The Billionaire Firefighter

Chapter 4: One Small Suitcase

"Moss." Brett's voice was stripped down to essentials, no greeting, no preamble. The voice he used when things were bad. "You're seeing the news?"

"I'm looking at it now."

"Los Vangees is gone. The flames have breached multiple ridges and are bearing down on residential zones and resorts. The state had activated its cross-county mutual aid protocol."

Derek straightened. “What does that mean for us?”

"We're deploying at 0200. All available personnel."

A pause. "It's bad, Derek. They've already got casualties. Command wants experienced people at the front."

Another pause, heavier than the first. "Say goodbye to your family. Properly."

The call ended.

Derek stood still for a moment, phone in his hand, the wildfire flickering silently on the screen.

He needed to leave. Now.

Yet after three years under the same roof, some stubborn part of him still believed Erin deserved a few parting words. Not because he still loved her. Whatever he had once felt had been worn down long ago. But three years of marriage should have ended with something more than a closed door.

When he looked up, Erin and Dick had already changed the channel. They sat together on the couch, close and comfortable, like a picture of the family Derek had never truly belonged to. The sight should have hurt. Instead, it only confirmed what he had finally accepted.

He opened his mouth.

Erin looked over, "Why the hell are you still here?"

The words died in his throat.

In the end, he just walked to the bedroom and pulled his duffel bag from the top shelf of the closet.

Derek packed in eleven minutes.

He had lived in this house for three years. He had painted two of the walls himself, assembled the furniture from flat-pack boxes on a Sunday afternoon with a YouTube tutorial and no help. He had hung the curtains, fixed the leaking tap under the kitchen sink twice, re-grouted the bathroom tiles one weekend when Erin had a conference in Denver and he had nothing else to do but make the house better.

Eleven minutes was all it took.

One duffel bag. Clothes, his spare boots, his grandfather's watch from the nightstand drawer, a paperback he hadn't finished. He stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around for anything he'd missed.

There was nothing. Everything else, the furniture, the art on the walls, the good knives in the kitchen was hers. Had always been hers. He saw that clearly now, the way you see a room differently once you've decided to leave it.

He zipped the bag.

In the living room, Erin was laughing again. The sound followed him down the hallway, light and unbothered, the laugh of someone whose evening had not been meaningfully disrupted.

Derek paused at the key rack by the front door. His key was on the second hook, the one he'd installed himself because the original rack only had one. He unclipped it from the ring, set it on the small shelf beneath the hooks, and walked out.

The door closed behind him with a quiet click.

No slam. He hadn't wanted to give her that.

The fire station was twenty minutes away. Derek sat in the back of the cab with his duffel on his lap and watched the city slide past the window. Normal Saturday night — restaurants lit up, couples on sidewalks, a group of college kids spilling out of a bar. The world continuing at its regular pace, indifferent.

His leg throbbed steadily beneath the bandage. He pressed his palm against it and breathed.

When the cab pulled up to the station, Brett was outside running through the deployment checklist with two junior crew members. He looked up, saw Derek climbing out with a duffel bag, and went very still.

Derek crossed the lot before Brett could say anything.

"I'm here. I'm good to go."

Brett was actually caught surprised, he looked hard at Derek and then at the bag. Then at Derek's face. Then at the bag again.

"You need not to worry, I have arranged everything at home and I don't want my wife to be heartbroken looking at his belongings if I didn't come back." He cleared his throat.

Brett had been a firefighter for nineteen years. He had a particular talent for knowing when a man didn't want to be asked about something, and a particular respect for that boundary. He studied Derek for one long moment, then put a hand briefly on his shoulder.

"Get your gear on," he said quietly. "We roll at 0200."

Derek nodded and moved past him toward the locker room.

He was pulling on his turnout coat when he heard the footsteps too deliberate, too leisurely for someone preparing a deployment. He didn't need to turn around.

"Well, well." Christian Browning's voice had a particular quality, like something expensive that had gone slightly off. "Didn't expect to see you here, Moss. Thought you'd be home with the wife."

Derek kept his back to him, fastening his coat.

Christian moved into his peripheral vision, flanked by the two crew members he kept close, not friends, exactly, more like an audience he'd cultivated. He was already in his gear, which meant he'd had it on for a while, which meant this entrance had been planned.

Everybody knew that Christian was a nepo-baby whose family had essentially bought his position. The station was currently choosing between Derek and Christian for the soon-to-be-vacant Captain's seat.

Christian knew perfectly well that Derek vastly outclassed him in both skill and the crew's respect and to suppress Derek's rising prestige, Christian abused his authority to assign Derek to the most lethal deployments, keeping his own clique safely resting at the station.

"This isn't a standard callout," Christian continued, a very apparent fake smile on his lips. "Los Vangees is a different animal. Command structure, terrain, resources, nothing like working your home district." He paused to let that settle. "A man who's distracted out there.. emotionally compromised, let's say.. that's a liability. To the team. To the mission. If you make any mistake or disobey orders, you will face suspension upon return" His smile was perfectly calibrated. Plausible deniability baked right in. 

He paused before maliciously adding, "But that is of course, if you survive."

"Christian." Brett's voice came from the doorway, flat and cold as concrete. "We have twenty-three minutes to deployment. If your gear isn't checked and your team isn't briefed, you can explain that to the incident commander in Los Vangees."

Christian held the smile for one beat too long, then let it drop. He looked at Derek.

"Best not give me any leverage out there" he said quietly. "That's all I'm saying."

Derek closed his eyes and breathed in, he had to ignore him and so he did completely.

Christian chuckled and left. His audience followed.

Brett waited until the footsteps faded, then crossed to his own locker without comment. That was the thing about Brett, he understood that some situations didn't need words. He'd said what needed saying. Derek had heard it.

Derek picked up his helmet.

Through the station's open bay doors, he could see the convoy assembling in the lot, engines, support vehicles, the equipment trailer. Crew members moving with the focused, quiet efficiency of people who understood what they were heading toward. No bravado. No noise. Just preparation.

Somewhere out there, a mountain was burning.

Derek settled his helmet on his head, snapped the chin strap, and walked toward the light.