Page 122 of Controlled Burn
Same voice. Same walk. Same fire inhereyes.
She didn’t recognize him. Of course, she didn’t. But he remembered.
She’d gone to school with him. He was the kid who carried her books once. She was the girl who kissed someone else ten minutes later. The girl who laughed when his name got called for yearbook tech lead.
She never saw him. But he saw her.
And when things went sideways with the last girl—the one who’d found his backup drives and called it stalking—he’d left his IT job quietly. No charges. Just whispers. She twisted it. Made it sound worse than it was. He’d been careful.
The fire department was supposed to be a clean slate.
Five years. No issues. No drama. Just numbers and patterns and silence.
Until she showed up again.
And now?
He watched the footage.
Not for the sex—though yes, he’d saved every angle. Her thighs. His mouth. The way she stood and took it like a sovereign.
But it wasn’t about arousal anymore.
Now, he studied her face.
That expression she wore when she thought no one was watching. The flicker of satisfaction. The shift when she stopped responding and started commanding.
She drew the scene to her—King, the camera, the whole station orbiting.
She was beautiful in the way a burning house was exquisite—wild, destructive, impossible to ignore.
She didn’t fuck to feel. She fucked to dominate.
She was rewriting power in real time, and the others—King, Jake, even Maddox—were trying to catch up.
No one had stopped her.
Until now.
Brooks clicked open a new folder—access logs. Archived camera feeds routed through off-site servers. A diagram of movement. Locations. Timing. Evidence of her rise, captured like a brushfire licking across dry ground.
He’d mapped her like a wildfire—unpredictable to most, but not to him. Not if you studied the wind. Not if you knew what ambition looked like in heat-miraged silhouettes and tactical glances.
He wasn’t angry.
He was patient.
He leaned back and brought up the live rig bay feed.
And there she was.
Talking to Jake.
Jake—the bruised dog in uniform. Angry. Coiled. Predictable. Vulnerable.
Perfect.
Brooks smiled, slow and measured. He didn’t trust Jake. He didn’t need to.
