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I waved him in. He sat in the chair across from the desk and rubbed his hands on his knees.

"This stays between us." He took a breath. "Abbott is in trouble."

I listened.

"I'm telling you because I've got nowhere else to go with it." He looked at his hands. "He's showing up late. Not five minutes late, twenty, thirty. His judgment on calls is off. Last week he sent a crew into a structure without confirming ventilation, and Keating had to call the correction from inside."

Every firehouse runs on a code. You handle your shift's problems on your shift. For Tanner to be breaking that meant his crew had run out of ways to hold it together.

"We're compensating, Cap. Every shift, we're covering for him, and it's getting worse."

The shape of it was familiar. A man losing control of something and everyone around him pretending they couldn't see it.

"I hear you," I told Tanner. "I'll note it and see what I can do. But I can't promise you a clean fix. Whatever happens next is going to be hard."

"I know." He looked at me for a long moment. "Thanks, Cap."

He stood up, shook my hand, and walked out of the office. I sat there for a long time after the door closed.

Half my overtime the past few months had been Abbott's shifts. Health reasons, every time. I'd started wondering what kind of health problem didn't get better.

The rest of the shift ran clean. Drills, an equipment check on Ladder 20, a medical assist on Commercial Street that Sawyer and Amos handled without a hitch.

After dinner, the guys settled into the TV room for the Bruins game. Julio had the volume up and I could hear the play-by-play from the hallway, and I stopped in the doorway instead of walking past.

Sawyer looked up from the couch. He didn't say anything. He just moved his feet off the chair next to him.

I sat down.

The Bruins were up 2-1 in the second period.

"That's interference! Are you kidding me? He had his stick in his hands!"

Julio pointed at the screen. "Offside. Right there. He was offside."

"That wasn't even close to offside. His skate was in a different zip code from the line. Stop talking."

"It was offside," I said. Julio pointed at me like I'd just saved his life.

During the second intermission I got up to use the bathroom. When I came out, Sawyer was leaning against the wall across from the door, arms crossed.

"It's nice to see you outside your office, Cap. Interacting with the crew." He pushed off the wall. "The princess is good for you."

"Sawyer."

"I'm happy for you, man. That's all."

Janine was on the couch when I got home. Hazel was curled against her side with her face pressed into Janine's shoulder. Janine's hand was moving slow circles on her back.

Janine looked at me over Hazel's head. "She got cut from the tournament team. The coach called today. Said she wasn't performing at the level the team needed and moved her to the reserve list."

The reserve list. Hazel had been preparing for this tournament since September. She'd worked on her crossovers every practice, stayed late at the rink, talked about nothing else at dinner for three months. And now she was on a list that meant she'd sit in the stands and watch her teammates play.

"I'll handle it."

I said it quietly enough that Hazel wouldn't hear the edge. My confrontation in that corridor had landed on a six-year-old who'd done nothing except love hockey and work harder than anyone on her team. The coach couldn't get to me or Janine, so he cut Hazel from the roster. Punished the mother through the daughter. Precise, deniable, and aimed at the one person who couldn't fight back.

I pulled out my phone and made a call I should have made weeks ago.