Page 48 of Inferno

The others filtered in behind him, headed for the locker room or the kitchen. Even if they still had blood on them, some of the guys insisted on coffee first. They would take it into the showers with them and leave it on the floor just outside the curtain. A hot drink that was more like a lifeline sometimes.

As he wandered down the hallway, the building intercom chimed. “Captain Coda to the Chief’s office ASAP.”

Julio pushed open the door to his tiny captain’s office and tossed the jacket on his cot. Then he turned on his heel and jogged through to the other wing of the building and upstairs to the offices.

Chief Frayer’s assistant sat behind her desk, red-rimmed glasses perched on her nose as she typed. Her long nails clacked on the keyboard.

Julio spotted Greyson through the window, currently on the phone. He grabbed a chair from another desk, currently unoccupied, and tugged it over to the short side of Viola’s desk. He set his elbows on a clear spot. “Good morning, Vi. How are you today?”

She didn’t look over, but her features took on a pinched expression. “Too busy to be interrupted, even by a cutie such as yourself,” she replied, still typing.

Julio chuckled. “Maybe you should have sat in on that sexual harassment seminar with us last month.”

She made a face. “I’m going to tell Reginald you said that.” She chuckled lightly. “He’ll get a kick out of the insinuation I’m some kind of hussy.”

Julio prepared himself for another one of her “in my heyday” stories. These days, she was helping Ashlyn and Greyson plan their wedding, and she and Reginald were about to have their second grandchild within the next couple of months.

She finished typing and looked at him. “Did you need something?”

Apparently, he had skated out of listening to a story he’d probably heard several times before. “Just waiting for the chief.”

She nodded. “You can just go on in. It sounded important.” But before he could stand, she said, “How was that last callout? I never know what to think when it’s announced as a ‘person trapped.’”

Julio was only willing to say, “We got him out and off to the hospital.”

She knew what that meant—the implication of what he hadn’t said. “I’ll tell the guys we are having pizza delivered tonight.”

“Good idea.”

She always sprung extra for the good stuff from Backdraft rather than franchise pizza that tasted the same no matter what city you are in.

Julio knocked on the desk and headed for Greyson’s office. He slowed at the door.

The chief waved him in with his free hand. “Thank you, sir.” Then he hung up the phone. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks, Chief.” Julio slumped into the seat, knowing what Greyson would ask first before they even got to what this was about. “We got the guy out, but Max and Prichard had to dismantle the entire machine. He probably won’t be able to keep his arm, but he’s alive and he will eventually be able to go home to his children.”

Greyson nodded. “Sounds like you guys did a good job.”

On top of that, things were good right now with Samantha. Two nights ago, he had kissed her good night and gone home to sleep like the dead until his shift. She was at home resting, probably working on her computer from her house. He’d worked a twenty-four-hour shift that ended earlier this morning—a couple of hours ago actually.

Not many of the guys complained about overtime, especially when they hadn’t had many callouts for the duration of the shift. It just so happened that the last one overlapped the end of their time clocked in. Julio considered this morning’s work on shift with the other firefighters as a win, even if it had gone longer than they were supposed to be working.

There was a hopefulness inside him centered on the new day. Something in him had settled, questions had been answered.

The thing that had always been between him and Samantha was at least somewhat resolved. Or, he simply woke up yesterday, or this morning, more observant of the new mercies available to him than he had been for a long time. The verse ofthe day that popped up on his Bible app this morning came from Lamentations chapter3.

Great is thy faithfulness.

So why did he feel like Greyson was about to drop a bomb and ruin all of it? At least Julio had the training necessary to diffuse the device. But not if it was about to explode before he could do damage control.

“Yesterday afternoon, Detective Jesse received an email from the arsonist,” Greyson began. “She wasn’t logged in to her work computer at the time, so the email bounced to the on-call cop in the Intelligence Division on duty, which happened to be her boss, Sergeant Deerdan. They managed to move the email before she could read it.”

“So she doesn’t know?”

“It’s my understanding she’s being pulled into a meeting this morning, and that’s when they’re going to show it to her.”

At least that was something. He couldn’t imagine getting sent something and not being the first to know. Then again, just because she was a police detective with active cases didn’t mean Samantha wasn’t allowed to take time off and disconnect from her job in order to heal from the injuries she sustained getting attacked. There had to be some kind of coverage for the unexpected while an officer wasn’t available to deal with them.

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