Page 95 of Controlled Burn
No name. No label. Just cheap, off-white paper, sealed tight with a single strip of clear tape.
Talia stared at it like it might bleed.
For a split second, she thought maybe it was from Dean. Some twisted apology, a confession, perhaps a desperate plea to see her again. But it felt wrong. Lighter. Colder.
Her heart didn’t start racing—not yet.
Not until she slid it out with two fingers—slow, careful—and felt how thin it was. Crisp. Heavy with threat.
She peeled back the flap.
Photographs.
Her stomach dropped. Every sound around her faded.
Four of them. Matte. Printed. The kind you couldn’t explain away as an accident or a mistake.
They weren’t stills from firehouse cameras. This wasn’t Watts digging for gossip.
This was personal. Intimate. Private.
The first image showed her face—her mouth open, flushed, and her eyes unfocused. Caught at the terrible, beautiful moment where shame and want bled into one. The second: heron her knees, Jake behind her, Ryan’s hand fisted in her hair. The third—a tight, filthy zoom. Her lips parted, one of them in her mouth, eyes glassy, a strand of spit catching the light. And the last—
The last one gutted her.
Just her. Alone. Offered up, a face twisted in surrender.
She stared until the edges blurred, the world closing in. At the bottom of the envelope, folded once, was a note. Typed. Anonymous.
“Do it again—this time with the lights on.
Private show. Tonight. The empty bunkroom bathroom.
Or these go public.”
No signature. No timestamp. Just the command. The dare. The threat.
She stood in the locker room for a long time. Motionless. Cold, despite the sweat on her spine. Her mind wasn’t racing; it was numb. Static. She wanted to scream. Tear the pictures in half. March into the bay and pin every man there to the wall until someone confesses.
But she didn’t move.
Because part of her already knew. Not who. Not yet. But the why. The how. Because someone had been watching. Longer than she realized. Because someone knew exactly what she wanted.
And worse—what she might give.
She stuffed the photos and note back into the envelope, slid it behind a spare T-shirt, and shut the locker door with a soft, final click.
Outside, the hallway was quiet. Voices echoed faintly from the bay—laughter, banter, the daily noise of the shift. Jake, maybe. Ryan. Brooks.
The same men who’d defended her. Fucked her. Betrayed her.
She moved on autopilot. Bathroom. Mirror. Sink.
Her reflection was hollow. Lips pale. Eyes rimmed in exhaustion and hunger. A bruise, half-faded, lingered near her jaw—Dean’s mark. The memory flickered: his hand on her throat, the rasp in his voice, You’re mine.
She pressed both palms to the sink, forced herself not to shatter.
Instead, she turned away. Didn’t go home after the shift. Waited. Waited until the station thinned out, until the only ones left were the oblivious and the tired. Until it was just her and whoever was watching.
