Page 78 of Igniting Her

Gone, gone, gone.

But Cassie had not looked at Ellie and found her too difficult to keep. She had looked through her and seen a firefighter who had already died.

A ghost wearing turnouts.

The distinction left the injury intact. Ellie had been alive in that office, within reach, and Cassie had answered the dead. Love excused none of it; grief could not borrow rank and call every wound protection.

Yet for the first time since the door closed behind her, Ellie’s pain was not proof of her disposability. It belonged to Cassie’s terror, not Ellie’s value.

Her throat tightened. She let it.

“Why are you telling me?”

Mo looked down at the untouched lime in his glass. “Because she won’t. Because I blocked one doorway and watched her walk back to command, and I thought that might be enough to stop the repetition.” He exhaled. “It wasn’t.”

“Did the others send you?”

“They know I’m here. That is not the same as permission.”

“Teak is going to kill you.”

“She’s drafting the speech.”

The laugh escaped Ellie before she could prevent it. It was brief and wet around the edges, but it was real. Mo’s face softened.

Ellie reached inside her jacket and removed the folded transfer request. The paper had softened along the creases from eight days of being carried. She spread it on the bar between them.

Mo read only the first line before looking away. He gave her the privacy of pretending he had not understood the rest.

The blank date waited beside her name.

“I was going to turn it in tonight,” Ellie said.

“Were you?”

“No.”

Mo nodded as if she had finally given him the first accurate report of the evening.

Ellie folded the letter again. Her grief remained. So did the violation, the transfer, and the woman who had let fear speak with her authority. Understanding did not repair any of it. It only put the damage in the right building.

She slid the undated request back into her jacket and stood.

“What are you going to do?” Mo asked.

Ellie left money beneath the untouched half of her beer.

“Give her one chance to look at me alive.”

For the first time in three weeks, she knew where she was going.

20

CASSIE

For three weeks, Cassie made damage look like routine. Apparatus cleared on time, reports reached Battalion before deadline, and every firefighter under her command returned from every call. She reviewed staffing pages until the numbers blurred and left Mo’s food untouched until somebody else ate it.

Her crew noticed. Priya set water on the desk; Jamie intercepted the equipment log before Cassie could check it twice; Teak invented hourly reasons to enter the office. Mo simply occupied the doorway until Cassie ate.