Page 42 of Rising Heat

Ryan stops by the station house a little before midnight. Off duty, which means something’s on his mind he doesn’t want to sit with alone. I know it before he says a word. His suit jacket’s still on, tie loosened, and he has that look he gets when he’s been turning the same problem over for hours without getting any closer to an answer.

He drops into the chair across from me and sets his phone on the table.

A few fires he thinks might be connected.

Nothing concrete yet. If there was, he wouldn’t be sitting in the station kitchen talking it through with me. But there’s enough there to make him suspicious, and Ryan’s never been the type to ignore his instincts when something feels off.

Ryan pulls up the photos and slides the phone across the table. An hour later we’re still sitting there turning it over from every angle looking for the thing that doesn’t fit.

Most people think good decisions happen because somebody has the answer. In my experience, they usually happen because two stubborn people sit with a problem long enough to figure out which parts matter and which parts don’t.

After a while, he leans back in his chair.

“You hear anything yet?”

I already know he means the chauffeur position.

“Results come out next month.”

“You’ll get it.”

“Maybe.”

Ryan huffs a laugh.

It’s the same reaction I’ve gotten from just about everybody lately.

Dad called last week pretending he was checking in about the house before dancing around the subject for twenty minutes. My grandfather was less subtle. He left a voicemail that started with congratulations and ended with a story about the first time he backed Engine 7 into the bay without taking out a traffic cone. Tyler’s abandoned subtlety altogether and now just works it into conversation whenever there’s a lull long enough for him to fit it in.

The promotion isn’t even official yet and somehow half the people in my life are already acting like it is.

Ryan watches me for a second.

“You want it.”

“I do,” I answer honestly.

The funny thing is most people assume I want it because of my family. They’re not totally off base. You don’t grow up around firehouses without imagining yourself in one eventually, and I spent enough afternoons at the station as a kid to know the place almost as well as my childhood home. Dad would finish reports while I wandered around the bay pretending I wasn’t waiting on him.

I must’ve been no more than six years old the first time I climbed into the chauffeur seat.

I remember wrapping my hands around the wheel and being surprised by how big it felt. Dad caught me sitting there and laughed before climbing up beside me.

“Everybody thinks this job is about driving,” he’d said.

Then he pointed through the windshield toward the bay doors. I don’t remember exactly what I expected him to say after that. Something about the truck, maybe. Instead he told me the driver gets everybody there and gets everybody home.

At six, that sounded simple.

Now at thirty-two, I understand it too well.

Somewhere along the way, chauffeur stopped feeling like my father’s job and started feeling like something I wanted for myself.

Ryan turns his mug slowly between his hands.

“You’ll be good at it.”

Maybe.