PRESENT DAY
I loved my job. I lovedeverything about fighting fires. Not only the actual time spent taming the beast but the preparation required to do it right. The training. The time spent cleaning, repairing, and ensuring our equipment was in tip-top shape for when the call came. It was comforting. Soothing. And today, I was grateful for every task that kept me occupied.
After pounding out some of my fury in the station’s gym over the chief’s call I’d overheard, I’d showered and dove into the list of things my crew and I needed to do. That included running drills with our probie.
I was manning the stopwatch as Leon rolled up the lines, when Vadercame sauntering in the large roll-up doors. I barely shot him a look, keeping my focus trained on the time.
“’Bout time, dog. You almost missed a meal.”
Leon glanced over at my dog, and his grip on the hose loosened. “What’s he got? A dead animal?”
I stopped the watch and said, “That’s your worst time yet, probie. Do it again.”
I’d just turned to look at Vader as a mewl escaped his mouth—one emanating not from my dog but the animal he held tenderly between his teeth.
“Oh fuck, no,” I said, shaking my head.
Vader just sauntered over, plopped his butt on the cement next to me, and looked up at me with sad, sad eyes. The short-haired, gray-and-white striped kitten meowed again.
“You can’t keep doing this, shithead,” I told the dog.
“Is that a cat? Is he going to eat a cat?” Leon’s voice rose in panic.
“He isn’t going to eat it,” I said in disgust.
Somehow, the greyhound, hunting-prey instinct in Vader’s DNA had been mangled with the protective, caring instinct of his Labrador ancestors so that my dog was routinely bringing home abandoned animals, mostly kittens. But there’d also been a baby chipmunk and an illegally kept ferret. People found it endearing, but that was because they weren’t the ones who had to find families to take in the strays.
“Let me see what you got there,” I grunted, squatting down to take the kitten from him.
Slobber mixed with dirt coated the kitten. It barely looked old enough to feed itself, which had my stomach falling all over again. My last attempt at bottle-feeding had not ended well.
“Stretch the line, probie, and run the drill again,” I ordered before heading up the cement and metal stairs to the kitchen.
Vader followed on my heels, looking as proud as a father in a delivery room. “You’re a pain in the ass, dog. You’re lucky I don’t send you to the shelter along with this thing you dragged in.”
Kasey and Tejas simply watched, not even attempting to hide their amusement, as I dunked the cat in the sink. I washed the animal with Dawn dish soap, while the kitten complained viciously, and Vader whined in concern.
“Thanks for the help, assholes,” I groused, looking over at my crew.
Kasey’s cropped blond hair and broad shoulders shook with the force of her laughter. Once she got a hold of herself, she said, “Your dog, yourresponsibility.”
My good deed of cleaning the cat was rewarded with scratches up my arms and a set of teeth marks on my thumb, which I was certain would leave a scar. I wrapped the kitten in one of the soft towels we used for waxing the wagons and placed it in a plastic crate. Vader stuffed his nose inside it, sniffed in apparent approval, and then curled his body around it while I called Sheila at the shelter.
When she said she was full up and couldn’t take in another animal, I groaned.
“I’ll call around to my volunteers who foster litters and see if anyone has room,” she promised, but I knew how that went. At this point, I was pretty sure Sheila considered me one of her foster families.
While I’d been on the phone, Tejas had dug through our cabinets and come up with a can of soft cat food from the last time Vader had dragged in a pair of kittens. He placed the disgusting glob of goo in a bowl and put it inside the crate. I was relieved to see the cat lap at it with little growling noises. At least I wouldn’t have to repeat the bottle-feeding nightmare.
Vader’s tail thumped on the floor, and I swore the dog smirked at me. Tejas did the wrong thing by pulling a dog treat from the cookie jar and handing it to him. My dog would never stop bringing animals home if he got snacks out of it.
“Well, you'd better be prepared to share your bed with this one for a few days,” I told my dog, running a hand over his smooth head. “You old softie.”
It tugged at something inside me. Old memories. Old worries. My dad had been a softie too. He may not have brought home strays, but he’d had his heart crushed multiple times. Good thing my dog wasn’t out on the prowl for a mate, or he’d end up in the same shape as my father—old, single, and with a scarred heart.
The tap of high heels drew my attention to the stairs.
Delilah stepped into the kitchen in what I considered her work uniform. The gray pencil skirt and pale blue button-down covered every curve in a classy, old school sort of way. Her hair was up in a messy bun, and she’d slid a pair of tortoise-shell eyeglasses on her slender nose I was ninety percent sure she didn’t need.