Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(66)
Walking back out to the engine bay, Kellan stored his gear in his regular spot in Engine Seventeen’s back step, checking, then double-checking his SCBA tank and mask before securing them in the compartment behind his well-worn seatback. He stuck his head into Bridges’ office to officially check in with the captain and start his shift, but he hadn’t even made it six steps out of the man’s office before the shrill sound of the all-call turned his pulse into a playground.
“Engine Seventeen, Squad Six, Ambulance Twenty-Two, Battalion Seventeen. Structure fire, hazardous materials, forty-two fourteen Oakmont Boulevard. Requesting immediate response.”
Kellan moved toward the engine bay out of pure instinct, and he was far from alone.
“Woohoo, looks like they’re playing our song, y’all,” Hawk drawled, hustling his way into the hall from the fire house’s common area with the rest of the rescue squad on his heels.
“Nothing like a hazmat call to make your dick nice and hard in the morning,” Faurier said, tacking on an apologetic shrug as he caught Shae’s eye roll from the doorway to the engine bay. “No offense, McCullough.”
But Shae just smirked in response as she beat feet to Engine Seventeen and grabbed her bunker pants from the operator’s seat. “All good, Sammy boy. If you’ve got to apologize for your dick, you’ve got bigger problems than offending me.”
Faurier laughed and lifted his hands in concession before quickly hoisting himself into Squad Six’s vehicle. Although the conversation seemed relaxed, maybe even to the point of being inappropriate considering the potential seriousness of the call they were about to go on, Kellan knew better. Every single one of their adrenal glands was pumping out a fucking truckload of go-go-go right now. Letting the conversation crank that tension even higher wouldn’t do them—or the people they were hustling to help—any favors. Keeping cool was an absolute imperative if they wanted to get their jobs done right. One split second of panic could be the difference between life and death.
Focus. Block out everything that isn’t right now. Kellan set his shoulders around his spine and rounded the back side of the engine, where Gamble greeted him with a single lift of his chin.
“Nice timing. You fucking slacker,” his lieutenant added, toeing out of his plainclothes work boots and yanking his turnout gear over his navy blue RFD T-shirt in a well-practiced move.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kellan was tempted to jaw back, but he’d already ducked the radar with McCullough and Drake. Plus, something out there was on fire, and from the all-call, it didn’t sound like a family barbecue gone awry. Hazmat was no joke.
Pulling himself into the back step, Kellan sucked in a few rounds of inhale/exhale to meter his pulse as he slung his headset into place and began to gear up. Gamble swiveled a lightning-fast three-sixty through the engine’s interior, his eyes landing on Kellan, then their rookie Slater beside him before giving Shae the signal to haul balls out of the engine bay.
“Okay, boys and girls. Let’s see what we’ve got,” Gamble clipped through the mic, hitting the words with enough volume to be heard over the wail of the sirens and the rattle and whoosh of the interior vehicle noise. He turned his attention to the display screen on the dashboard, scrolling through the updates from dispatch. “House fire, and from the sound of things, not a small one. Dispatch has a report of flames showing on the entire first floor and some kind of explosion. Huh,” he added, his voice hitching in surprise. “That’s weird. Only one nine-one-one call.”
“Really?” Slater asked, pausing with one arm halfway through his coat. “On a Saturday morning? With an explosion?”
The rookie was right. That wasn’t just weird. It was fucking crazy.
Shae’s honey-colored ponytail swung from the back of one shoulder to the other as she checked the intersection in front of them and hung a sharp right. “Oakmont Boulevard marks the eastern edge of North Point. That neighborhood is as bad as it gets. People tend to mind their own business and not much else around there.”
Kellan pictured the layout of their call area in his mind’s eye, and damn, looked like weird was just their jumping-off point today. “Why the hell did we get called all the way out there? Isn’t that Station Twelve’s territory?”
“Dunno,” Gamble said. “Might be the hazmat though. Squad always gets dibs on those calls, and if the fire’s big enough, the guys from Twelve will be there, too. Speaking of which, this is a hazmat situation. Dispatch has the nine-one-one caller IDing the house as having a meth lab inside, so we’re gonna have to be on our toes. Gear up and get your shit together.”
“Copy that,” Kellan said into the mic, Shae and Slater’s identical response layering in with his over the headset. He put his senses on full alert as he shouldered into the heavy material of his coat and fastened the thing without looking. Following with the rest of his gear, he looked over at Slater to make sure the guy was all systems go with both his equipment and the nerves that had to be filling the kid to the goddamn brim right now.
Not that Kellan didn’t get it. On this job, you were either scared or you lacked a pulse. The trick was learning how to throw your fear back like a double shot of Crown Royal and not let the afterburn kick your ass for the effort.
Inhale on a three-count. Exhale to five. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Focus.