The slap landed before he finished the word.Not dramatic, not telegraphed — just a sharp, efficient crack across his left cheek. Her ring caught the corner of his mouth and left behind a bright metallic sting."Don't." Her voice had gone to ice. "Don't you dare."He looked at her, and for one foolish second something warm crept back into his chest. Maybe some part of her still—"I have the Ashford Leadership Summit in three weeks," Vanessa said. "I am the keynote speaker on a panel about modern family values. Do you have any idea what a divorce filing does to that? To the coverage? To everything we've built?"The warmth died before it finished arriving."Everything you've built," Caleb said quietly. "So in the end, it's still about you. Your image. Your career.""What else would it be about? Your wounded pride?" Vanessa's lip curled. "My work has helped hundreds of people. That matters more than your hurt feelings. For once in your life, Caleb, man up."The sheer nerve of it nearly ma

Caleb was tightening the last strap on his turnout gear when Deputy Chief Preston Vale found him.Preston had the kind of handsome that came from good genetics and better tailors — the department-issued jacket on him looked like it had been altered by someone who charged by the hour, and even his boots, standard issue like everyone else's, somehow looked like they'd never touched an actual fire. He crossed the bay with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never once doubted he belonged wherever he stood, weaving between crews loading hose and airpacks without appearing to notice any of them get out of his way."Reyes." Preston looked him over, taking in the bruised jaw with open, almost delighted interest. "Rough night?""Something like that.""Domestic?" Preston's mouth curved, enjoying himself. "I heard things have been... complicated. At home."Caleb said nothing, which seemed to please Preston more than any answer could have."Cedar Ridge isn't like anything we normally run."

# Chapter Seven: Fifteen More MinutesThe fifteen minutes felt longer than the six-hour drive that morning.Caleb worked the saw with his jaw locked, counting his own breaths to keep from counting the minutes, watching the glow on the ridge deepen from orange to something closer to red. His radio stayed quiet, which was somehow worse than noise would have been — every silence stretching a little longer than the last, every crackle of static making his whole body tense before it resolved into nothing.Then, four minutes in, the radio broke its silence with a voice that wasn't Castillo's — a paramedic on the south end, tight and clipped. "Still loading the last two residents, wheelchair transfers, going as fast as we can without dropping anybody. Need another ten.""Copy," Castillo answered, and even through the static his voice had an edge to it that hadn't been there an hour ago. "Reyes, you copy that? Ten more, not fifteen. I'll take what I can get.""Copy," Caleb said, and looked at

The eastern evacuation road held.Word of it reached Caleb in pieces over the next several hours — first as a stray line on someone's radio, then as a number, then as a fact solid enough to lean on: two thousand people, out, safe, because a line of dirt and cut brush had done exactly what it was supposed to do at exactly the moment it mattered. Somewhere behind that number was a nursing home's worth of wheelchairs and a woman with a satchel he still hadn't let go of the memory of, and somewhere ahead of it was a version of himself that hadn't decided yet what any of it was going to cost him.He learned, secondhand, that she'd stabilized. A nurse mentioned it in passing while restitching the burn on his forearm — smoke inhalation, serious but survivable, lucky that whoever pulled her out had gotten to her when they did. Caleb didn't correct her use of the word lucky, though luck had felt like the wrong word for the particular way that woman had looked at him. He filed the thought away i