Page 153 of Things You Save in a Fire

ON THE ROAD,we hashed it all out. We all piled into the captain’s Suburban—the captain and Tiny up front, and me squeezed between Six-Pack and Case in the back. I talked them through exactly how I’d figured out what was going on with DeStasio, describing all the clues and how they all just fell into place.

“He would have died if you hadn’t showed up,” the captain said.

“Probably.”

“He would have died if he’d gone into that building alone,” Six-Pack said.

“Definitely.”

On the drive down, the guys acted like things were totally normal—like I’d never been under suspicion, never been shunned or doubted. In fact, things were better than normal. Something about the whole ordeal seemed to have broken some final, unseen barrier that I hadn’t even realized was there. The guys joked around, and teased me, and thanked me, and apologized, and called themselves idiots over and over.

They mostly teased me about the rookie.

Yeah, no way was I getting out of that one unteased.

“We need to combine your names,” Six-Pack said.

“‘Cassie’ plus ‘rookie,’” Case said. “‘Cookie.’”

“I called it from the beginning,” Six-Pack said.

“You never saw it coming,” Case said, reaching around me to punch him.

“Shut your yaps,” Tiny said. “It was an epic secret love. Nobody called it.”

“Mentally,” Case said. “To myself. I said, ‘Those two will be in the sack before you know it.’”

“Nobody’s in the sack,” I said, my ears getting a little hot.

“Not at the moment, anyway,” Six-Pack said.

“Not for a couple of weeks,” the captain advised from the front seat. “Give the poor guy a little time to recover.”

“Poor Loverboy,” the guys all chimed in.

“Oh God. Please tell me you’re not going to start calling him Loverboy.”

“Too late,” the guys said, and roughed each other up some more.

OWEN’S SMALL HOSPITALroom was so full—his parents, his sisters, their husbands, at least a few cousins, and a handful of retired firefighters—it was like stepping into a crowded elevator.

Captain Murphy and the guys hustled me in. “We brought you a present,” the captain said, as the guys from my crew cheered, and the crowd parted, and I found myself standing beside Owen’s bed.

He was alive. He was awake. He was okay.

He was the most beautiful sight in the world.

I caught my breath, and then I held it.

He looked up and met my eyes.

“Hey, rookie,” I said.

“Hey, Cassie.”

His voice was hoarse from the tube. His face was still burned, a little red in places, but not bad. His hair was adorably mussed.

He reached out his hand over the bedrail, and I took it.

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