Free Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 by Lila Ashe Page B

 
    “Nice try,” said Lexie. “This is my show, and you two will be the grand prize.”  
    Caz scrambled to think of something that would dissuade her. “What about the chief? Barger would be great up there. What if we dare him to shave off that mustache?”  
    Lexie gave him a look of horror. “We don’t want to see what he’s got under there. No. He’ll have to do something else for a dare. He is going to be our opener, though.”  
    Bonnie said, “You think you can make him do that?”  
    “Please. This is dispatch. We tell all y’all what to do. Speaking of which, I need Truth or Dare posters. A bunch of them. Make them big.” The 911 line rang, loud and jarring. Lexie answered, looked at the address, and waggled her fingers at them, shooing them out.  
    “Must be ours,” said Bonnie, pushing her way into the hall.
    Caz followed her jog to the app bay, unable to keep his eyes off the way her sweet little rear swayed. In the rig, he got in the driver’s seat without discussion. He hit the lights and pulled out, headed to the accident Lexie had just dispatched them on. “So, let me get this straight, Mad,” he said. “We’re being put on poster duty?”  
    In his peripheral vision, he could see Bonnie smile. “I believe we just got put on that, yes.”  
    “I haven’t made a poster since…” He took a sharp turn onto 8 th . “Since high school.”  
    “What was the poster for?”  
    “What?” He whooped the siren. “I don’t remember.”  
    “Yes, you do.” She had not an ounce of doubt in her voice.  
    Caz cleared his throat. “Cheer club.”  
    “Cheer club? You mean for the cheerleaders?”  
    “It was a club . My girlfriend made me.”  
    “She made you!”  
    “I’m telling you, she was mean.”  
    Bonnie laughed.  
    “Mean like a snake,” Caz went on, easing carefully around the Darling Bay Trolley (often full of day trippers who didn’t take the time to look before stepping into traffic on their way to the beach). Then he hit the gas again. “Mean like a mama bear who’s lost her cub. She said use the puff-paint, I used the puff-paint.”  
    Bonnie’s laugh was like alcohol in his blood. He probably shouldn’t even be driving. He was over the limit.  
    “I like you so much better like this,” she said, still laughing. “I like you talking. You can be fun .”  
    It sobered him quickly. Kiss or no kiss, he was here to get the job done. He couldn’t forget that. He wasn’t there to have fun. His mother had been one for having fun, all the time, until she’d left. Fun was a way of lying to yourself, and Caz didn’t lie.  
    “Numbers?” he asked.  
    Bonnie peered at the computer screen, always hard to read in daylight. “861. Should be that red house, right there.”  
    Caz braked too hard. He wasn’t here to be fun . Not for her or for anyone else. The sooner he remembered that and got over this little infatuation or whatever it was, the better off he’d be.  
    “Caz, I didn’t mean…”  
    He opened the door and got out, shutting it behind him, closing it on whatever she had to say.

CHAPTER TWELVE

    They ran four more calls before sunset. And no matter what she said, Bonnie couldn’t get Caz to open up again.  
    They’d had a moment.  
    No, not that moment—not the kiss at Bud’s Bar—even though that was something she couldn’t stop thinking about. And while the kiss was a highly interesting thing to think about, she knew it wasn’t the most important. That had been in the rig, when Caz had made her laugh. It was a small thing, but it was something she and Caz hadn’t had yet together. That camaraderie. It’s what made the department special. Bonnie’s ex-partners were her best friends. Riding the rig together was how you got to really know someone. You saw them save a life, and then you saw them lose someone—you saw them hold an old woman’s hand as they told her her husband wasn’t going to make it, and you saw them