No storm door here, so she knocked on the jamb and then cupped her hands and leaned in to see through the glass window. The kitchen was a bomb zone, dirty dishes in the sink, empty beer bottles on all the counters, crushed packs of cigarettes lying around randomly like the wrecked cars of a demolition derby.

She knocked again and then tried the knob, expecting it to be locked and for her to be free to go—

The door opened so easily, it was as if the apartment had joined the list of people trying to turn her into a savior. Damn it.

“Danny?” When there was no answer, she stepped over the threshold. “Danny, come on . . . wake up, wouldja?”

The sitting room was through the kitchen and down the hall some, the last space before you got to the block of bedrooms and the pair of baths. And as she walked forward, the flickering light of the TV cast shadows on the floor, and made her think of the guiding beacon of the afterlife.

What if he really was dead?

She paused and called out, “Danny?”

When there was no response, she cursed and kept going. Heart pounding, palm sweating, she halted in the archway of the parlor. The sound of soft snoring made her go weak with relief.

Danny Maguire was alive but seriously out of it, collapsed on the couch with nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs covering him. His head was propped up on the heavy arm he’d cocked over his shoulder, and his hard-muscled body was stretched out in a sprawl that was so sexual she had to look away and catch her breath again.

God, she’d forgotten how many tattoos he had.

Her eyes had to return, and she flushed. His chest was enormous, the pads of his pecs developed and maintained by the demands of his work, and his ribbed stomach was the anti-Moose, all six-pack and then some. Then there were his hip bones and his . . .

Shaking herself, she checked out his tats. The ink he had gotten over the years wasn’t the result of some metrosexual, hipster grand plan. It was a layering of meaningful events, all of them losses: Danny carried the department’s dead all over himself, the birth and death dates, the nicknames, even portraits, on occasion, of those who had been lost forming a map of mourning in his skin that was as beautiful as it was tragic.

Where would you have put me? she wondered.

“Anne?”

As he spoke her name, she swung her stare northward, away from the waistband of his black Hanes.

“Danny.”

He blinked a couple of times and lifted his head. “Am I dreaming?”

His voice was a husky whisper, and she knew it was hoarse from drinking, from getting into that fight at Timeout with that rich kid, from trading punches with Vic Rizzo. Moose had given her the rundown. And now that Danny was awake and staring at her, she could see the bruising on the side of his face. He was going to have a black eye tomorrow.

“You don’t look so good,” she said. “No offense.”

Danny groaned as he sat up, and she ignored the cracking sound that was either his back or his shoulder. Or maybe both. And then she had to look at the TV as he rubbed his short black hair—because otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to take her eyes off the way his biceps bulged.

When he reached for a pack of Marlboros, she shook her head. “Are you serious?”

“What.” He put one of the cancer sticks between his teeth. “And I suppose you won’t get my lighter for me, will you.”

“I absolutely will not. I’m not your maid, and you were just treated for smoke inhalation, for godsakes.”

“So which one of those little old ladies called you to come over here?”

As he got to his feet, she turned away and needed a place to go, so she wandered down the hall toward the bedrooms. It seemed weird to look into two of the four spaces and see nothing but dust bunnies and forgotten hangers, Moose had moved in with Deandra, Mick was in rehab out of state—the addiction kind, not the physical. The third bedroom, Jack’s, housed little more than a stripped bed and a bureau that looked as if it were throwing up the shirts and pants that were in its drawers. The final crib was Danny’s, and she merely glanced in as she pivoted around for the return trip.

Anne stopped. He was leaning against the hallway wall like James Dean, that cigarette lit between his fingers.

His eyes were hooded as he stared at her, and she wanted to tell him to put some damn clothes on—except that seemed like an admission that she was noticing his body.

“I’ve lost two and a half of my roommates as you can see.” He motioned to the vacant rooms with his free hand. “Moose and Deandra. Then Mick went into that rehab program. Now Jack is worried about that sister of his again and staying with her. They’re dropping like flies, I tell ya.”

“Times change.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Your face is busted up.”

“Vic needs to lose your number.”

“Moose was the one who called me.”

“Him, too, then.”

“What are you doing, Danny.” She nodded toward his trainwreck of a room. “I mean, look at this place.”

There was laundry on the floor—in two piles that she guessed meant one was clean and the other dirty. The bed was a shambles of sheets and blankets with a bald pillow at the headboard. And the window’s curtain had bought the farm, the rod hanging cockeyed, a blanket nailed in place so he didn’t flash the neighbors.

“I don’t spend a lot of time in there,” he muttered before taking a draw.

She bent down and picked up a flimsy piece of lace. “At least you’re not alone, though.”

He shrugged. “I might as well be.”

“Oh, come on.” Anne let the lingerie dangle. “What was wrong with her? Given the cup size here, I’m thinking her anatomy was just fine.”

Danny was quiet for a while. Then in a low voice, he said, “She wasn’t you. That was the trouble.”

Chapter 15

In the suddenly charged silence, Anne decided she hadn’t heard that right. Nope. She most certainly hadn’t heard that.

“Enough with the bullcrap.” She dropped the Victoria’s Secret and wiped her hand on her hip. “Moose is worried about you. A lot of people are worried about you.”

Danny shrugged. “No reason to be.”

“You got into a fistfight.”

“No, I didn’t. I choked the bastard after he insulted Josefina. So I didn’t actually punch him.”

“I’m talking about Vic. You hit one of us—I mean, you. You hit another firefighter—”

“He was in my way—”

“—because he wouldn’t let you kill someone when you’d had six beers in sixty minutes.”

“I’m sober.”

“Not when you were strangling him. And if by some miracle your liver was able to process all that alcohol load by now, then you need to follow Mick’s example and go inpatient.” She shook her head. “Seriously, what the hell are you doing to yourself. You risked your life today at that fire. You blew off procedure—”

“Moose really needs to forget he knows you.”

“—and endangered yourself—”

“This coming from you?”

“—and nearly didn’t get out of there. All for a kid’s homework.” She put her palm up. “And don’t give me that holier-than-thou about how important it was to get it for her. That’s an excuse. If you’re looking to commit suicide, do your department a favor and just put a bullet in your head or hang yourself from the ceiling. But don’t do it on the job where every single man or woman on-site will feel like it’s their fault. That is not fair to them. It’s just not.”

There was a tense silence. And then his eyes dropped to her prosthesis.

As they lingered on the model of her hand, she shook her head. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you for a second use what happened to me as a justification for self-destructing. You do not get to do that.”

“You expect me to feel good about cutting your fucking arm off?”

“It was my wrist and hand, for one thing. And what I expect is for you not to pretend like it happened to you.” She held up the elephant in the room. “I have to live with this. I lost my career. I am having to reinvent myself. You, on the other hand, still have your life, your job, your friends, and your calling. You’ve got everything you had the moment you jumped into that stairwell. Nothing has changed for you.”