Echoes in the Ashes

Chapter4

Chapter Five: Golden Boy

Derek was tightening the last strap on his turnout gear when Deputy Chief Christian Browning found him.

Christian 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.

"Moss." Christian looked him over, taking in the bruised jaw with open, almost delighted interest. "Rough night?"

"Something like that."

"Domestic?" Christian's mouth curved, enjoying himself. "I heard things have been... complicated. At home."

Derek said nothing, which seemed to please Christian more than any answer could have.

"Los Vangees isn't like anything we normally run." Christian's tone shifted, all business now, though the smugness never quite left his eyes. "I don't need to tell you what happens if someone on my roster makes a mistake out there. Or disobeys a direct order."

"You don't."

"Suspension. Minimum." Christian let that sit, then added, almost as an afterthought, "Assuming you make it back to be suspended."

The words hung there, dressed up as concern for department protocol, meaning something considerably uglier underneath.

Derek looked at him and, to his own mild surprise, felt something in his chest ease instead of tighten.

He smiled.

Christian's easy confidence flickered, just slightly, at the reaction he hadn't expected.

The truth was, after a night that had taken his marriage apart plank by plank with nothing to hit back at except a door and a man half his size, Derek genuinely welcomed something real to fight. A wildfire didn't lie to him. A wildfire didn't tell him it loved him and then explain, calmly, over a stove, that love had always been a transaction. A wildfire was just fire, and fire he knew exactly how to fight.

"Something funny, Moss?"

"No, sir," Derek said. "Just looking forward to the work."

Christian's eyes narrowed, unsettled by a reaction that gave him nothing to push against.

Everyone in the bay knew the story, even if nobody said it out loud — Christian's family had greased the path to his deputy chief post two years back, over a captain with fifteen more years on the line and a crew that would have followed him into anything. That captain had been Derek. He hadn't fought it at the time; fighting it would have meant admitting how much it stung, and Derek had never been good at admitting that kind of thing out loud, not even to himself. He'd simply gone back to the floor and kept working, the way he always did.

The crews still trusted Derek more, still looked to him first when a building was coming down around their ears, and Christian had never once forgiven him for it. He handled it the way small, insecure men usually handled things: by handing Derek's crew the worst assignments the department had to offer and dressing it up as fairness, as if difficulty were a resource to be distributed evenly rather than a weapon to be aimed.

Brett stepped in from the side before it could go further. "Chief. We've got ninety minutes and a hundred things to load. You need something, or are we good?"

Christian held Derek's gaze a moment longer, then shrugged, the performance of authority sliding back over his face like a mask clicking into place.

"Just making sure everyone understands the stakes." He held out a clipboard. "Your assignment, Moss. Eastern sector, direct fire line."

Derek took it and scanned the map. The eastern sector wasn't just active — it was the worst ground on the entire fire, the section every incident commander in the state would have flagged as the one to hold back experienced crews from, not send them straight into.

He looked up. Christian was already walking away, satisfied, not bothering to watch for a reaction, his boots clicking across the concrete like the conversation had gone exactly the way he'd expected.

Brett read the sheet over Derek's shoulder and swore under his breath. "That's not an assignment. That's a message."

"Then I'll answer it," Derek said, and folded the sheet into his jacket.

Diaz, loading airpacks a few feet away, had clearly heard enough of it. "He does this every big one," the younger firefighter muttered, not quite quiet enough. "Gives your crew the worst ground, then acts surprised when we come back with a story that makes him look small. One day somebody's gonna ask why the department's golden boy has never once taken point on anything that could actually kill him."

"Not today," Brett said, sharp enough to end it. "Focus up. We roll in twenty."

Derek said nothing, but some small, tired part of him was grateful the anger in the room wasn't only his to carry tonight.

At oh-two-hundred, the engines rolled out of the station in a long red line, lights cutting through a night already hazed orange at the horizon from a fire still eighty miles away.

Derek sat in the cab with his forehead against the cool glass, watching the last streetlights of the city give way to dark highway.

Behind him was a house he no longer had a key to, a marriage that had ended over a stove full of wagyu, a wife who was probably still laughing at that very moment as if nothing had happened at all.

Ahead of him, an entire county was burning.

For the first time since he'd walked out of Suite 318 with his mask in another man's hands, Derek knew exactly what he was supposed to do.

He was going into the fire.