Page 12 of Jethro

“I’m sure you can show your own kids that one day,” he smiled. Her head jerked up and Jethro immediately knew he’d said the wrong thing. “Aurora.”

“I’m tired now,” she said standing. “Thank you for talking to me.”

She ran back toward the station and Jethro just sat there looking after her as she ran. One of the other female firefighters walked toward him.

“Don’t feel bad, Jethro,” said Eloise. “I’m not sure what happened to her but she told us she couldn’t have children. Honestly, she hasn’t even had a period in over a year according to her. Give her some time.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” he nodded.

Time. Time was something he had in spades. He just needed to make sure that Aurora understood that he was the most patient man on the planet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The call dropped at 0217 hours, when the community around Belle Fleur had gone quiet enough for every sound in BFFD Station #1 to feel sharpened. You could hear the printer coughing out the run sheet, boots striking concrete, the bay door shuddering upward into the dark.

The run sheet said it plainly. Dumpster fire, rear of the old Bellweather cannery, no exposures reported.

Jethro read the address twice while hauling on his coat, not because he needed to, but because it was the third dumpster fire in as many days and the same block had appeared on all three dispatches. That made seven overall in the last few weeks.

“Our loyal customer,” he said, climbing into the engine. “At this rate we ought to leave a punch card. Four trash fires and the fifth one’s free.”

Kai dropped into the seat across from him and clipped his mask to his harness.

“I want a toaster after 0600 hours.”

Sonny, was already checking the thermal imager.

“You’re both assuming the dumpster survives the loyalty program.”

Aurora’s voice came over the cab intercom, level and clipped from the officer’s seat.

“Save the comedy for after we confirm there’s nothing behind it.”

Eloise pulled her gloves tight and looked through the windshield as the engine rolled into the empty avenue. Sodium lights slid over the glass. Rocco drove with both hands rigid on the wheel, siren scattering the few cars ahead of them.

Wilder sat near the rear door, young enough that he still bounced one knee on routine calls and tried to hide it. The cannery had been abandoned for eleven years, a sprawled timber building beside the river, all warped siding and rusted vents.

Everyone in the district knew it was waiting for gravity, weather, or a developer to decide its future. They were shocked the hurricane hadn’t ended its life. Tonight, as they turned onto Bellweather, the horizon decided for them.

Orange light pulsed above the roofs three blocks away. A column of smoke pushed upward, thick and black, spreading low beneath the clouds. Rocco eased off the siren without thinking. No one joked. The dispatch description suddenly felt like a lie told by someone who had only seen the first spark.

They rounded the last corner, and the cannery filled the windshield, burning from end to end. Flame ran along the roofline in quick yellow sheets, ducking through holes where shingles had fallen away and rising again through the skeletal cupola.

The dumpster behind the loading dock was no longer a separate fire. It was a white-hot metal box at the center of a widening pool of burning debris, and the weeds between it and the building had become a fuse. One wall leaned outward several degrees farther than Jethro remembered. Boards snapped loose, flared as they fell, and vanished into the orange churn below.

“BFFD Engine 1 on scene,” Aurora transmitted. Her voice held steady, but her gloved hand was braced against the dash. “Heavy fire throughout a large abandoned commercial structure. Exposure on the east side. Establishing Bellweather Command. Strike a second alarm to Shadow Warriors and notify utilities. Defensive operations until proven otherwise.”

The radio answered in bursts of static and acknowledgments. Rocco nosed the engine past the mouth of the alley, far enough from the leaning wall that a collapse might miss them. Might was doing a great deal of work. The brakes sighed.

They spilled out into heat that struck like an opening oven. Jethro caught an odor beneath the smoke before he had both boots on the pavement: harsh, sweet, chemical. Not old oil baked out of floorboards. Not rotting garbage. Gasoline, maybe more than gasoline, sharp enough to taste through the air before he pulled his mask on.

Kai turned his head toward him. Their eyes met through the glow.

“You smell that?”

“I smell several felonies,” Jethro said.

Sonny swung down with the irons.