Sweet Southern Nights. Liz Talley

       CHAPTER ONE

      EVA MONROE ADJUSTED her helmet as Engine One roared up to the Magnolia Breeze residential complex.

      “You ready?” Jake Beauchamp asked her, his blue eyes intense.

      “I’m always ready,” she said, fitting the Nomex hood over her braided hair and securing the Velcro on her bunker coat. Her heart galloped in her throat. Didn’t matter that she’d done this hundreds of times. Preparing to battle a fire always felt the same. Like sex. Didn’t know how good or bad it was going to be, but you were going to get hot and sweaty either way.

      Captain Sorrento crossed himself as he shifted the engine into Park alongside a curb grown wooly with overgrown crabgrass. A string of tired duplexes squatted next to the one smudging a sky the color of Cozumel Bay with dark smoke. “Check your radios. Everyone safe.”

      “Everyone safe,” she and Jake repeated the department mantra.

      Eva fitted her SCBA, strapping the air tank securely before pulling her mask over her mouth. She glanced at Jake, who’d done the same, his eyes crackling with intensity and focus.

      Jake was always focused.

      “FD2, go to C and give a status. FD5, start initial attack at A.” Captain Hank Sorrento already stood at the helm, flipping levers and barking directives at the engines pulling in behind. “Catch me a hydrant, Engine Four.”

      Eva bailed out after Jake, just the way she liked it. When she first joined the squad, one of the older guys tried to let her out ahead of him saying “Ladies first.”

      It had pissed Eva off...and Jake must have noticed because he said, “You kidding? She ain’t no lady. She’s a goddamn fire swallower, ready to put this bitch out.”

      His words had made Eva laugh...and Dutch Rinaudo frown. Dutch was a home-grown Louisiana boy who still struggled with the fact Eva was his equal on the squad. Jake had grinned at Dutch and then pushed Eva back, bailing out before she could.

      Later when she rolled the scene around in her mind, she wondered if his charging in first was because he couldn’t wait to face death or because he wanted to protect her.

      Probably the first one.

      Though she’d been friends with Jake for years, she didn’t doubt that embedded deep within his modern brain was the masculine desire to protect the weaker sex.

      She snorted at the thought of her being weaker.

      Weaker, her ass.

      Jake hooked his accountability tag on the large cone designed to help keep track of who had tanks and was active on the scene before jerking back around to face her. “Want me to get the beast so you can break the window?”

      Eva gave him the look, and Jake grinned. Ever since she’d nearly broken her hand trying to break a thick plexiglass window with the Halligan tool, Jake had given her grief.

      Her heavy gloves prevented her from giving him the finger.

      Smoke poured from the upper right corner of the freestanding, single-story apartment building. When Eva reached the backside as the captain instructed her to do, she called in her position and assessment. The captain barked commands, and Eva noted Moon Avery attaching the LDH to feed the pump.

      “FD5, get the front door. Start initial through A. Let’s push this back. FD2, report to front.” Jake would go through and attack, while Eva headed back to the front to assist...or whatever the captain wanted her to do.

      Moon set a ladder against the front side of the building and started securing the hose straps. Moon drove Engine Four and had worked for the department for almost twenty-three years. Martin drove the snorkel truck, which idled behind the two pumpers, the aerial bucket dangling like a forgotten toy.

      Moon looked at her and jerked his head to an older woman huddled with a young girl, both crying.

      Eva’s stomach flared aggravation. She shook her head.

      Her radio crackled and Captain Sorrento said, “FD2, interview residents.”

      “Shit.” Eva gritted her teeth, pissed that once again she wouldn’t be part of the attack and that she’d been relegated to deal with the teary-eyed while Jake and Martin smashed in the front door and knocked down the fire.

      But then Eva looked at the older woman standing in a striped housecoat, dampness streaking her cheeks, anguish in her eyes, and softened as she headed toward where the pair held each other. Chief Blume met her there.

      Eva pulled off her mask. “Anyone else in the building, ma’am?”

      “Just me and Kiki. The people next door are at work. Ollie puts Zeke and Zara on the bus at ten to seven before she leaves for the day,” the woman said.

      With sad eyes, the woman watched the hoses begin to pump. “They gonna ruin my mama’s quilt.” The girl she held to her looked about ten or eleven years old, and she watched stoically as the other firefighters scrambled to get into position.

      Eva slid off her gloves, hooking them on her bunker coat. “We have tarps, and once we access the apartment we’ll do our best to cover your furnishings.”

      The chief leveled bushy eyebrows at Eva. “I’m not assuming command, but I’ll send Martin next door to clear the apartment.”

      “I can go,” Eva said.

      “No, you stay here with Ms....”

      “Glory Mitchell,” the woman managed, wiping her eyes with one hand.

      “Ms. Mitchell,” the chief repeated, glancing back at Eva. “Take care of things here, Eva. Thanks.” The chief walked away before Eva could protest. She snapped her mouth shut, tamping down the sour taste of disappointment.

      Over her shoulder, she heard Jake burst into Glory’s apartment using the battering ram. The older woman sucked in an injured breath before moaning and turned away. Her threadbare cotton robe swished against the tall hitchhiker grass peppering the yard.

      “Oh, Jesus, they broke the door,” Glory said, her shoulders shaking. “I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this.”

      “It’ll be okay, Ms. Mitchell. You’re safe, and that’s most important. Doors can be fixed.”

      The older woman nodded, trying to staunch the emotion shaking her.

      “So, can you tell me what happened?” Eva asked.

      “When I saw those curtains on fire, I grabbed Kiki and we ran out the back door. She had her phone so I called 911.”

      “Very smart, Ms. Mitchell,” Eva said, taking the older woman’s elbow and moving her back toward the sprawling mimosa tree on the edge of the yard. Seemed like the only thing that grew on the hardscrabble lot. Glory shuffled back, but her eyes remained fixed on the apartment building.

      Captain Sorrento released the valves, and water started pumping out of the blue hose strapped to the ladder and the red hose Jake had dragged in through the front door.

      “Ms. Mitchell, do you have any idea what may have sparked this fire?” Eva asked, placing a gentle hand on Glory’s shoulder.

      “I don’t rightly know. I was cooking breakfast, and Kiki was in the bathroom. You do somethin’, Kiki?”

      The girl shook her head but her gaze slid away.

      “Then I heard Kiki start screaming.”

      “So you don’t know where the fire started?”

      Glory shook her head.

      “Uh, the bedroom. I think,” Kiki said. “I mean, there was this, uh, lighter sittin’ on the dresser.”

      Glory stiffened. “What’s