After the Storm

by Amy Knupp

  “I’ll run this in to Mace before I go,” he said. “Meet you guys there.” As an afterthought, he turned to Penn and his mother. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Griff. We’ll fill you in on all the details later.” He directed the last at Penn before he jogged off with the other guys’ money.

  “I’ll be sure to have a beer for each of you,” Penn said, and received a concerned look from his mom. “Not really.”

  Epic fail on the self-consolation effort.

  Within thirty seconds, Penn and his mom were left in the relative calm of having five big, loud guys take off.

  “Wow,” Nell said, watching them in the parking lot. “They’re…quite a group. Are they always like that?”

  That made Penn grin. “They’re usually twice as loud and ten times as vulgar. They were on their best behavior for you.”

  “I haven’t laughed so hard in ages,” she said. “I like them.”

  He tried not to show his surprise. For the first ten minutes, she’d been uptight, though she’d done her best to hide it. “They’re good guys, every last one of them.”

  “Did you want to order a beer? I could sit out here and listen to the surf all night.”

  “Nah. But I’m happy to stay for a while if you’re not in a hurry.” The chairs here weren’t the best but then no chair was particularly comfortable.

  “Where would I have to go? This is paradise. Front row seat, right here.”

  She stared out at the darkening waves and the contrast of the light sand. The sun was slowly sinking in the sky behind them and the patio lights were coming on.

  “You picked one heck of a place to settle down, son of mine.”

  Macey Severson, Derek’s wife, walked up to the table. “Hey, Penn, how are you doing?” She began clearing the baskets and trash the guys had left.

  There was a hint of general sympathy in her voice. He was starting to get that a lot and it made him want to lash out. Fortunately, he liked Macey and knew her enough to recognize she meant well. He’d have to learn how to blow off that tone or he was going to develop high blood pressure—or a violent streak—in no time.

  “Doing pretty well,” he said, stacking his and his mom’s now-empty baskets to hand to her. “I’ve been showing my mom here around San Amaro this week.” He briefly introduced the two.

  “You guys need anything else?” Macey asked.

  He and his mom looked at each other and shook their heads. “We’re okay.”

  The cell phone in Macey’s pocket rang and she excused herself, setting the trash on the empty table next to theirs and taking the call a few feet away. As she did, Penn told his mom about her and Derek and how the Shell Shack had become the unofficial bar of the San Amaro Fire Department.

  “That was Derek,” Macey said, less than two minutes later. “He heard on the radio on the way in that there’s a strip mall on the southern end of Coral Road on fire. They said they have two full blocks closed and are diverting traffic.”

  “It’s a big one, then,” Penn said, immediately scanning the sky to the south. It’d become too dark and they were too far away to detect smoke.

  “It sounds bad.” Macey pressed some buttons on her phone. “I’m calling Andie to see what she’s heard. I think Clay’s on duty.” She cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear, picked up the baskets and trash and headed back inside.

  “Let me know if you learn anything,” he said as she went back into the open-air shack.

  Penn didn’t realize he’d exhaled loudly until his mom turned to him.

  “You miss your job, don’t you?” she said.

  If anyone else had referred to his firefighting career as his “job,” Penn wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But with his mom, it was different. What he did wasn’t a career to her. Not the way law was a career.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.” It took some effort to shake off the annoyance, but he was admittedly sidetracked by the thought of what his colleagues—former colleagues—were up against and what they were doing at that very minute. “I’ll get over it.” In a decade or two, hopefully.

  He breathed in deeply, trying to smell the smoke in the air, but the wind wasn’t cooperating. He thought he knew the strip mall Macey had described, and if so, there would be multiple challenges, depending on what parts of the building were engaged.

  “Anything I can do to help, Penn?” his mom asked after a minute of distracted silence.

  He sized her up. “Ever been to a fire?”

  “You mean besides a bonfire? When I was a junior in college, one of the old buildings on campus was struck by lightning and caught on fire. My roommates and I went and paid homage for a few minutes, but by then things were mostly under control.”

  He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, suddenly infused with a surge of energy as he considered. “You said you want to get to know me better. What do you say you drive me to the fire and I’ll show you what I’ve spent twelve years of my life doing.”

  She frowned and his spirits sank. He shouldn’t have asked.

  “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “We’d stay well out of the way. You’re tired, though.”

  “It’s seven in the evening, Penn. I’m fifty-two, not a hundred and two. Let’s go check out the excitement.”

  He was out of his chair, faulty back and all, before she could reach for her purse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PENN COULD SMELL the fire before he could see it. And that was saying something because as soon as they turned onto Coral Road, about two miles north of where he suspected the engaged building was, they could see the sky glowing as if a bank of stadium lights had been turned on.

  There was extra traffic, most likely gawkers curious about the blaze. Just like him, he realized. He was on the outside, with the rest of the world. The realization left a bad taste in his mouth that had nothing to do with the tainted air as they drove closer.

  “Wow,” his mom said, gazing ahead of them as she drove. “It looks bad. You’re sure we’ll be okay?”

  “I know a thing or two about fires. I’ll keep you out of harm’s way.”

  An ambulance turned onto the street up ahead of them, lights flashing, heading for the scene and kicking up Penn’s adrenaline an extra notch.

  “There’s going to be a grocery store up here on your left. We’ll park there and walk,” Penn said, checking to make sure his mom wasn’t wearing some impossible high-heeled shoes. They could undoubtedly drive a little closer but walking would be quickest, judging by the congestion up ahead.

  As soon as his mom stopped the car, Penn was out, back injury be damned. His heart was racing in his chest and it was all he could do to wait for his mother to emerge from the Jeep.

  “Let’s go,” he said when she joined him on the sidewalk.

  “You’re like a kid on the way to an amusement park,” Nell said, grinning but managing to match his pace.

  The foreboding in his gut was incomparable to the happy anticipation she described. “My friends are inside that,” he said, pointing as the actual structure came into view. He shook his head, unable to say more.

  Heavy smoke filled the air. The structure was more than 50 percent involved and it appeared to have spread from the north end, which had been a diner.

  “Looks like they’re doing an interior attack,” he said to his mom. When she looked confused, he explained, “They’ve got the hoses inside the building at this point.”

  All three of the department’s rigs and the chief’s truck were on the scene, but he didn’t see any other departments. Yet. From the looks of it, it wouldn’t be long.

  A crowd had gathered and Penn slowly made his way to the front, his mom sticking close behind him. He took in what probably looked like chaos to the casual observer. Though it was impossible to see faces or read names from this far back, he could pick out some of his former coworkers by their stance and size. He recognized Joe Mendoza’s animated wide frame and Dylan, who was the shortest in the departm
ent. The chief was giving orders nearby, as well.

  More sirens approached the site, growing louder. Within seconds, an engine and a truck from a neighboring fire department on the mainland arrived, just as he’d expected.

  “This is terrifying,” his mom said into his ear to be heard over all the noise.

  Penn had forgotten she was there. He looked down at her. Her eyes were wide and glued to the scene. She lifted the collar of her shirt over her face to filter the air. Without thought, Penn put an arm around her and squeezed her reassuringly.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked, unable to imagine leaving so soon after arriving. But he didn’t want his mom to be upset.

  She nodded without moving her gaze from the fire.

  A fire scene was always scary, he supposed. He was just programmed to act on that fear or ignore it. Maybe if she understood more of what was going on, saw the rhyme and reason of fighting the fire, she’d be less fearful.

  “See those guys over there?” he said, pointing to a pair of firefighters who’d just arrived. “They’re prepping a line and will probably take it in over there.”

  “It doesn’t look safe.”

  Penn stifled a grin. “No. Safe is probably not a word I’d use to describe the job. But they’re smart guys with years of training to handle all kinds of variables once they get in there.”

  They watched without further discussion for a few minutes. The battle raged on, with the men and the fire seeming to trade the advantage back and forth. This one was going to take a while.

  “What are they doing?” His mom pointed to a ladder and a firefighter barely visible through the smoke.

  “They’re going up to the roof to ventilate.”

  “What if the roof is weakened? Can’t they fall through?”

  “They’ll watch out for that.”

  “Crazy,” she said. “Which job did you do?” his mom asked after some time.

  “Which job?”

  “Did you go on the roof or run in with the hose or stand around outside like that guy over there and watch everything?”

  Penn chuckled at the thought of what the chief would say to the accusation of standing around and watching. “He’s the one in charge. Giving all the orders. That’s the chief, and no, that wasn’t my job.”

  “What was?”

  “All the rest of them. Depended on the day and what I was told to do.”

  “What was your favorite?” she asked.

  “Easy. Nozzle.”

  “Nozzle?”

  “Manning the hose. Being the guy who gets to shoot the water on the fire.” He smiled just thinking about it.

  She dragged her eyes from the blaze and studied him silently. The attention made him fidget.

  A substantial crowd had gathered behind them and seemed to be closing in. “Let’s go over that way,” he suggested, spotting a less populated area to the side by two ambulances that would be upwind from the smoke.

  It took several minutes to get to their destination because they had to work their way back through the crowd and skirt around the gas station in the parking lot near the street. Once they did, the air was somewhat clearer. There were only a few observers scattered here and there on this side.

  “Better,” his mom said, finally releasing her shirt.

  “Little bit,” he agreed.

  They were closer now to the diner, and he could see that there had been a collapse at this end of the structure. Two firefighters were manning the hose from outside. He could imagine what was going on inside.

  “Isn’t that Nadia?” his mom said.

  Dragging his attention from the action, he followed her line of sight to a group of three women to their left, close to one of the ambulances. Sure enough, the one on this end looked like Nadia, though he couldn’t be certain because the back of her blond head was to them.

  “Might be.”

  The woman next to the blonde had dark hair pulled up on the back of her head. As she turned to say something to her friend, he realized it was Faith Peligni. Which made it highly likely that the blonde was indeed Nadia. The third woman paced nervously away from the other two, then returned, and he recognized her as Andie Marlow, the wife of firefighter Clay Marlow.

  “Why would she be here?” Nell asked.

  “She’s with Faith.” He pointed her out. “Faith’s a firefighter and her fiancé, Joe, is a captain. I saw him earlier. Looked like he was safety sector command.”

  “Safety what?”

  “He’s keeping track of which firefighters enter and come out of the structure.”

  “At least he’s not one of the ones going in.”

  “He’s got the responsibility for the others,” Penn said. “Sounds easy but in this chaos…”

  His mom frowned. “Are you going to talk to her?” She nodded in Nadia’s direction.

  He shook his head, fighting the urge to watch Nadia.

  “No? Aren’t you two an item?”

  An item? He didn’t know what an item was, exactly, but he did know he and Nadia were not one. “She’s…just a friend.”

  Or something. He wasn’t sure he’d consider her a friend because most of his friends didn’t make his body react the way she did. He looked at her again. She’d turned her head so she was in profile now, her dainty nose and tempting lips outlined against the brightness of the fire. And yep, his body reacted, his blood heating up as if a fire just a few feet away wasn’t enough excitement.

  “Just a friend,” his mom said smugly, “who happened to be there in the middle of a workday—looking flushed—when I arrived the other day.”

  He had nothing to say to that. They both turned their attention back to the action, with her asking periodic questions about what was happening.

  A few minutes later, it appeared there might have been an injury somewhere inside. Casual bystanders wouldn’t notice anything, but he sensed that the tension had ratcheted up. Two paramedics hurried with a cot toward the building. Sure enough, a firefighter came out carrying the victim. It was tough to see from where Penn stood, and then there were lots of people in the way, including Rafe and Paige, the paramedics who carried the cot toward the ambulances. From what he could tell, it wasn’t a firefighter.

  In front of him, Andie grabbed Faith’s arm and held on, obviously scared for her husband, wherever he was. Nadia had taken several steps away and was squatting down for a better vantage point. She was in profile to Penn and the look on her face told him the scene was really getting to her.

  He and his mother angled to try to see and found themselves closer to the three women. Penn’s attention was again diverted to Nadia as she straightened and turned away from the medical scene, her hands covering the lower part of her face as if she was deeply disturbed.

  Without bothering to consider his actions—or the tense way they had parted last night—he came up behind her, wanting to offer comfort.

  “Hey, Nadia.”

  She turned to him and he didn’t wait for her to speak—he could see her dismay in her eyes. Instinctively, he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, wishing he could make that fear and sadness disappear. He felt her arms wrap around his waist and hold on.

  “That girl…” she finally said, and shook her head.

  “They’re doing everything they can for her.”

  He felt her nod against his chest, beneath his chin. Several seconds later, she inhaled and straightened.

  “You must have heard about this on your scanner.”

  “I was at the Shack with Cooper and some others when they got called in. You were with Faith?”

  “Working on wedding stuff.” She shot a glance toward the huddle of paramedics and closed her eyes. “Intense.”

  “I wish I could say you get used to it.” At least when he was on the job, he’d had so much on his mind in the midst of an emergency that he’d been able to compartmentalize and block things like casualties out until afterward. The view was different from this side.
/>   “Hey, Penn,” Faith said when she looked away from the medical scene and noticed him. “It’s tough being out here, huh?”

  “Like sitting on the bench with an injury during the championship ball game. Hi, Andie. Clay working?”

  “Somewhere. I haven’t seen him yet but I’m sure he’s here.”

  His mom introduced herself to Faith and Andie and they all turned their attention back to the scene. After a while, he felt Nadia watching him. When she wrapped her arm around his, he looked down at her. She rested her head against his arm and tensed as the paramedics got the patient into the back of the ambulance and prepared to hightail it out of there.

  “Are you sure you want to stay?” he asked in her ear. “There could be more of that before it’s over.”

  “I don’t want to leave Faith.”

  “I’m guessing my mom’s ready to go. I bet she’d give you a ride. I can stay with Faith.”

  “Isn’t this…really hard for you?”

  “No harder than sitting at home wondering what’s happening,” Penn said. “I need to be here.”

  She gazed up at him, her eyes narrowed as if making sure he was okay. Finally, she nodded, as if granting her approval. An unspoken connection arced between them for a moment and the answer to last night’s question became clear to him. She did care about him. Whatever role guilt played in her ongoing attention to him, there was genuine affection there, too.

  When he asked, his mom admitted she’d seen enough and was ready to get off her feet, so she took Nadia and Andie, whose stepdaughter was due to be dropped off by Clay’s parents, with her. Penn explained to Nadia where they’d parked, just in case his mom got turned around, and then watched them walk away.

  “So the rumors are true,” Faith said with a knowing smile.

  “What rumors?”

  “You’ve got the hots for my friend.”

  He started to deny it but there was no point. “No comment. You think they’re making any headway with this fire?”

  The two of them discussed what was going on and analyzed what needed to be done to put it out, talking details as they hadn’t been able to with the others. Penn felt more mentally alive than he had for weeks. Physically, well, he put that out of his mind for as long as he could. He wasn’t leaving because of a little fatigue, not when his friends were working to exhaustion. Not until he knew all of them were safe.