Page 1 of Igniting Her

1

ELLIE

Ellie Ridge had learned to travel light. It made being sent away much easier, except emotionally. At twenty-six, everything she owned that mattered fit inside one navy duffel: three pairs of jeans, six T-shirts, workout clothes, running shoes, a framed academy photograph wrapped in an old sweatshirt, and a coffee mug that had survived four foster homes and one apartment fire. Everything that could ruin her fit inside one sealed envelope clipped inside the transfer packet beneath her arm.

Station 12 stood two blocks uphill from Santa Vera Harbor, its white stucco already warming beneath the nine o’clock sun. Three red bay doors faced the street. Through the open center one, Ellie could see Engine 12 polished to an indecent shine and a firefighter dragging a mop across concrete that already looked clean enough to perform surgery on.

The Pacific flashed at the end of the hill. Behind her, dry canyon country rose brown and brittle beyond the tiled roofs. Ocean on one side, fuel on the other. Whoever had built Santa Vera had possessed either a sense of drama or no sense at all.

Ellie shifted the duffel higher on her shoulder and looked at the brass letters over the bay.

STATION 12.

New city. New department. Final chance, according to a deputy chief in Los Angeles who had praised her courage for the cameras and questioned her judgment once the cameras left.

“Try not to get fired before lunch,” she told herself out loud.

The firefighter with the mop glanced up. “We usually save that for after probation.”

He was broad through the shoulders, somewhere in his late thirties, with a mustache that belonged on a firefighter calendar from 1987. He propped both hands on the mop handle and considered her duffel, her file, then the shield clipped to her belt.

“Ridge?”

“Depends. Is Captain Everett here?”

“Then definitely Ridge.” He offered a hand. “Mo. Engineer, reluctant floor-care specialist, best cook on A shift according to a fully independent survey conducted by me.”

His grip was warm and dry. Nothing in his face lingered on the file.

“Ellie. Firefighter, excellent survey skeptic, available to judge breakfast foods without bias.”

“You’ll do.” Mo waved her inside as if that settled it.

The apparatus bay smelled like diesel, damp canvas, and the mineral bite of old water. Engine 12, a quint combining engine and aerial-ladder functions, filled the center bay; Rescue 12 sat in the far bay with every compartment latched. Helmets and turnout coats hung in disciplined rows along one wall. Someone had drawn a tiny pair of devil horns on a strip of tape above one locker.

“Teak,” Mo explained when he saw her looking. “She’ll deny it’s hers while standing directly beneath it.”

“I like her already.”

“Everybody does. Makes it impossible to discipline her.”

A woman’s voice drifted from beneath Engine 12. “I can hear you, traitor.”

Boots appeared first, then the rest of a compact woman on a rolling creeper, wrench in hand and black curls crushed beneath a backward cap. Teak pushed herself upright, took one look at Ellie, and grinned. “Fresh blood.”

“Transferred blood,” Mo said. “Show some class.”

“We keep that on B shift.” Teak wiped her hand before shaking Ellie’s. “Welcome to the busiest house in Santa Vera. If Mo offers you carnitas, say yes. If Jamie offers to cut your hair, run. If Priya asks whether something hurts, tell the truth. She’ll know when you’re lying and make it hurt more.”

“This is less a welcome and more a threat assessment,” Ellie mused.

“You catch on fast.”

They took her upstairs first. The bunk room held two neat lines of beds, privacy curtains, and the specific quiet of a place where people learned to sleep between alarms. Downstairs, the kitchen opened into a day room arranged around a scarred wooden table long enough for the whole shift and then some. Names, dates, and station jokes had been carved into its underside and along one edge.

“Table’s the real captain,” Mo said. “Everything important gets settled here.”

The gym occupied a converted storage room behind the bay, crowded with free weights, a rowing machine, rescue dummies, and the accumulated competitiveness of three shifts. A whiteboard listed station records in several colors of ink. The ladder time at the top belonged to Teak. Beneath it, someone had written COWARDS MAY NOT APPLY in red marker.