Fearless

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “I just went through the academy. I know the rules, Cole. What I really want to know is the score.”

  Right. Time to bottom-line it, then. “Relationships between two people in the same house are definitely discouraged. I’m not saying they don’t happen, because the truth is, they do. But that’s usually between paramedics and firefighters, who don’t work together as directly as you and I do.”

  Her knuckles pulled tight over the spatula in her grasp, but she managed a nod. “So it’s different for us.”

  “Yes. To answer your question, if anyone found out we’d slept together, dealing with it would fall to Captain Westin.” A cold sweat formed between Cole’s shoulder blades despite the warmth of the kitchen. “He’s a fair man, but he also runs a tight house.”

  “We’d both be reprimanded,” Savannah said, no trace of a question in her words.

  “That would probably be the least of our worries. It’s hard to say because we’ve never had a female firefighter at Eight. But Westin’s big on going by the book.” The captain’s integrity was one of the main reasons Cole respected the man, although not nearly the only one.

  “Okay, but the only actual rule is against two people from the same house being married,” she said. “Even then, nobody gets fired.”

  Damn, she really had paid attention at the academy. “No, but in that scenario, at least one person does get transferred.”

  “You think Westin would boot me if he found out?” Savannah asked, clearly stunned.

  “No. I don’t know.” The thought put a dent in Cole’s already questionable composure. “I’m sure he’d argue the conflict of interest.”

  She slid the last piece of French toast to the serving plate at her hip, leveling him with a copper-colored stare as brazen and honest as ever. “You mean the one that doesn’t exist? Come on, Cole. I get that the FFD isn’t all rah-rah over things like this. But this attraction between us didn’t just pop up overnight, and you’ve never treated me differently from Donovan or Crews or Jones. When we’re at work, we work. Period.”

  He opened his mouth to argue—the regs weren’t arbitrary, for Chrissake—but the words slammed to a stop in his throat.

  Cole couldn’t argue with her because she was right.

  “Just because you and I know that doesn’t mean Westin or anyone else in the department will agree,” he said instead, and on that, she didn’t fight him.

  “That may be true, but they’d still have to find out.” Savannah lowered her spatula, silencing the soft whoosh of the burner with a turn of her wrist. “Look, I’m not a big fan of secrets, but considering the circumstances, disclosure doesn’t seem wise. Nobody knows what’s going on between us. All we have to do is keep it that way.”

  “And what’s going on between us?” The question was out before he could harness it, but of course, Savannah stayed true to form and met it head-on.

  “Denying that I like you would make me a liar, and since you wouldn’t believe me anyway, I’m not going to insult either one of us by trying. I don’t take this lightly—you know how important the job is to me.” She paused, every bit of her expression punctuating the emotion behind her words. “But we’re adults. What was it you said last week about Donovan and Zoe? Risky or not, they knew what they were doing when they jumped in.”

  Cole let out a long exhale. “I did say that.” Never in a trillion years had he thought the sentiment would apply to him, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d meant what he’d said.

  Savannah turned, the move bringing their bodies within an inch of contact, and damn, he wanted to touch her.

  She beat him to it, rising up on the balls of her bare feet to brush a kiss over his mouth. “I don’t want to get married, Cole. Hell, I don’t even want to get serious. But this . . .” She kissed him again. “This doesn’t feel wrong to me.”

  “We’ll have to be careful,” he said, this time kissing her. “And I still won’t treat you any different than I would another candidate.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to.”

  Her lips slid apart, the warm heat of her body deliciously firm and strong against his, and Cole couldn’t fight the truth.

  Forbidden as she might be, Savannah didn’t feel wrong to him, either.

  Needing something to do other than focus on the knot building in his chest, Cole kissed her one more time and pulled back. He took the serving dish of French toast from the counter, moving toward the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room, and Savannah grabbed the plates and silverware he’d taken from the cupboards.

  “I’m not kidding when I say we’ll have to be careful. Maybe we should work out some sort of plan.” He gestured her onto one of the bar stools before taking a seat next to her, and it felt all too easy to kick back in his condo and share breakfast together.

  “I should’ve known you’d formulate a strategy.” Savannah laughed, splitting the thick slices of French toast between the two empty plates.

  Cole’s return laughter popped out without consulting his brain or better judgment. “Hey, strategies work. Anyway, Oz is on a tear lately. I’m not sure what’s going on with him, but even though he’s acting like an ass, he’s still far from stupid.”

  Savannah bit her bottom lip in what he’d bet was a bid to keep a smart comment at bay. “Have you come up with anything else on that mistake he made at the warehouse fire?”

  “No.” Cole’s shoulders tightened, but he forced them back to neutral. “I’m not even sure Oz wasn’t right. That fire could’ve gone down exactly the way he said it did.”

  “But your gut is telling you something different,” she said, and he noticed there was no question in her tone. Just as there was no question in his mind.

  “Yeah. I think he made a mistake. Those other burn patterns are too big not to have played a factor in how the fire started.”

  “And?”

  Damn, she was getting good at reading situations. Or maybe she was just getting good at reading him. “And Oz is too smart for a miss like that. I’m not even technically on squad yet, and I caught the discrepancy. But he didn’t even mention the burn pattern in the report for the fire marshal to review. No pictures, no notation. Nothing.” The guy might’ve worked enough double shifts to look like a shit sandwich lately, but even so, it was a weird no-call.

  “Okay, so let’s look at the facts,” Savannah said, her forehead creasing to a V between her slender brows. “The warehouse is an old building that wasn’t very well maintained.”

  Cole nodded in agreement. She’d just described pretty much every building on Industrial Row, but . . . “Def initely accurate.”

  “And the air-conditioning unit in that second-floor storage bay was the cause of the fire.”

  “Absolutely.” Between the damage and the burn patterns, the starting point was irrefutable.

  Savannah continued, her seriousness and her smarts both on full display. “But even though the burn patterns on the wall show that the fire moved through the electrical system, you think the real reason it spread so quickly was because the unit somehow exploded.”

  “That’s what the burn pattern on the floor indicates. But the thing would’ve had to get really hot, really fast. Faulty electrical wouldn’t be enough to make it explode.”

  “No,” Savannah said slowly. “But if someone tampered with the unit, it would.”

  Shock knifed through Cole, snapping his spine to rigid attention. “No.”

  “I’m not saying Oz tampered with it,” she countered quickly. “But come on, Cole. You have to admit, some sort of foul play is at least plausible.”

  He turned, but none of the thoughts ricocheting around in his brain made it down the chain of command to his mouth. No way. No fucking way. Oz was a firefighter. He might be a salty son of a bitch, but the thought that he’d overlook something sketchy, either accidentally or otherwise, was asinine.

  “No.” Cole fought for an inhale to counter the sudden burst of emotion in his chest. Lo
ck it down. Focus. “I’m not saying that unit didn’t somehow burn fast enough to explode, or that Oz didn’t make a mistake in not documenting the second burn pattern,” he said, because the more he thought about it, the more it looked as if the guy had. “But both of those things are a far freaking cry from arson.”

  After a long minute, Savannah nodded. “That may be true. Either way, though, something isn’t right here.”

  “Yeah, but unfortunately there’s no way to know exactly what.”

  “Just because we can’t find answers on this call doesn’t mean we can’t find answers, period,” she countered without heat. “You said Oz writes up the official reports for most of the fires C-shift responds to.”

  Cole shifted his weight over his bar stool, his pulse evening out at the opportunity for clear, logical thought. “Reports usually fall under Westin’s domain, but we’ve been so slammed from the redistricting over the last four months that Oz volunteered to write them up instead.”

  Savannah sank the side of her fork into one buttery brown corner of her French toast, although her attention was clearly still on the conversation, and the move smoothed over Cole’s unease.

  “That’s a bit unusual for a squad lieutenant, isn’t it?” she asked.

  But he just shook his head. “Oz has been with the department only two years less than Westin. The same way Westin could’ve made battalion chief a decade ago, Oz knows enough to be a captain ten times over. He could write up these reports from a coma.”

  Cole paused to take a bite of his breakfast, following the mouthful with an involuntary moan. “Damn, Nelson. You weren’t kidding.” In went another bite, then another. “This French toast is like a gateway drug.”

  “I told you.” She grinned, pointing her fork at him for emphasis before lasering back in on the topic. “Anyway, how do the write-ups work?”

  “After every incident, Crews documents things from the engine side. Oz adds his notes, goes back to the scene to complete the investigation, then runs the official report up the chain of command,” Cole said. “Eventually the fire marshal reviews everything and does further investigations whenever necessary. The cause of most of the fires we respond to is pretty easy to pinpoint, though.”

  The same way arson was nearly impossible to prove. Identical causes could be intentional or accidental, depending on what—or who—kicked them off.

  “Okay. So if this warehouse thing was just an honest oversight on Oz’s part, then all of his other reports should wash with their corresponding scenes, right?”

  “Right,” he said automatically, making the logic leap less than a second later. “So you want to go check another fire scene against Oz’s report?”

  “Why not?” Savannah asked, ambitious as ever. “That restaurant fire we put out last week would be the perfect place to check—you and I even saw the blaze firsthand. Comparing another report against the scene will be more experience for when you move to squad, and chances are, it’ll put this whole thing to rest as a simple oversight. What’ve we got to lose?”

  He turned the idea over in his mind, and it wasn’t a half-bad strategy. “The report on that restaurant fire is probably done by now. I could call in a favor and have someone at the clerk’s office e-mail me a copy.”

  No sense in bugging Westin for it when they weren’t on shift, and Savannah was right. Once they made a quick run-through at the restaurant and all turned out copasetic, he’d be able to lose this weird feeling over the warehouse once and for all.

  Cole looked at her, his unease finally leveling out as he dug back into his French toast. “With any luck, we’ll have this thing figured out by lunch.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Savannah flipped her Ray-Bans into place, carefully navigating the still not-quite-familiar Fairview streets while also trying to manage all of the emotions flinging themselves around in her chest. The residual endorphins from the orgasms she’d lost count of after she and Cole had finally made it to his bedroom last night were potent enough. But adding the one-two punch of their morning-after conversation to the mix, then sticking the whole warehouse investigation mystery on top? Yeah, Savannah was pretty much as jacked up as a girl could get.

  Which would be dangerous if it didn’t feel so damned delicious.

  “Okay.” Savannah squeezed the steering wheel triple extra tight. She needed to concentrate, stat. “So give me the highlights of the report.”

  Cole palmed his cell phone, flicking the screen to life with his thumb. “According to this, the fire originated in the kitchen.”

  “That’s consistent with what we found when we got in there,” she said, dialing up the fire in her mind’s eye. “The whole back of the restaurant was fully involved.” They hadn’t even been able to get to the kitchen from their position, the flames had been so heavy.

  “The damage is just as bad as the warehouse fire. Looks like something sparked the grease in the hood over the range and the fire spread through the ventilation system in the walls and ceiling. The kitchen took the brunt of it, but grease fires get out of control fast, and again, with no one to smell the smoke . . .”

  “Nine-one-one doesn’t get called until the fire’s already rolling.”

  Cole nodded. He dropped his chin to scan the report silently, no doubt committing the crucial points to memory. His methodical nature might be at odds with her tendency to dive right in, but God, the way his mind seemed to work through every detail with thorough care was more than just impressive.

  It was one hell of a turn-on.

  Savannah turned onto Martinsburg Avenue, following the guidance of her GPS. She’d known suggesting they check out the scene of this fire was a slippery slope. True, they might find nothing amiss, in which case they really could just chalk up the discrepancy in the warehouse fire report to an honest mistake. But Savannah’s gut thrummed with emotion, whispering hotly that there was more to this whole thing than some whoopsie-daisy oversight on Oz’s part.

  Enough that she’d made the bold suggestion they come looking for clues that might or might not point the finger at the superior who’d wanted to show her the door from day freaking one.

  Cole’s voice interrupted her thoughts with a smooth rumble. “There it is.”

  Savannah turned off the main thoroughfare, winding through the parking lot. She pulled around the back of the restaurant, which was heavily strung with bright yellow tape cautioning DANGER—DO NOT CROSS. “Wow. Looks like another loss.”

  “That’s what this says.” Cole lifted his phone, sliding out of the passenger seat next to her and adjusting the brim of his dark blue FFD baseball cap for a closer look at the restaurant. They approached the back of the building, and Savannah pulled up at the sight of the clearly locked employee entrance. Of course the FFD wouldn’t rely on caution tape to keep people out. The scene was a massive liability for anyone not knowing how to navigate it. But Cole’s movements didn’t hitch as he pulled a slim leather case from the back pocket of his cargo shorts, popping the lock on the door less than a minute later.

  Savannah’s laugh was inescapable. “A bit off the straight and narrow, don’t you think?” she asked, arching a brow at the set of lock picks just before he returned them to his pocket.

  He met the look with a dark smile that made her toes curl in her cross-trainers. “I might favor a good strategy, but I never claimed to be a saint, sweetheart. Picking the locks might not be entirely on the up-and-up, but it’s the path of least resistance. Anyway, we’re just looking.”

  “Got it,” she breathed. She followed him past the steel door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, the familiar scent of bitter-burnt smoke occupying her senses enough to make her eyes water. The terra cotta–colored floor tiles bore heavy streaks of dried-up ash and soot, and the walls leading past what looked like a dry goods pantry and a storage space for cleaning supplies showed similar dirt and damage. Cole propped the back door open to let the midday summer sunlight guide their way into the kitchen, where the only other light came c
ourtesy of the two long rectangular windows set high into the right-hand wall.

  “I can’t imagine the fire didn’t start back here,” Savannah said, swiveling her gaze around the blackened shell of the room. Two stainless-steel worktables sat crookedly on the floor tiles in the middle of the narrow galley kitchen, with a dishwashing station on the far side under the windows. The interior wall—which she assumed bordered the back wall of the dining room, judging by the damage—was burned down to the tiles spanning its entire length. A hulking six-burner range stood dead center on what was left of the wall, and once again, Savannah had no clue how she and Cole would be able to sift through this mess to uncover anything of use.

  “It did.” Cole clicked the button on his small Maglite, spotlighting the hood over the range. “See the burn patterns on the ceiling? With the grease that had to have been accumulating here for who knows how long, this thing would’ve only needed one spark to go up like a pressure cooker.”

  “But the restaurant was closed for business,” Savannah argued. “Where’s a spark going to come from if there’s no one around to make one?”

  His hesitation was slight, but she didn’t miss it. “If the power to the building wasn’t turned off, faulty electrical could’ve done it.”

  She thought back. Crews had said something about the electrical system, right after they’d put out the blaze. But still . . . “Is that what the report says?”

  “Mmm-hmm. The wiring’s definitely fried, just like at the warehouse”—Cole swung the beam of the flashlight over the drywalled section of the kitchen, which showed multiple burn patterns where the fire had scorched the wires that had once run beneath—“which backs up the report.”

  The but hung in his tone, and Savannah willed herself to wait patiently for him to voice it even though her heartbeat pounded hard and fast against her eardrums.

  “But that doesn’t explain these marks down here, or the debris under the grates on the cooktop.”