Page 10 of Sizzle
“That’s not a call you get to make,” Bridges snapped. “I take saving civilian lives very seriously, but I take the lives of my firefighters seriously, too. Today’s fire wasextremelyvolatile, and running in with no backup and no search and rescue plan could’ve made it deadly for both of you. You may think it’s fine to recklessly risk your own life and limb”—he paused to point at Faurier—“but what you don’t get is that your body doesn’t belong to you when you’re on shift. It belongs to your commanding officers.Iassess the situation.Iweigh the risks.Imake the call whether or not it’s too dangerous to go in. That’s not ego. It’s experience, and it keeps firefighters from being needlessly killed. Orders come down the chain of command and they get followed. Period. That is what you signed on for, and if you can’t abide by that, there’s the door.”
Lucy’s heart slammed against her eardrums so hard, she was certain everyone in the room must be able to hear it. Faurier’s eyes were wide, but that didn’t stop Bridges from continuing to slice into him. “You made a bad judgment call, Faurier, and it wasn’t your first. Only this time, you took de Costa down with you. You saw that fire. You knew how dangerous it was to go in, foranyreason. And you don’t get to make that call with one of my firefighter’s lives, let alone two of them. You’re lucky you weren’t both seriously hurt. Or worse.”
“I made a choice, just like Faurier,” Lucy said, and it took all her effort to keep her voice steady as she continued. “I’m not disagreeing that bad judgment calls were made, but we go into burning buildings in pairs. That’s the rule, so…bad call or not, I stand by my decision.”
“Well, good,” Bridges said, “because the consequences will be the same for both of you. Effective tomorrow, you’ll be placed on leave from active duty so you can return to the fire academy for three weeks.”
Lucy’s chin whipped up, but Faurier beat her to a response. “The academy? For threeweeks?”
“You’ll train with the recruits,” Bridges said by way of an answer, and oh, God. This couldnotbe happening. “You’ll do exactly what you’re told, every second of every day that you’re there. Hopefully, that will help you re-learn the basics you seem to so desperately need.”
“Sir,” Faurier said, no less than three separate emotions battling for control of his face. “I know you think I made a mistake. But this is—”
“This is my decision, and it is final,” Bridges said, nailing Lucy’s dread into place. “Is that understood?”
God, she just wanted this over with so she could cry—and scream—in peace. “Yes, sir,” she said, Faurier echoing the words despite the frown bracketing his mouth.
“Report to the academy at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning. Captain Nolan will be expecting you. That’s all. You’re dismissed.”
Before her face could betray her, Lucy stood and walked through the door.
5
Lucy slung her duffel bag over her shoulder and blew out a breath. The quick shower she’d taken out of necessity after leaving Captain Bridges’s office had done nothing to help her process the fifty-two feelings churning around in her gut. The fact that she was somehow certain her father had decided to stick around and wait for her so they could have a good, old-fashioned call to Jesus talk about what had gone down in the captain’s office? Definitely not helping matters.
But as much as she wished her father hadn’t been there for her dressing down, Lucy would have told him what had happened regardless. Not that he wouldn’t have found out through the RFD grapevine, especially with her being bumped back to the academy for three weeks(not going to think about it. Nope. Not even going there).Still, she and her father had always been close. It had been just the two of them ever since her mother had died a little over ten years ago, and he’d always stood by her. Even when her news was shitty, Lucy told him everything.
Well, almost everything.
Seriously. Not. Going. There.
Shaking off her crummy memories of the academy, Lucy squared her shoulders and headed toward the door. Engine and ambo were out responding to a traffic accident, and Hawkins, Gates, and Dempsey were probably catching up on sleep in the bunks. She didn’t know where Faurier was or if he’d already left, but really, steering clear of him until she no longer felt the urge to throttle him was for the best. All she wanted was to put her head down, do her penance, and follow the damn rules so she could get back to normal as fast as possible.
Also, maybe drown her sorrows in a triple stack of pancakes and a side of extra-crispy bacon.
Lucy walked through the fire house, moving past the eerily silent common room and kitchen and heading for the door beside the engine bay that led outside. As expected, her father was leaning against his vehicle, his hands in the pockets of his quilted navy blue RFD jacket and his expression indecipherable as he waited for her to move within earshot.
“Figured I’d wait for you,” he said, but didn’t follow it up with anything else. Guilt flooded Lucy’s rib cage at the flicker of emotion moving through his dark stare—for Chrissake, he’d taught her the importance of the chain of command before her tenth birthday—and her words rushed out in a heap.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re probably mad and disappointed and…well,reallymad, and I hate that you got called all the way down here because of me. I know I screwed up by not following the chain of command.”
“It was not the call I wanted to get this morning,” her father agreed, unsmiling. As close as they were, and as much as Lucy knew he loved her, she also knew he’d weigh in with his unvarnished feelings about her choice to run into that warehouse this morning. She’d disobeyed a direct order from a superior while on an active fire call, and it was every bit as big a deal as Bridges had said. Rules existed for good reason. Lucy knew this—hell, shelivedby it. She deserved whatever he was going to say.
“I know,” she said, blowing out a breath and bracing for the rest. Her father wasn’t the sort of man to rely on bluster or a whole lot of yelling. Not that he couldn’t pull it off—Lucy had seen him holler with the best of them, and with his deep voice and linebacker-esque build, he usually got his point across, quick.
Somehow, his quiet appraisal as he squinted through the chilly sunlight was worse. “Let me ask you this. You clearly know you broke the rules. But do you believe you made a mistake?”
A huff of joyless laughter involuntarily crossed her lips. “Well, I just got my ass handed to me in a basket by my captain, so…” She shrugged. “To answer your question, even though I only had a few seconds to do risk assessment, I still knew Faurier was making a dicey judgment call. But we always go in pairs. He saw someone inside a burning building, and he acted. I couldn’t let him go alone.”
The look of absolute certainty that had blazed across Faurier’s face hit her mind’s eye like a wrecking ball, and the way he hadn’t second guessed his gut for so much as a millisecond made her breath catch.
Her father lifted his dark brows at her. “Ah, but you didn’t answer the question, now did you?”
“What?” She flung the image of Sam Faurier to the hinterlands of her brain, and ugh, her adrenaline letdown was making her addled.
Her father, however, was scalpel-sharp. “I understand that you only had seconds to assess the situation, and I also understand that you recognized the judgment call was risky. But I’ll ask you again. Do you think you made a mistake by following Faurier into that burning warehouse?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know,” Lucy said. Damn it. “We always have each other’s backs.”