Where There's Smoke. Kristin Hardy

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      Dave stood up and grabbed his sunglasses off his desk. “Okay, mem sahib, your wish is my command.” He walked jauntily out into the hall. A moment later the door opened again and his head popped back inside. “Hey, boss?”

      “Yes?”

      “You really think I could be a rock star?”

      Sloane tried to keep a straight face. “Truth?”

      “Truth.”

      “Don’t quit your day job,” she advised.

      The door to the lab clicked closed on his whistle and Sloane got to work monitoring the simulations. Her good humor slid into humming concentration as she ran the Orienteer module through scenario after scenario. When the phone rang, she picked it up absently. “Sloane Hillyard.”

      “Nick Trask, Ladder 67.”

      She would have recognized his voice even without the introduction. It was unsettling how clearly she could imagine the lines of his face. Still, no one was going to distract her from getting the gear qualified, no matter how good-looking he was. Too much was at stake.

      She made herself speak coolly, impersonally. “Captain Trask. How are you?”

      “Good enough. How about you?”

      “Fine, thanks. I saw the fire at the tank farm on the news. It looked bad.”

      “For a while. We held onto it, though. Chief Douglass is a good firefighter.” It was the highest praise a firefighter could give.

      “I’m glad everything worked out all right.” Sloane took a deep breath. “So what can I do for you, captain?”

      “You could call me Nick, for starters. I only get called Captain Trask when I’m visiting schools or getting chewed out by the chief.”

      She blinked. “Why?”

      “Why do I get chewed out?”

      “Why should I call you Nick?”

      “We’re going to be working together, right? It might make things a little more friendly.”

      “You didn’t seem too happy about the situation the other day. Why the sudden change of pace?”

      “Call it an experiment. I know Ayre’s an operator, but you were right the other day, I don’t know you at all. I figure you deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

      Oh, nice wasn’t fair, she thought with a little twist of alarm. Nice could be dangerous. Nice could be just the start of far more than she could handle. She paused. “So what can I do for you…Nick?”

      “I thought it was the other way around. That was the gist of our conversation yesterday, wasn’t it?”

      “It was.” Sloane drew a precise pattern of interlocking diamonds on her desk blotter, trying to ignore the quick flutter in her stomach. “You made it pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with pandering to the politicos.” And she wanted nothing to do with any man who could make her stomach flutter. Especially if he was a firefighter.

      “You hold a grudge?”

      “No, but I need cooperation. Nick.”

      “Well, my opinion of the situation hasn’t changed, but as you pointed out, it isn’t up to me. So if I can help you out—safely—then I’ll do it.”

      The stiff note in his voice let her relax a bit. “Start with an open mind.”

      “Done. If the equipment’s good, you’ll have my support. Just don’t expect it to go any further than the testing. The day the department has the money to buy pricey electronics like you’re peddling is the day I’ll be driving to work in a Rolls.”

      Sloane took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you drive, but I do know this equipment is going to be an important tool, as common in firehouses as thermal cameras.”

      “No doubt.”

      “No, there isn’t,” she said shortly. There couldn’t be, not after all she’d been through. “Now is there something else, Captain Trask?”

      “Nick. And yeah, there is. I need to know what you want to do about the testing. How many men you want, when, what kind of apparatus, all that. You might find an engine company better suited to your needs, by the way.”

      Sloane shook her head, forgetting that he couldn’t see her. “No, it has to be a truck company. I’ve got five Orienteers to test, plus the master unit that I’ll be using to monitor. I’d like to keep it to the same group of men.”

      “We can do that if you schedule carefully.”

      “Good. What I had in mind was a session or two at the training facility, where we’ll have control. Once I’m sure the kinks are all out of it, you can start taking it onto fire grounds. I need a minimum of three fire situations over and above the training facility sessions to get meaningful statistics.”

      “Okay. Let’s set up some dates.”

      It didn’t take long, when it came down to it, and she entered the dates in her computer with satisfaction. “We’re all set, then. I’ll see you at the Quincy facility on Saturday.”

      “All right.” Nick paused. “You know, Bill Grant backed you when I talked to him. Despite his unfortunate tendency to cooperate with Ayre, he’s a good man. Don’t let him down.”

      Sloane hung up the telephone. Don’t let him down. The words echoed in her mind as she stared at the computer screen. She wasn’t seeing the data, though. She was seeing a red-headed boy hanging around the local firehouse, wiping down the engine and listening to the stories of courage and glory. Don’t let him down. She saw him on the edge of manhood, wearing the blue of the Hartford fire service, his lieutenant’s badge gleaming on his chest, pride gleaming in his eyes. She saw him at the altar, uncomfortable in his tuxedo and unmindful of the discomfort as he looked at the glowing woman who had just become his wife. Don’t let him down. She saw his casket being lowered into the ground.

      The fire had been in an abandoned warehouse honeycombed with cold-storage lockers, decrepit and way below code. Two of Mitch’s guys had been searching a tangle of rooms for victims when the smoke had thickened and they’d gotten lost. Mitch had plunged in to find them. And had never come out.

      How quickly had he passed out from the fumes after his air had run out? Sloane wondered for the thousandth time. Seconds? Heartbeats? Before or after he heard the voices of the firefighters on the other side of the wall, the firefighters who couldn’t find him?

      Before or after the whole room flashed over into merciless, killing flame?

      Officially, the cause of death had been the smoke inhalation, but the real culprit had been the labyrinthine building and the lack of orientation equipment. It could happen to any firefighter at any time. It had been Mitch’s bad luck it had happened to him. Even five years later, remembering made her tighten with the fury of senseless waste, struggle against the tearing loss.

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