Page 24 of Fire and Icing

“He’s toast, is what he is,” Cody aptly assesses.

“You could have warned me,” I tell him, looking into his eyes now that I realize I’m not the only guilty party in this scenario.

Cody was the one who encouraged me to rent the basement apartment.

“I thought you’d find out during the tour,” Cody says, casually. “Mrs. Holt is amazing. But you can barely spend five minutes with her without her raving about her granddaughter.”

I nod. Mrs. Holt did go on a bit over those photos. She even said I’d hit it off with her granddaughter once we met. I wouldn’t say we hit it off. Emberleigh did nearly try to hit me, so there’sthat. I smile, remembering the way Emberleigh chewed me out after I lifted her over my shoulder and carried her out of her home. She’s got a kind heart, but she’s no pushover.

I stand by the fact that she wasn’t being safe. Maybe I overreacted, but I’d probably do it again if the situation repeated itself. Safety comes first and Emberleigh wasn’t leaving. Fire is unpredictable. Did our crew have it contained? Yes. But she had no protection. So I did what I did.

“To be fair,” Cody says with more compassion in his voice. “Emberleigh basically lives at her bakery. It’s not like she’s over at her gran’s daily or anything.”

I breathe out a sigh. “Yeah. Let’s hope that pattern continues.”

I glance at Patrick. His forehead is drawn in.

“I like Emberleigh,” I say. “Don’t get me wrong. We just got off on the wrong foot and I don’t need to keep stepping in it where she’s concerned. Knowing my luck, she’ll assume I rented from her grandmother just to bug her or get under her skin.”

“She’s not as awful as she’s been to you,” Cody says. “She’s genuinely one of the nicest people in town. You just …”

“... manhandled her like an oaf,” Patrick finishes with a chuckle.

“Yeah, I did.” I laugh too.

We’re interrupted by the alarm ringing through the station.

I don’t have another second to think about what Emberleigh would do if she found out I was the new tenant in her grandma’s house.

Patrick drops his weight on the floor next to the bench. Cody drops the jump rope. I release my grip on the pull-up bar.

Captain comes out into the bay. “Emergency at Sycamore Assisted Living.”

In a matter of moments, we’re all suiting up in our turnouts.

Cody shakes his head. “What is it this time?”

Patrick looks at me. “It’s always a false alarm there. It might not be, but so far we’ve never been called out for an actual fire.”

“We always assume it’s a fire until we know otherwise,” Greyson says.

I nod and follow the guys into the engine to take my seat behind the driver.

A few minutes later, we pull up in front of a three-story brick building with green shutters and white trim. No smoke is evident. The front yard is filled with elderly people, some in wheelchairs, some in pajamas. Nurses move between the residents, leading them to sit on benches or giving others assuring pats on the back.

We exit the engine. Patrick looks at me and I nod. We gear up, grabbing axes and our basic tools.

“Here goes nothing,” Patrick says to me.

We walk in together, passing the crowd of seniors. There’s no sign of smoke inside the entry. We stop at the fire alarm panel to determine which zone or floor of the building set off the alarm.

“Smoke detector, third floor, east wing. Looks like unit three-twenty,” Patrick says. “That would be Wilma Chesterton’s apartment.”

“You know who lives in each apartment?”

“Practice makes perfect,” Patrick says.

He leads the way to the stairwell and opens the door after testing it for heat and looking for signs of smoke. We run up the stairs together, Patrick ahead of me by only a stride. At the top of the stairs, he checks for heat again, opens the stairwell door and heads straight for apartment three-twenty.

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