, and I got”—she paused to swallow past her suddenly dry mouth—“a little carried away. I’m sorry I was out of line.”

Surprise flashed through his stare before he cleared it with a slow, single blink. “We were both there for that kiss. And we both know how intense an adrenaline reaction can be. The whole thing was…” He trailed off, rubbing a palm over the back of his neck while Quinn’s libido supplied words like hot, so hot, and insanely fucking hot to fill in the blanks. “Just a normal reaction to the endorphins,” he finally finished. “But I was actually thinking we need to talk about the other thing that happened.”

“Oh.” Confusion sent her feet back a step on the buffed concrete floor. What the hell was he—“No,” she said, snapping her arms over her chest as her brain played an ad hoc game of connect the dots. Was he out of his mind? “We don’t.”

“We do, and I think you know we do.”

Quinn’s breath grew shaky. How could his voice be so soft, so comforting, when the things he was saying terrified her so much?

“We need to tell the police about the call we went on, Quinn. All of it.” Luke stepped in even closer, dropping his chin until she had no choice but to look right into those piercing, ice-blue eyes of his. Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids, and she channeled all of her energy into keeping them at bay.

“We’ve already been through this. We can’t tell anybody,” she said. But her words lacked conviction, wobbling upon exit. Luke might not be chatty about his family, but she’d seen his face when Ice had pulled up the photographs of his sister and the other, older woman on his cell phone. He was clearly close to them, just as she was close to everyone here at Seventeen. He wouldn’t put them in danger unless he was sure they’d be safe from it. Would he?

Luke shook his head, adamant. “We can, and we should have right from the beginning. We aren’t doing anyone we care about any favors by keeping what happened to ourselves. The longer Ice gets away with threatening us, the longer they’re all in danger regardless. We’re not taking care of them by ignoring what happened.” He paused, an odd emotion flickering through his stare for less than a breath before it disappeared. “And we’re not looking out for each other by pretending everything is fine.”

Quinn’s threadbare composure tilted further. Easy. Breathe, came Luke’s voice from her memory, combining with the unwavering closeness of his body in front of hers to unstick the truth from her throat. “I…I’m scared.”

“I know,” Luke said, quiet and calm, and God, didn’t anything rock him? “But we can’t just move on like everything is normal, Quinn. It’s not, and it won’t be until we fix this.”

“Fix this.” She repeated the words on a whisper. As much as she hated it, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Faking her way through this whole thing was only putting her nerves—not to mention her conscience—through a blender. She’d never last if she tried to keep it up, and the truth was, Ice could change his mind and come after everyone at any time if he felt like taking care of loose ends. He could be out there, hurting other people. Maybe even innocent people.

Still… “Ice is a cold-blooded killer,” Quinn said. She might not have technically seen him commit the act, but she’d seen the look in his eyes when he’d threatened to kill her and Luke, and it had been enough to know he was neither bluffing nor inexperienced. “We can’t just waltz right in to the Thirty-Third and spill our guts. He could be watching our every move.”

Luke exhaled, scrubbing a hand over his clean-shaven face. “He could. Which means we’ll have to come up with a plan to outsmart him.”

“He’s a gang leader, Luke. He’s probably got tons of experience staying off the cops’ radar, not to mention he’s ruthless as hell and he knows everything about us. How on earth are we going to outsmart him?”

“I don’t know.”

For the first time since they’d come out here to the engine bay, Luke looked uncertain, and yeah, she felt his pain. They needed a plan—an impossible plan—and right now, they had no information, no advantage—God, all they had was each other.

Wait.

“I think I know what we need to do,” Quinn said, her pulse threatening to outrun the air in her lungs.

Luke’s brows popped, his stare widening in the harsh fluorescent light spilling down from overhead. “You do?”

She nodded. The idea forming in her brain scared the shit out of her, yes, but she couldn’t deny the truth behind it.

She and Luke were in this together. They were partners. They needed to rely on the person they trusted most above all.

“I do. Now let’s go before I lose my nerve.”