You still good for tonight?
Ben typed the message and hit Send, sat on the couch in the squad room and stared at the screen for a moment or two, in case she came back immediately. He knew she wasn’t coming back to him immediately, but he figured it made a good show for Engo, who he could sense was reading his screen over his shoulder. The night before, when Ben had sat with the team in Matt’s basement popping stones from their settings, he’d made sure to check the phone a few times for texts from Andy, even though they weren’t scheduled. He figured it would convince the guys he was distracted by it, by wanting her and wondering about her. Maybe he wasn’t going to be so bad at this whole undercover thing after all.
Truth was, he really hadn’t stopped wondering about her. So he was playing it close to the truth, then, he supposed. Like she’d said he should. Not for a second had she left his mind, not since he rolled over the morning after she slept beside him and found her naked figure gone from the bed, no sign of her ever having been there.
He’d slept beside plenty of women in his life without knowing a thing about them, not even their names.
But it had never felt dangerous before.
“No nudes yet?” Engo asked.
Ben turned around on the couch, threw him a look across the squad room. Engo raked his greasy hair behind his ears and sighed.
“Suppose it takes a few days.”
Jake was all over his own phone at the end of the couch, chewing his nails, which meant that either he was setting up a feeding frenzy for his loan sharks now that he had some chum to offer, or he was already begging for fronts for new bets. Matt came charging in from the chow room with a plate of pancakes and a giant coffee mug, heading for his office. Matt always came into the building the back way, so he didn’t have to pass the NEVER FORGET memorial and the wall of the fallen. The pictures, the uniforms. Titus Cliffen now last in the row, with his smug smile.
Ben looked back at the end of the couch and saw that Jakey had vanished, the door to the engine bay swinging. Ben remembered those days, when you could hear your chief’s footsteps from a mile away, pick them out from the gait of a hundred other men. Matt had rescued Ben from Wade Warrens in his probie days, sure. He’d never docked Ben’s pay. Never outright hit him. Never overworked him. But he was an asshole in other ways, because that was the law of the jungle. Back then, Matt had thrown things at him, pushed him over in sewer canals, blasted him about the littlest things in front of other officers. A loose strap. A badge worn crooked. And if there was ever a welfare check and the front windows of the place were crowded with blowflies, Matt sent Ben in.
A car under a bridge with fogged windows and a suicide note on the hood?
Matt sent Ben.
A tent fire in a homeless camp, the crazies fistfighting over whose fault it was?
Matt sent Ben.
It was the rules. It was tradition.
A decade and a half later, Matt’s footfall still made Ben a little uneasy.
When the door Matt had charged through flew back open, the uneasiness switched gears into outright dread. Matt pointed right at Ben’s face, which didn’t help.
“You! Here! Now!”
Ben went. Engo came along, just to watch the fireworks.
When Ben reached the hallway outside the squad room, standing there in the white morning light with her bunker gear uniform on a hanger on her finger was the woman he knew as Andy.
Matt gestured to Andy, his small black predatory eyes glittering at Ben.
“What the fuck is this?”
Ben looked at Andy. Her mouth had dropped open and all the color had drained from her cheeks. She let her shoulders slump so that her backpack slid down to one of her wrists, and her bunker jacket wilted on the floor.
Ben gaped, reaching inside himself and coming up with nothing but the truth. “I have no freakin’ idea.”
“You’re Andy Nearland?” Matt asked Andy. He lifted a clipboard, held it up so both Andy and Ben could see. “You’re the fucking new guy?”
Engo burst into laughter behind Ben, startling him.
Andy’s eyes were big and confused. “What are you doing here?” she asked Ben.
“Me? I work here! What are you doing here?”
“Andy Nearland.” Matt tapped the clipboard hard, still in denial. “Says right here. The new guy’s name is Andy Nearland. That’s not you. That can’t be you.”
“It is me.” Andy eased a strained sigh. “I’m Andy. Andrea Nearland.”
“Did you know about this?” Matt wheeled on Ben.
“What? No!”
“I must be going crazy, because to me, she looks a hell of a lot like the broad you picked up at that bar the other night.”
“She is,” Ben said. They all stood there, the silence cracked only by a huge wheeze from Engo as he sucked in more air to laugh again.
“This is just amazing!” Engo hacked. “Where the hell’s Jakey? He’s got to see this!”
“Get into my office. Both of you.”
Matt stormed down the hall. Andy picked up her things and walked beside Ben, two kids on their way to the principal’s office, their mouths tight and minds racing. It was suddenly all making sense to Ben. Why Andy was ripped as all hell. Where she’d been for a week. He looked back and made sure Engo had gone from the hall before he grabbed her biceps.
“You can’t do this,” he said.
She tugged her arm away. “Don’t fucking touch me,” she snapped. There was something indignant and unfamiliar in her eyes, like somehow this really was their second meeting ever. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m serious,” Ben hissed. “You can’t work here. You’re not a trained firefighter. You’ll never pass as one.”
“Hurry up!” Matt bellowed from his office, two doors ahead of them. They passed a pair of Ladder 98 guys, who looked Andy over with interest.
They traversed the wall of aftershave and nicotine-gum stink that permeated Matt’s office. The giant was sitting behind his steel desk, an angry king trying to decide who he should have beheaded first. Ben sank into a chair. There was sweat running down his temples. Andy looked bloodless. There was a plate of pancakes and a mug of coffee rapidly cooling on the edge of the desk.
“This is a setup,” Matt said. The words made Ben’s stomach plunge. That devastating finger lined him up like a shotgun barrel, pointing right between his eyes. “You picked her up on the weekend. You got talking. She told you she needs a job. You made a call to someone in Command.”
“That’s not true.” Ben’s mouth was dry as bone. “I didn’t even know she was in the job, Matt.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“You think I know people in Command?”
“You, then.” Matt pointed the Finger of Death at Andy. “You set this up.”
“I had no idea he worked here.” Andy shook her head. “I had no idea he was FD. We didn’t talk about that. We didn’t talk about anything.” Her face flushed, a rush of pink that was quickly gone. “Jesus.” She held her head. “I don’t need this.”
“Neither do I.” Ben looked at Matt, tried to decide if the big guy was accepting his performance. He was doing it. He was acting. It was all moving so fast, but he was keeping up. He’d been blindsided, and he thanked God Andy had known to do that, because most of the terror and confusion he was feeling right now was real. “Matt, this is not a setup, man. It’s a ridiculous fucking coincidence.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Matt pushed the clipboard with Andy’s name on it aside. “I don’t have couples working together in my crew. Never have. Never will. Shit goes down, and you’re trapped somewhere? He’ll abandon his post to come get you. I’ve seen it happen. It’s dangerous. It’s not how I operate.”
Andy was still as a stone now. Ben’s chest ached. Neither of them spoke.
“So I’m sorry, Andy. Which is a stupid fucking name for a chick, just so you know.” Matt shook his head. “But you’re not working here. I’m going to put in a call to Command and have you reassigned somewhere else. Vacancies are tight but there’ll be a workaround. Go home.”
Nobody moved. Andy was staring at a spot on the bottom edge of Matt’s desk. Ben didn’t know what the plan was. Had never known what the goddamn plan was. He gripped his chair like a guy on a roller coaster waiting for the thing to bottom out at the end of a sickening plunge.
“Ben,” Andy said. “Get out.”
Ben looked at Matt. In an absurd few seconds of silence, the two men played mental Ping-Pong, trying to figure out if this woman had the authority to order Ben out of Matt’s office. Then Andy lifted her head and Ben saw a look in her eyes that could melt marble.
“Get,” she said. “Out.”