Page 78 of Christmas with Three Firemen

“So you let me build it blind.”

“I kept one thing back.”

“You kept two things back.” My voice stays level. “Marsh. And the photograph. And I’ve been in this building for three weeks.”

The bay is quiet around us, just the equipment hum and Wes at the far end, perhaps pretending to read the clipboard. Outside, an engine from another house rolls past, its lights sweeping red across the windows.

Grant holds my gaze.

“I know,” he says.

I pick up my folder.

“We’re not having this conversation now,” I say. “There isn’t time.”

“No,” he agrees.

“But we’re going to have it.”

“Yes,” he says. “We are.”

I walk back toward the stairs. Behind me, he picks up the coupling and goes back to the check.

The station runs on high alert for the rest of the day.

Callum strings new lights along the bay ceiling to replace the singed ones. Mateo cooks dinner for fourteen.

The toy drive boxes get reorganized into a system only Mateo understands. Danny and Tara run a ladder drill in the side lot in the cold, arguing the whole way through about who called the last position wrong.

Rico sends a video from the hospital of himself eating a cheeseburger with enormous dignity given that he’s doing it through a straw, and the crew sends back a video of Callum’s eggnog jug with a lit candle in front of it like a shrine, and his reply comes in under a minute.

Two calls by nine. Both routine, and both knocked down clean.

Between calls, Grant is present in a way I can’t quite name. He’s visible in the bay, in the kitchen doorway, at the end of the mezzanine hall.

At ten, I’m at the kitchen table with the Marsh file open and the Delaney financials beside it, building the connection on paper, the thing Grant knew and I’m only now putting into documented form. Snow is starting again outside, light and dry against the bay windows.

Mateo sets a plate beside my laptop. Looks at the files. Looks at my face and goes back to the stove without a word.

Chapter twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-Four: Grant

She’s waiting in my office when I come off the floor.

“Marsh,” she says, before I’ve even shut the door. “You said we’d have this conversation. We’re having it now.”

I close the door. Sit down. Don’t reach for anything to hold onto this time.

“I recognized the pattern at the apartment fire,” I say. “Marsh worked structure fires for six years before I fired him. He knows exactly how an investigator reads a scene, which means he knows exactly how to place an accelerant so it doesn’t read as anything at all. I’ve seen him run controlled burns in training. I knew his hand the second I saw that pattern.”

“And you said nothing.”

“I had a hunch built on history with a man I fired myself. Not proof. If I’d named him with nothing behind it, best case he lawyers up and we lose him, worst case I’m wrong and I’ve sent the whole investigation chasing a grudge instead of the actual threat.”

“You could have told me to look at him. Quietly. You didn’t have to make an accusation to point me in a direction.”

“You’re right.” I don’t soften it. “I could have. I told myself I was protecting the investigation. Some of that’s true. Some of it was easier than admitting I fired a man who might be capable of this and never saw it in him at the time.”