Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3)

by Susan Fanetti

  Pilar liked him. Everybody did. He wasn’t friendly, necessarily, but he was fair. And he respected his firefighters.

  They didn’t talk smack around him. It was like their father had walked into the room.

  “You want coffee, Cap?” Scott Nguyen, Perez’s paramedic partner, asked.

  Harrison shook his head and reached for the pitcher of orange juice. “No, thanks, Nguyen. I’ve shot my limit already this morning.” As he sat back with his glass of juice, he grinned and said, “So, anybody got news besides Cordero?”

  Pilar could have hugged him. Usually, she didn’t mind all the smack and banter, but she was feeling defensive about Connor. She knew why, too. She liked him. A lot. He had a wry sense of humor and a devil-may-care attitude. That could come off as superficial, and it had, at first. But he was smart, too. And thoughtful.

  And he was smoking hot and a great lay.

  Though she thought she’d covered it well, she’d been pissed when he’d said he was heading to the clubhouse to grab some pussy. She’d been more pissed at herself, however, that she was pissed at him.

  Nothing serious. She wanted nothing serious, and neither did he. That was a good thing. A perfect scenario. It was fine that he was getting more pussy. It meant that she didn’t have to worry that he’d want more from her than she could give. He had no more to give than she. A good thing.

  She didn’t have a life or a job that made room for a serious relationship. Every watch, there was a chance she could get killed or fucked up. She literally lived half her life at her job. Yeah, there were people in the barn who had families, but she didn’t have the temperament for it.

  It was a spiel she knew well, and it was running through her head on a loop this morning.

  So Pilar was very glad when Captain Harrison filled his plate and they all sat around the table and spent the rest of the meal talking about the weather and the drought.

  ~oOo~

  After breakfast, they did their daily checks and assignments, making sure the equipment was in shape and the supplies were stocked and the barn was clean. It was Sunday, so they didn’t have training or public service to do. Weekday watches often included trips to schools or school trips to the station, blood drives, and a variety of other kinds of community engagement obligations. Pilar and Perez spent a lot of time on those details—they were two of the very few women in this job at all, and they made good press.

  Especially Pilar, since she was the only woman in the county whose primary job wasn’t medical.

  All the firefighters were EMTs, it was a requirement of the job, but there were two paramedics on every watch, and they took the lead in first-response medical calls. Pilar’s primary job was rescue. She was often the first into a burning building—or second, behind Moore. They were a team.

  For a woman, Pilar was fairly average in size: just shy of five-seven, about one-twenty-five. For a firefighter, she was small. But she was strong; those one hundred and twenty-five pounds were solid muscle. She was agile, too—and fierce. The package helped her excel at rescue. She could get places a man could not, even in full gear. And she could lift well more than her own weight.

  Moore was much bigger than she was; in fact, he was one of the bigger guys in the whole station. About Connor’s size. He was her brawn. Those places too tight even for Pilar to get into, Moore and she could clear together.

  When people told her she was brave, she normally corrected them, at least in her head. She didn’t think she was brave. She preferred the term ‘fierce.’ To be brave, one needed to overcome fear. Pilar didn’t feel fear. She had respect for the risks, and she knew her job. She did her job. She barely noticed the danger. When she was on scene, fire was just something to be dealt with. She trusted her training and her instincts, and she did the thing she was there to do.

  The truth was, though, that burning-building calls were the least common calls they went on. Much more common were the accident calls—vehicular or otherwise—and medical calls or public safety calls like gas leaks or water main breaks. There was a reason a structure fire made the news. It didn’t happen all that often.

  In California, especially in the summer, though, they went on plenty of fire calls. They had an actual wildfire season, the way the Midwest had a tornado season. Though the Forest Service had its own firefighters, all firefighters were trained in wildfire management and took calls to assist, and the department jumped on brush fire calls like they were harbingers of Armageddon itself.

  Because they well might be.

  This summer, so far, despite the dry winter, the fire season had been quiet. But it was still early yet, really. As the dry season progressed, everything got more precarious, and August and September were often the worst months. There was always an extra layer of vigilance over every watch in the summer and early fall. One cigarette butt tossed out a car window could destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and brush. It happened all the time.

  And those fuckers were nearly impossible to fight.

  But the watch on the Sunday after she’d been with Connor was quiet. The truck and ambulance went out on a vehicular call about eight hours in, but the only injury had been a driver whose airbag had made meat out of his face. Both cars had been obviously totaled, so they’d kept the truck around to block the lane. They’d milled about for an hour or so, directing traffic until the tow company could get the wrecks onto a flatbed and out of the way.

  Then they’d gone back to the barn and run their checks again.

  After dinner that night, Pilar and Moore were on cleanup detail, so they were alone in the kitchen while everybody was upstairs in the rec room watching the Dodgers game.

  While Pilar loaded the dishwasher, Moore put away the cooking supplies. Reyes was a great cook, but a real slob at the counter. Leaning over her to put the spices away in the cupboard, Moore asked, “You got plans tomorrow? Want to head to Joshua and do some climbing after watch?”

  It sounded like a plan to her. “Yeah—but I need to check on my brother first. Can we make it an overnight, ride out in the afternoon and climb in the morning?” It was too hot to climb past noon in the desert. “Indian Cove should be pretty light on a Monday night. Not too many tourists.”

  She and Moore were both rock climbing enthusiasts; their friendship was based as much on their off time as it was on the teamwork on watch. They weren’t close in a ‘share-our-deepest-secrets-and-braid-each-other’s-hair’ way, but they understood each other without that kind of sharing. They’d come into the station within a year of each other, Moore after Pilar, and had hit it off right away. They experienced the world in similar ways, most of them physical. But they’d never been physical together, despite countless camping trips sleeping in the same little pack tent.

  They’d come close once, a couple of years ago, when they’d been up on Big Bear and an unexpected rain had driven them into the tent early. They’d spent the night drinking terrible wine they’d picked up at a convenience store on their way up, and they’d ended up making out for about three minutes.

  At which point, they’d dissolved into drunken giggles and then passed out. So no. They weren’t into each other. It would be like fucking her brother. If she had a brother she actually liked.

  “How’s he doing?”

  Pilar had told Moore about Hugo, giving a highly edited version of the story—no showdown at the High Life, no Night Horde shield, no threat to her personally. But her friend knew enough about her brother to know that he was always in some kind of shit soup, so she’d told him that he’d gotten in bad with the Assassins and had landed in the hospital because of it.

  “I called Nana earlier. He’s awake and doing okay. They’re keeping him for a couple of days, and then he’ll be home moaning for Nana to wipe his ass, but he’ll live. Probably lost his job, though. That was the best job he’d had for a while.”

  “I’m telling you, that kid needs to join up.” Moore hadn’t served in the military, but his younger brother, Jude—
who also had his challenges getting along in the world—had enlisted in the Army a couple of years out of high school. The main reason he’d enlisted had been to hurt their mom when she’d tried to put her foot down. He’d succeeded at that. But actually serving had turned him around.

  “He’s not a kid. He’s twenty-five.”

  “Not too old to enlist.”

  “Unless we can roofie him and throw him on a C-5, I think it’s not going to happen. Besides, it’d kill Nana. She thinks he’ll straighten out. As long as she keeps Assassins ink off of him, she thinks he’ll find his way.”

  While Moore took a sponge and wiped down the counter, Pilar took the special cleaner to clean the table. It was a big, oblong pine table. The emblems of their station, of their district, and of their profession had all been carved into it, with the founding date carved at the head. 1913, when the livery stable first housed a fire engine. They didn’t wipe that table down with just a wet sponge.

  “She’s wrong, you know. If he’s not turning around yet, he’s going to keep going in the direction he’s in. And that’s down.”

  Pilar knew that. Of course she knew that. And deep down, her grandmother knew it, too. But it infuriated her that an outsider was standing there with a lime-green sponge in his hand and handing down judgments. Even an outsider that was closer to the inside than any other. Maybe he was too fucking close.

  “Butt out, Moore. Didn’t ask for your opinion or your help.”

  He glared at her through the hanging pots and pans for a second, and then he nodded and went back to his work.

  ~oOo~

  The next morning, after a quiet night without a call, Pilar and Moore made plans to meet up in the afternoon, ride out to Joshua Tree, and set up camp in preparation for an early-morning climb. No hard feelings had lingered after their terse exchange in the kitchen; by the time they’d turned out the lights and headed up to the rec room, they’d been fine. They understood each other, and they didn’t take their disagreements to heart.

  After the new watch came in, Pilar changed into her street clothes and rode to the hospital. When she got up to Hugo’s room, her brother was having breakfast, and their grandmother was fussing around, unpacking an overnight bag.

  Hugo noticed her right away and set his carton of milk back on his tray. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She came into the room and closed the door. Hugo looked terrible. His face was a swollen mess, and he had sutured lacerations across his nose and along his chin. His chest and arms were wrapped in bandages. Pilar knew he had a serious concussion, too, but he looked alert, his eyes focused inside his swollen, darkened face.

  “I’m glad you’re here, mija. Dolores brought things from home, but I need to run out for some things Hughie wants. Can you stay with him?”

  Dolores was their grandmother’s next door neighbor and good friend. “Sure. But if you’d called, I could have picked it up, whatever it is.” But she wouldn’t mind a chance to talk to her brother alone. They had some things to get straight.

  “You know I hate to bother you at work. I don’t mind. I’d like to get out in the sunshine for a bit.”

  Pilar picked up a wedge of white toast from her brother’s tray. “Okay. Take your time. I don’t have plans until later. Kyle and I are going out to Joshua Tree tonight.”

  “Oh, that sounds fun. Kyle is such a good boy. And handsome, too.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Nana. You should ask him out, since you’re so into him.”

  Her grandmother put her hand on her hip in a saucy little pose. “Don’t think I won’t. I was quite the beauty in my day. Your abuelo used to brag about what my legs could do.”

  “Ugh! Nana, no! That is not something I need to have in my head.” Their grandfather had died long before Pilar had been born, but their grandmother had lots of stories. He sounded like he’d been a cool dude. And yes, Nana had been a great beauty. She still was.

  She laughed and patted Pilar’s arm. “I’ll take Kyle. You take that furry one from the other night. Connor, right? I like him, too.”

  “Okay, okay, go get your sunshine. I’ll babysit the brat.”

  With a gentle kiss to Hugo’s swollen cheek and a promise to be back soon, their grandmother left them alone.

  And Pilar turned on her brother. “You fucked up in a big way, pendejo.”

  Hugo finished his milk and sat back against the pillows. “Opening with the lecture. Great.”

  “I pulled your ass out of the back room at the fucking High Life, Hugo. What do you expect? Raul says you owe him. What the fuck did you get into?”

  “None of your business.”

  “It is my business. You drag me into it, and my friends, and now I’m on Assassins radar.”

  “We’re always on their radar. Both our fathers died wearing Assassins colors. I didn’t ask for your fucking help, Pilar. And didn’t ask for you to find me or save me or anything. Whatever trouble you’re in now, that’s on you.”

  “Nana asked me to find you! And they were killing you!”

  “They weren’t. It was a beating. They won’t kill me. I’m family. And, anyway, I haven’t paid my debt yet.” He twitched, like he’d realized that he’d given her an opening.

  And she took it. “What does he want?”

  Sighing, he pushed the table over his bed away. “I was supposed to move a brick for him. I found a buyer with a better price. I figured I’d sell to him, bring Raul the money he was expecting, and pocket the rest. But the hijo de puta paid me in counterfeit bills.”

  She sat hard in the chair next to the bed. “Jesus, Hugo. A kee? That’s like, what, thirty grand?”

  “Thirty-five. Guy paid me fifty. In funny money.”

  The parts of the equation were starting to find their proper place. “So you didn’t bring product to Raul’s customer. You sold that product to somebody he doesn’t know. And he paid you in trash.” Hugo didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. “Oh, you stupid culo. What does he want to put you even?”

  “I don’t know. He was still at the working out his rage part when you showed up. And with bikers, right? I’m remembering that right? The Horde?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Raul hates those fuckers. You bringing them into his house…yeah, that trouble’s on you. I’ll deal with my shit. You deal with yours.”

  “You won’t deal with your shit, Hugo. You never do. Until the day you die, you’ll be looking for somebody to take your heat for you. It’s what you do.”

  Hugo turned on the television and focused his attention there, away from her. “Well, maybe Raul will kill me after all and make your life that much better.”

  That broke her heart. When Hugo was born, Pilar had been ecstatic. A little brother. Someone to care for and play mother to, someone to sit with her stuffed animals and take her lessons. As he’d gotten older, they’d continued to be close. He’d followed her everywhere. Then his father and their mother had both been killed in much the same way her father had been killed, and they’d been moved away from the home they’d known, out of Assassins turf.

  They’d had only each other. Their grandmother had slaved to be a good provider and a good nurturer, both. She’d done as well as she could, and Pilar had picked up the slack, getting Hugo to school, making his meals, trying to help with his homework. She’d loved him so much. From the day he’d come home wrapped in a knitted blue shawl.

  She still loved that little boy. But she didn’t know the man he’d become. And she knew it was her fault, at least in part, that he’d turned out as he had. In middle school, when he’d started to drift, she hadn’t known how to steer him back on course. All she’d done had been to shout and fight.

  That was all they’d been doing since. They didn’t like each other much anymore. But she still loved him. She’d still die for him.

  She sat and watched television with him. She’d told their grandmother she’d stay.

  So she stayed.

  ~oOo~

  “Cordero, here! I’m open
!”

  They were getting in some fitness time on their next watch. Pilar wasn’t much good at basketball, but this wasn’t really much of a basketball game. The rules were fluid. They split into teams and shot baskets and blocked shots until they were bored or worn out. It got physical.

  Pilar turned, pushing back on Moore, and threw the basketball to Reyes, who sank the basket. Moore grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her up, pretty much tossing her out of his way.

  “Foul! Foul!”

  Moore laughed. “That’s your pussy talking, sugarplum. You need to toughen up.”

  She punched him in the solar plexus.