“Jack? Can I see you for a minute?”

It was Fred Moran, the fire chief, who stopped by Station One once every shift. In his late fifties, the stocky Chief Moran sported an over-the-top handlebar mustache, which some people speculated was designed to draw attention away from his unwanted balding. Jack generally found him to be a fair and dedicated chief who had his firefighters’ backs, although he did sometimes play politics.

“Sure, Chief. We can go into my office.”

Jack saved the incident report he was working on from an earlier medical call and led the chief into his captain’s office, which also served as his bunkroom. He noticed that Chief Moran was carrying a manila folder with him, and Jack didn’t like it when the chief closed the door behind him and sat down at Jack’s desk, in his office chair, leaving the small side chair for Jack.

Dang it, Jack thought. It had been a few days since he and Troy Garrett had gotten into it at the Sled Dog, and Garrett had been walking around with a smug grin all shift. Tom had mentioned it to Jack, and he’d been feeling uneasy ever since, waiting for the hammer to drop.

Here it was.

Jack took a seat. “What’s up, Chief?”

Moran eyed him. “I was looking through some of your reports, and one of them concerns me.”

“Oh?” Jack said, telling himself to stay calm. “Which one?”

As if he didn’t know.

The chief opened the folder. “Single-car accident. Highway Thirty, January 7, 4:02 a.m. You remember it?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Elizabeth Armstrong,” said Moran as he flipped through the two-page report. “Any truth to the rumor you disregarded protocol so she could avoid talking to the police?”

“Who’s spreading the rumor?” Jack asked. “Let me guess—Troy Garrett.” From the look on the chief’s face, Jack knew he was right, and he fumed. That bastard. This stunt was payback for getting in his face at the bar the other night. “Let me get this straight. Troy Garrett, who’s a temporary firefighter on another crew, who wasn’t even at the scene, has a problem with how I handled it?”

“For whatever reason, he looked up the incident report and has an issue with it.”

Jack clenched his jaw. The whole thing was ridiculous, but because he was dealing with the fire chief, he needed to stay calm and play the game. “I’m not sure why Firefighter Garrett felt the need to go to you with this, instead of to his captain or even to me, but I’d be happy to address any concerns you have.”

“Great,” said Moran. “Why don’t you walk me through what happened?”

“It’s all in the report.”

“Just walk me through it, please.”

Jack took a deep breath and recalled the events of that night, remembering most of all how alone Elizabeth looked standing in the middle of the highway, in the middle of a snowstorm, in the middle of the night.

“Single-car MVA on Highway Thirty, just past mile marker forty-six. Not much to it,” he said. “The vehicle went into the ditch and snowbank. The female patient—Ms. Armstrong—had no injuries, was alert and oriented and answered questions appropriately, and she refused further medical treatment. She arranged for a ride back to town and for her vehicle to be towed.”

Moran eyed him. “What else?”

Jack pondered how much to say. One or more of the men on the call must have come back to the station and shared what had happened. They wouldn’t have done it maliciously—Jack hadn’t told anyone of the Armstrong family’s importance in his life, and they often shared details of their calls with Ladder One and vice versa. Jack, who prided himself on being a straight shooter, suspected Chief Moran already knew what had happened and was testing Jack to see how much he’d tell him. Even if that weren’t the case, Jack would be forthcoming … about most things. He didn’t think he’d done anything technically wrong that night. If he had—well, he’d accept the consequences.

“As I believe the report states, it appeared to those of us at the scene that the female patient wasn’t the driver of the vehicle. We suspected this because there was blood in the driver’s side area, and also in the snow leading away from the vehicle. Following a thorough examination, we found Ms. Armstrong had no wounds. Nothing to explain the blood.”

“What did the woman say?”

“She wasn’t forthcoming with any details.”

“And that didn’t concern you?”

“It did concern me, but the woman’s lawyer showed up and advised her not to speak with the first responders, as is her right,” Jack said. “Theresa Harmon’s the attorney involved. Do you know her?”

Moran nodded. “We serve on the board of the Boys & Girls Club together. Nice lady.”

“In any case, she showed up and went all balls-to-the-walls with me about what I was and wasn’t legally able to do,” Jack said. “Since the female patient refused medical treatment and didn’t require further assistance from my crew, there wasn’t much else I could do. For our part, it was a single-car accident on a slippery road during a blizzard, which as we all know is a very common occurrence. Whether Ms. Armstrong was the driver or whether she’d been drinking was a matter for the police.”

“What about your report to the police department? That you were quite insistent that she wasn’t the driver?”

“I just told them my professional opinion based on the presentation of the scene. The lawyer did the rest of the talking to the police on behalf of her client.” He shrugged. “In my capacity as a firefighter and paramedic, I had no reason involve myself further.”

“Even with the driver fleeing the scene?”

“He—or she—didn’t necessarily flee,” Jack said. “They were gone when we got there and didn’t know we were coming. Perhaps they simply went to get help. That’s what the lawyer suggested, and it’s a valid argument, theoretically.”

“Innocent people don’t call their lawyers for a simple situation of a car skidding off the road.”

“Maybe they do when their last name’s Armstrong,” Jack said.

“I wondered,” Moran said. “It’s that Armstrong family?”

“Yes, sir.”

Moran looked at him closely. “I’d think you’d want to throw the book at a member of the Armstrong family. You were part of the police force when that all went down, weren’t you?”

Jack felt his heart pounding, an internal thunder of old anger mixed with new, more confusing emotions. “I don’t think the sins of the father should be visited upon the children. Whatever Nate Armstrong may or may not have done all those years ago, the daughter was a child at the time and blameless.”

No longer a child, he thought. Instead, a beautiful woman.

And still blameless.

He leaned forward earnestly, eager to put the matter behind him. “Bottom line, it was a judgment call. Ms. Armstrong hadn’t called for help, wasn’t injured, and refused medical treatment. With all due respect, sir, I think what you’re really asking is did I give special favors to her for personal reasons, and I can assure you I’d never met her before that night.”

“Okay,” Moran said. “I’m glad we clarified that.”

“I think I know what this stems from,” Jack said, determined to not make things easy for Troy Garrett. “The other night, I got into a minor off-duty altercation with Firefighter Garrett. He made vulgar comments about Ms. Armstrong, who happens to be a bartender at the Sled Dog, where we were that night. I spoke up in her defense because it was the right thing to do, but Troy must have invented some ulterior motive. The simple fact is that I felt his crude comments in public reflected badly on the fire department, and I called him on it. The way I see it, that guy’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Jack knew that for a city administrative official, throwing in the word lawsuit was the best way to cast Troy Garrett in a deserved negative light.

“What did he say about her?” Moran asked. “Or do I even want to know?”

Jack recalled Troy’s words. Trashy. Gives good head. His voice was tight when he responded. “You probably don’t want to know.”

“Okay.” Moran nodded that he accepted Jack’s explanation. “Next time Garrett causes a problem like this, don’t hesitate to go through me and the HR channels. You want to get your version of the truth on record.”

“Yes, sir.” Jack stood, despising the politics of it all. He would rather have just punched Troy Garrett in the face. “Will do.”

Chief Moran stood, too, and extended a hand to Jack. “You’ve got a very promising future here—I think you know that. I wouldn’t want to see anything happen that could jeopardize it.”  

“Understood. I appreciate your interest.”

As Jack opened the door, he knew one thing was clear: he’d been right to pull back from Elizabeth the other night, for professional reasons alone.

He told himself it was for the best, but his heart didn’t believe him.