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“Huh?” A whistling sound came from behind him. Crap—the blowup doll was losing air. It made a quiet wailing sound punctuated by odd squeals.
“Damn, Jason. You sure know how to make a woman moan,” said crusty old Sven Lundgren, who should have retired years ago, if you asked Jason.
“Is this the emergency?” Kendra asked, gesturing at the doll. “Am I supposed to do something? Remedial foreplay instructions?”
Howls of laughter came from his cursed crew. Great. He felt his face turn a slow-baked red. Normally, he didn’t mind playing the fool for laughs, but with Kendra around, it bothered him, just a little bit.
But at least he’d finally figured out what was going on. “You’re filling in for Patty?”
“Yeah, she called me this morning. Very, very early this morning. Her bursitis is flaring up and she asked me if I could play your victim.” She spread her arms open. “So here I am. Your designated damsel in distress.”
Jason couldn’t imagine anyone less suited for the role of damsel in distress. Kendra Carter was smart as a whip, good at everything she tried, independent, outspoken. On top of that, she had a longtime crew of friends and a retired blues legend for a father—Alvin “Redfish” Carter, with whom she ran the restaurant at the Blue Drake Club.
Kendra Carter was used to taking care of herself. Except that…he still didn’t know why she’d left Minneapolis and come back to Lake Bittersweet. At first he’d assumed it was because of her father, but something told him it was more than that. Since she’d come back, she’d seemed more subdued than he remembered. Something had happened in Minneapolis, but she wasn’t talking about it. At least, not to him.
He dragged himself back to the task at hand. Training exercise. Victim. She stood a few feet from him now, her arms folded across her chest. She wore a thin gold necklace that glinted against her radiant brown skin. “We’re doing a swatting drill.”
“I know how to swat mosquitoes. Those little mother-effers know they can’t mess with me.”
“I bet.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
And there was the feisty Kendra he remembered from high school. “Hey, you said it. I’m just agreeing.”
“No, there was subtext. I heard it.”
He grabbed the hand of the blowup doll and slapped his own cheek with it. “That’ll teach me to keep the damn subtext out of my mouth.” He slapped himself again with the plastic hand. “And not to say ‘damn.’”
Her lips quirked. “Jason Mosedale, I did not drag myself out of bed at four in the morning to watch you play the fool.”
“It’s worth it, though, ain’t it?” called Brent.
“Definitely not.”
Jason decided he’d had enough of the peanut gallery. “You guys get yourselves some coffee while I bring Kendra up to speed on victim protocol. Back in ten.”
The other firefighters chaotically headed out of the garage, toward the common room where they usually hung out on a slow day. Lake Bittersweet had more than its share of slow days. Hence the nonstop pranks and jokes.
Kendra tapped a foot on the ground. Busy woman, places to go, things to do, said her body language. Except that Jason detected something else, a shadow behind her brightness. He wanted to ask her if everything was okay. But they weren’t exactly the confiding sort of friends, and her manner screamed “let’s get on with this,” so he didn’t.
“So what do I do in this swatting scenario?” she asked.
“Do you know what swatting is? Not the mosquito kind?”
“Nope.”
Weirdly, it felt good to know something that Kendra wasn’t already proficient at. All through high school, she’d been either at the top of every class or close to it. He’d always muddled around in the middle somewhere. It wasn’t until he’d dated an occupational therapist that he’d learned he probably had an undiagnosed learning disorder. The fact that he’d done as well as he had in school was probably a minor miracle. Nancy had insisted that he was highly intelligent, and that was what had saved his ass from complete failure.
“Swatting is when some nefarious person calls 9-1-1 to report a nonexistent crime happening somewhere. Law enforcement responds, full-force, and an innocent person finds themselves at the business end of a bunch of hyped-up first responders. Usually it’s police, but here in Lake Bittersweet, us studly firefighters respond to 9-1-1 calls, so we need to know what to do in a situation like that.”
“That really happens?” She looked appalled. “That doesn’t sound like something my demographic would do.”
Come to think of it, she probably wasn’t wrong. “I don’t have a demographic breakdown like that, so I can neither confirm nor deny.”
Her eyebrow lifted. “Practicing for the fire chief position when you have to face the media?”
He grinned at her. “How’d you know?”
