Where There's Smoke

She would have recognized his voice even without the introduction. It was unsettling how clearly she could imagine the lines of his face. Still, no one was going to distract her from getting the gear qualified, no matter how good-looking he was. Too much was at stake.

She made herself speak coolly, impersonally. “Captain Trask. How are you?”

“Good enough. How about you?”

“Fine, thanks. I saw the fire at the tank farm on the news. It looked bad.”

“For a while. We held onto it, though. Chief Douglass is a good firefighter.” It was the highest praise a firefighter could give.

“I’m glad everything worked out all right.” Sloane took a deep breath. “So what can I do for you, captain?”

“You could call me Nick, for starters. I only get called Captain Trask when I’m visiting schools or getting chewed out by the chief.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Why do I get chewed out?”

“Why should I call you Nick?”

“We’re going to be working together, right? It might make things a little more friendly.”

“You didn’t seem too happy about the situation the other day. Why the sudden change of pace?”

“Call it an experiment. I know Ayre’s an operator, but you were right the other day, I don’t know you at all. I figure you deserve the benefit of the doubt.”

Oh, nice wasn’t fair, she thought with a little twist of alarm. Nice could be dangerous. Nice could be just the start of far more than she could handle. She paused. “So what can I do for you…Nick?”

“I thought it was the other way around. That was the gist of our conversation yesterday, wasn’t it?”

“It was.” Sloane drew a precise pattern of interlocking diamonds on her desk blotter, trying to ignore the quick flutter in her stomach. “You made it pretty clear you wanted nothing to do with pandering to the politicos.” And she wanted nothing to do with any man who could make her stomach flutter. Especially if he was a firefighter.

“You hold a grudge?”

“No, but I need cooperation. Nick.”

“Well, my opinion of the situation hasn’t changed, but as you pointed out, it isn’t up to me. So if I can help you out—safely—then I’ll do it.”

The stiff note in his voice let her relax a bit. “Start with an open mind.”

“Done. If the equipment’s good, you’ll have my support. Just don’t expect it to go any further than the testing. The day the department has the money to buy pricey electronics like you’re peddling is the day I’ll be driving to work in a Rolls.”

Sloane took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you drive, but I do know this equipment is going to be an important tool, as common in firehouses as thermal cameras.”

“No doubt.”

“No, there isn’t,” she said shortly. There couldn’t be, not after all she’d been through. “Now is there something else, Captain Trask?”

“Nick. And yeah, there is. I need to know what you want to do about the testing. How many men you want, when, what kind of apparatus, all that. You might find an engine company better suited to your needs, by the way.”

Sloane shook her head, forgetting that he couldn’t see her. “No, it has to be a truck company. I’ve got five Orienteers to test, plus the master unit that I’ll be using to monitor. I’d like to keep it to the same group of men.”

“We can do that if you schedule carefully.”

“Good. What I had in mind was a session or two at the training facility, where we’ll have control. Once I’m sure the kinks are all out of it, you can start taking it onto fire grounds. I need a minimum of three fire situations over and above the training facility sessions to get meaningful statistics.”

“Okay. Let’s set up some dates.”

It didn’t take long, when it came down to it, and she entered the dates in her computer with satisfaction. “We’re all set, then. I’ll see you at the Quincy facility on Saturday.”

“All right.” Nick paused. “You know, Bill Grant backed you when I talked to him. Despite his unfortunate tendency to cooperate with Ayre, he’s a good man. Don’t let him down.”

Sloane hung up the telephone. Don’t let him down. The words echoed in her mind as she stared at the computer screen. She wasn’t seeing the data, though. She was seeing a red-headed boy hanging around the local firehouse, wiping down the engine and listening to the stories of courage and glory. Don’t let him down. She saw him on the edge of manhood, wearing the blue of the Hartford fire service, his lieutenant’s badge gleaming on his chest, pride gleaming in his eyes. She saw him at the altar, uncomfortable in his tuxedo and unmindful of the discomfort as he looked at the glowing woman who had just become his wife. Don’t let him down. She saw his casket being lowered into the ground.

The fire had been in an abandoned warehouse honeycombed with cold-storage lockers, decrepit and way below code. Two of Mitch’s guys had been searching a tangle of rooms for victims when the smoke had thickened and they’d gotten lost. Mitch had plunged in to find them. And had never come out.

How quickly had he passed out from the fumes after his air had run out? Sloane wondered for the thousandth time. Seconds? Heartbeats? Before or after he heard the voices of the firefighters on the other side of the wall, the firefighters who couldn’t find him?

Before or after the whole room flashed over into merciless, killing flame?

Officially, the cause of death had been the smoke inhalation, but the real culprit had been the labyrinthine building and the lack of orientation equipment. It could happen to any firefighter at any time. It had been Mitch’s bad luck it had happened to him. Even five years later, remembering made her tighten with the fury of senseless waste, struggle against the tearing loss.

Don’t let him down.

She wouldn’t let him down, Sloane thought now, staring around her lab, nor any of the people who staked their lives on the quality of their equipment. And she wouldn’t let down their families. She remembered what it was like to lose someone. She remembered too well….

Chapter Three

It was visible as she drove in, an improbable, eccentric structure that looked as though a committee of quarrelsome architects had built it out of giant-sized Tinkertoys. The closer Sloane came, the more bizarre it looked, meticulously executed building segments arbitrarily slapped together into a four-story monstrosity, the whole considerably less than the sum of the parts. Depending on the side of approach, the structure looked like an apartment house, an industrial building, a parking structure or a tract house on stilts.

It was the showpiece of the Boston fire-training facility and every inch of it had been carefully planned. It would never win any beauty contests, Sloane conceded ruefully as she parked her car and got out, but its sheer quirkiness appealed to her.

Or perhaps it appealed to her because it was where she was going to get a chance to see what her gear could really do.

Anticipation sharpened her awareness of everything around her, the early-morning tang in the air, the lines of the putty-colored tower silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. Nerves knotted her stomach as they had since she’d awoken that morning. There was no need to worry, she told herself for the hundredth time as she got out of her car. Everything was going to go fine.

Ladder 67’s truck was already parked on the wide concrete apron surrounding the tower, its aerial ladder stretched out to the top of the building. Nearby was a pumper, hoses trailing out toward the tower. From a distance, they looked like Tonka toys. In fact, the whole scene looked like nothing so much as a child’s play area after its owner had gone for milk and cookies. A mind-boggling array of fireplugs poked out of the concrete at intervals. Sloane skirted one, heading toward where the ladder truck waited in the slanting shadow of the tower.

Why did it have to be Ladder 67? she wondered, glancing at the group gathered around the truck. Things would have been so much easier if Bill Grant had let her change to another company. She had enough to worry without having to contend with Nick Trask. Not that she was about to let a man distract her from her job, but she’d have far more peace of mind with a captain who was oh, say, pushing sixty, with the start of a paunch and a couple of grandkids on the way.

She wouldn’t have felt so much at risk.

Still, Nick Trask was far from the first challenge she’d faced in bringing the Orienteer this far. She’d deal with him, just as she’d dealt with everything else. The important thing was to keep focused on what really mattered.

Making her brother’s death mean something.

She recognized Nick immediately. He stood out from the other men, even though they were all dressed in their department T-shirts and dark trousers. Cockiness, Sloane thought immediately, but intrinsic honesty forced her to admit that it wasn’t. Instead, it was confidence, complete confidence in his ability to deal with any fire that might arise and a man who could walk into an inferno without flinching wasn’t daunted by much else. He turned to look at her from where he leaned against the side of the truck and against her will she felt the spurt of adrenaline in her veins. Oh, yes, the legions of women who probably fell at his feet had to have had something to do with that confidence, as well. Willfully ignoring the sardonic curve of his mouth, Sloane squared her shoulders and kept walking.

When she drew near, Nick pushed away from the side of the ladder truck. “What, is Councilman Ayre running late for his photo op?”