Things You Save in a Fire(61)

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He was angry. I could see it in his eyes and the tension in his shoulders.

I, in contrast, was doing that thing where I decide I’m not going to have any feelings. “I felt my best option at the time was distance.” I sounded like a robot, even to myself.

“We need to figure out who this is.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”

But his mind was racing. “We need to check security camera footage. We need to set some kind of trap. We need to question all the guys—”

“No. We’re not questioning anybody.”

“But how can we find him if we—”

“I don’t know. But the last thing I’m doing is telling the whole crew.”

“But we—”

“And stop saying ‘we’! This is not your problem. This is my problem.”

“But I—”

“Cut it out!” I snapped. “Stop trying to rescue me! I can rescue my own damn self.”

Owen blinked. Then closed his mouth. Then nodded. “Okay,” he said. Then he handed the note back to me. “I won’t rescue you,” he said.

“Great. Perfect. Thank you.”

“Just let me point out one thing.”

“What?”

“You’re going to need a ride home.”



* * *



ON THE DRIVE, Owen told me he had a cousin with a wrecker service. “He’ll handle it for you,” he said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“He’ll pick up your car, and get you some new tires, and bring it to you. I already texted him.”

“I’m not sure I can afford new tires.”

“He’s not going to charge you.”

“For the tires?”

“For any of it.”

“Why wouldn’t he charge me?”

Owen smiled. “He owes me a few favors. More than a few.”

I didn’t respond to that, just leaned back against the seat, trying not to let my mind drift back to the last time I’d been in the rookie’s truck with him.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said, when the silence had gone on too long.

“Like what?”

“Anything. Anything distracting.”

“There is actually something I need to share with you.”

“Share?” I asked. That would be distracting. Firemen didn’t share.

“It’s relevant to our positions here.”

“Our positions?” I didn’t look back. “You mean me, the desperately overqualified and yet somehow underrated newcomer—and you, the rookie who wants my job?”

“Yes.”

I looked out the window. “Bring it on, pal.”

“First of all,” he went on, “I want you to know that I know that you are a better firefighter than I am.”

That caught my attention.

“I know it,” he went on. “Everybody knows it. If it were up to me, I’d just back out of this whole situation and let you have your rightful place.”

“Great,” I said.

“But I can’t.”

“It’s not up to you?” I asked.

“Not entirely.”

“Who’s it up to?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” I said. “Talk.”

But he hesitated. “I’m about to tell you something I’ve never told anybody.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said.

“I think I want to. Have wanted to for a while, actually,” he said.

“You’ve been wanting to tell me your biggest secret for a while?”

“Someone, at least. But when I started thinking about who I could trust—you were at the top of the list. Actually, you were the list. Just the whole list.”

The whole list? I squinted at him. “Parents?”

“Not for this.”

“Sisters?”

“Nope.”

“Friends?”

“You’re my friend, aren’t you?”

“Friend-slash-enemy.”

“Fair enough.”

He was stalling. “Out with it, then.”

“Okay,” he said. He adjusted his hands on the wheel. “When I was a kid, I used to hang out with these two boys from my neighborhood. I was the youngest of a bunch of kids, and all our parents worked, and these kids and I just kind of ran around all summer pretty much unsupervised. We didn’t misbehave, we just did kid stuff. Looked for bottle caps. Collected sticks. Set up toy soldiers. But our favorite thing to do was set little fires and put them out—and it was especially my favorite thing to do because my dad was a firefighter and so the other boys, even though they were older, totally deferred to my expertise.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering what any of this might have to do with me.

“Anyway, there was a warehouse district just past our neighborhood with lots of abandoned buildings. We weren’t supposed to go there. Our moms had drawn a line at Battle Street that we were never, ever supposed to cross. So of course we crossed it all the time.”