Page 15 of At First Spark
“You’re always like this. I don’t get the same excuse.”
That almost gets a laugh out of Ray. Almost. With him, the closest you usually get is a twitch at the corner of his mouth and the distinct feeling you’ve somehow won something.
I dry my hands on a dish towel and glance toward the bay doors at the far end of the station. Closed now. The glass windows in them reflect the inside lights back at us, making the building feel smaller after dark than during the day. More contained. More cut off from town and water and whatever else is happening outside. You can hear the wind hit the side of the building now and then if everything inside goes still enough.
I like that part. Or maybe like isn’t the right word. I understand it. The station feels more honest at night. Less like an idea people are excited about and more like what it actually is—four men inside a converted old building with a truck, equipment, too much coffee, not enough sleep, and a town trusting that if something goes wrong, we’ll get there in time.
That’s the part that never stops landing hard.
“We still pretending you’re not joining the Wendigos?” Beckett asks.
I give him a look. “I never agreed to anything.”
He takes a slow drink of soda and smiles over the can. “Jenna already put you on the roster.”
“That sounds like Jenna’s problem.”
“That sounds like denial.”
Ray flips a page on his clipboard. “He’ll show.”
“I absolutely will not.”
Beckett points at me. “You said that with no conviction.”
I open my mouth to answer and stop when Mac steps into the doorway. He doesn’t need to say anything for the room to shift.
It’s subtle. It always is with him. He isn’t loud enough to dominate a space by force, but he doesn’t have to be. He carries command the same way some men carry height or money or old family name. Easily. Without performance.
He looks at me first.
“Wright.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sit down for a minute.”
“I’m good.”
“That wasn’t a discussion.”
Beckett makes a soft, deeply unhelpful noise into his soda. I turn my head slowly toward him.
He immediately straightens. “I said nothing.”
Mac doesn’t wait for the rest of it. He steps farther into the kitchen, reading glasses hooked in one hand, clipboard under the other arm, gaze moving from one of us to the next in a way that tells me he has already taken the whole measure of the room and found it just this side of acceptable.
“Phones are charged,” he says. “Gear reset. Reports filed before midnight. I’m not chasing any of you down for paperwork after a call.”
“Yes, sir,” Ray says.
Beckett salutes with his soda. “You got it, Cap.”
Mac’s eyes flick to the can. “You spill that in my bay, you’re mopping until dawn.”
Beckett lowers it slowly. “Understood.”
Mac’s gaze lands on me again. I hold it. Some men know how to ask a question without using one. Mac has perfected it.You good. You here. You ready if this night stops being quiet.
