Page 31 of Igniting Her

Ellie triggered it. The shriek filled the bay.

“Reset.”

She did. Cassie made a mark and moved to Jamie.

Not one look lasted too long. Not one word bent out of professional shape. Cassie didn’t glance at Ellie’s mouth. Ellie didn’t look at the left hand that had held both her wrists above her head. Their control was so exact it became intimate. Every withheld reaction entered the space between them and stayed there, gathering pressure.

By ten, the secret had learned the station’s rhythms. It rode beneath ordinary things without disturbing them. Ellie passed Cassie a spanner wrench during the aerial inspection and placed it precisely into her open palm. Their gloves did not touch. Her body remembered contact anyway.

At lunch, Cassie sat at one end of the long table while Mo described a disastrous blind date from his academy years. Ellie laughed with the others. When she looked up, Cassie was already looking at her. The glance lasted no longer than a breath. Normal. Cassie lowered her eyes to her plate. Ellie lost the next line of Mo’s story.

“You with us?” Teak asked.

“I’m considering whether he deserved a second date retroactively.”

“She blocked his number from the parking lot.”

“Coward.”

The table moved on. Nobody noticed the pulse beating too hard in Ellie’s throat.

After lunch, she carried portable radios to the apparatus bay for battery checks. Cassie remained in the office with the base unit. “Portable one, radio check.”

Mo answered from the pump panel. “Loud and clear.”

“Portable two.”

Jamie responded from the gear racks.

Ellie clipped portable three to her belt and fitted the remote microphone at her shoulder.

“Portable three, radio check.” Cassie’s voice arrived directly beside her ear, flattened slightly by the speaker and still capable of doing things no department-issued equipment had any business doing.

Ellie pressed the transmit button. “Loud and clear, Captain.”

A pause. Barely one. “Copy.”

Ellie set the radio in its charger before she embarrassed herself in front of public property.

The tones dropped at 2:26 p.m.

“Commercial structure fire, Harbor Wash Laundry, three-sixteen Mercado Street. Caller reports fire in a dryer, building evacuated, smoke visible.”

Chairs moved back. The private current vanished beneath the work. Ellie ran for the bay with everyone else. Turnout pants, suspenders, coat, hood, radio strap. Mo took the wheel. Cassie climbed into the officer’s seat. Ellie secured herself behind her with Jamie across from her, Priya and Teak beside them.

Engine 12 rolled in seventy-eight seconds. Rescue 12 remained in its bay.

Mercado Street descended toward the older harbor district, narrow storefronts pressed shoulder to shoulder beneath apartments and offices. Light gray smoke pushed from the laundromat’s open rear door. Customers stood across the street in rain jackets, several still holding baskets. Mo positioned the quint beyond the front entrance, leaving the alley and hydrant clear for the second-due engine.

Cassie keyed the radio. “Engine 12 on scene. Single-story commercial laundromat, approximately forty by eighty, light smoke showing from the rear. Occupants reported evacuated. Engine 12 establishing Mercado Command. Engine 12 Attack, Ridge and Jamie, charged line through side Alpha. Engine 12 Search, Teak and Priya, control utilities, then primary search. Mo, tank water and stand by at the pump. Second-due will establish supply.”

Ellie took the nozzle. Jamie flanked the line behind her. They masked up at the threshold while Cassie spoke to the manager, confirming the dryer bank along the rear wall and an employee who had pulled the alarm before ushering everyone out.

“Attack ready,” Ellie called.

“Hold at the entrance until utilities are controlled and Search confirms the front half clear.”

At Pier Four, the order to hold had felt like a challenge to Ellie’s competence. Now she heard the whole scene inside it: a public space, poor visibility at the rear, energized appliances, gas-fed dryers, no verified life hazard. She rested one gloved hand on the charged line. “Copy. Holding.”