Where There's Smoke. Kristin Hardy

words echoed in her mind as she stared at the computer screen. She wasn’t seeing the data, though. She was seeing a red-headed boy hanging around the local firehouse, wiping down the engine and listening to the stories of courage and glory. Don’t let him down. She saw him on the edge of manhood, wearing the blue of the Hartford fire service, his lieutenant’s badge gleaming on his chest, pride gleaming in his eyes. She saw him at the altar, uncomfortable in his tuxedo and unmindful of the discomfort as he looked at the glowing woman who had just become his wife. Don’t let him down. She saw his casket being lowered into the ground.

      The fire had been in an abandoned warehouse honeycombed with cold-storage lockers, decrepit and way below code. Two of Mitch’s guys had been searching a tangle of rooms for victims when the smoke had thickened and they’d gotten lost. Mitch had plunged in to find them. And had never come out.

      How quickly had he passed out from the fumes after his air had run out? Sloane wondered for the thousandth time. Seconds? Heartbeats? Before or after he heard the voices of the firefighters on the other side of the wall, the firefighters who couldn’t find him?

      Before or after the whole room flashed over into merciless, killing flame?

      Officially, the cause of death had been the smoke inhalation, but the real culprit had been the labyrinthine building and the lack of orientation equipment. It could happen to any firefighter at any time. It had been Mitch’s bad luck it had happened to him. Even five years later, remembering made her tighten with the fury of senseless waste, struggle against the tearing loss.

      Don’t let him down.

      She wouldn’t let him down, Sloane thought now, staring around her lab, nor any of the people who staked their lives on the quality of their equipment. And she wouldn’t let down their families. She remembered what it was like to lose someone. She remembered too well….

      Chapter Three

      It was visible as she drove in, an improbable, eccentric structure that looked as though a committee of quarrelsome architects had built it out of giant-sized Tinkertoys. The closer Sloane came, the more bizarre it looked, meticulously executed building segments arbitrarily slapped together into a four-story monstrosity, the whole considerably less than the sum of the parts. Depending on the side of approach, the structure looked like an apartment house, an industrial building, a parking structure or a tract house on stilts.

      It was the showpiece of the Boston fire-training facility and every inch of it had been carefully planned. It would never win any beauty contests, Sloane conceded ruefully as she parked her car and got out, but its sheer quirkiness appealed to her.

      Or perhaps it appealed to her because it was where she was going to get a chance to see what her gear could really do.

      Anticipation sharpened her awareness of everything around her, the early-morning tang in the air, the lines of the putty-colored tower silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. Nerves knotted her stomach as they had since she’d awoken that morning. There was no need to worry, she told herself for the hundredth time as she got out of her car. Everything was going to go fine.

      Ladder 67’s truck was already parked on the wide concrete apron surrounding the tower, its aerial ladder stretched out to the top of the building. Nearby was a pumper, hoses trailing out toward the tower. From a distance, they looked like Tonka toys. In fact, the whole scene looked like nothing so much as a child’s play area after its owner had gone for milk and cookies. A mind-boggling array of fireplugs poked out of the concrete at intervals. Sloane skirted one, heading toward where the ladder truck waited in the slanting shadow of the tower.

      Why did it have to be Ladder 67? she wondered, glancing at the group gathered around the truck. Things would have been so much easier if Bill Grant had let her change to another company. She had enough to worry without having to contend with Nick Trask. Not that she was about to let a man distract her from her job, but she’d have far more peace of mind with a captain who was oh, say, pushing sixty, with the start of a paunch and a couple of grandkids on the way.

      She wouldn’t have felt so much at risk.

      Still, Nick Trask was far from the first challenge she’d faced in bringing the Orienteer this far. She’d deal with him, just as she’d dealt with everything else. The important thing was to keep focused on what really mattered.

      Making her brother’s death mean something.

      She recognized Nick immediately. He stood out from the other men, even though they were all dressed in their department T-shirts and dark trousers. Cockiness, Sloane thought immediately, but intrinsic honesty forced her to admit that it wasn’t. Instead, it was confidence, complete confidence in his ability to deal with any fire that might arise and a man who could walk into an inferno without flinching wasn’t daunted by much else. He turned to look at her from where he leaned against the side of the truck and against her will she felt the spurt of adrenaline in her veins. Oh, yes, the legions of women who probably fell at his feet had to have had something to do with that confidence, as well. Willfully ignoring the sardonic curve of his mouth, Sloane squared her shoulders and kept walking.

      When she drew near, Nick pushed away from the side of the ladder truck. “What, is Councilman Ayre running late for his photo op?”

      “No Councilman Ayre, sorry to disappoint you.”

      He studied her a moment. “Who said I was disappointed?”

      No man should be allowed to have such long eyelashes, she thought. “Just a guess. It’s good equipment. It can save lives, including yours.” Pulling a neat pair of files out of the battered leather satchel at her feet, she stacked them on her clipboard. “After Hartford, I can’t see any department giving up equipment like this.”

      “You’re obviously new to Boston, or at least the politics.”

      “Hardly. I’ve been here three years.”

      He laughed. Sloane stared at him, her cheeks tinting. “What?”

      “No wonder you’re such an optimist.” The high color that stained the edges of her cheekbones suited her, Nick thought. And it was definitely personal with her.

      Sloane frowned. “If Boston’s such a useless place and you hate it so much, why do you stay?”

      “Loving the city doesn’t mean I have to agree with the agenda of the people running it.”

      “I suppose, but why choose a job that’s subject to the whims of the politicians?”

      “I didn’t. It chose me.”

      For a moment, she just stared back at him. She looked a little like a Hollywood femme fatale, Nick thought, in her black turtleneck and tan jacket, dark glasses hiding her eyes. Her hair caught the light like a shower of sparks. Her skin was milk-pale and flawless.

      He wondered abruptly how it tasted.

      Concentrate on the job, Trask. “So what’s the plan?”

      “First let’s go over how the equipment works, then get some smoke going and let them take the Orienteer through its paces.”

      “You want smoke, we’ve got it. Come on, I’ll show you.”

      A change came over her as she faced the burn tower, a tenseness he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been so aware of her. For a moment something in her stance suggested wariness, perhaps dread. It was there and gone in a flash. There was a story there, he thought again.

      Sooner or later, he was going to find out what it was.

      He led her into the cool of the burn tower’s shadow. At close range, the cinder block walls were scarred by water-marks and black flares of soot.

      “What do they use for the fire?” Sloane asked.

      “Bales of hay, wood pallets. It depends on whether we want smoke or heat.” Nick led her to stairs that threaded up the outside of the tower. He stood back to let her go first. He’d given the tour plenty of times. Funny, he’d never