I’d endure anything to get back to her.

Failure was not an option.

Maybe they didn’t want me here. Maybe they’d resent everything about me. It didn’t matter. I needed to secure my place here, however I could.

If I lost this, I lost the one part of myself I couldn’t do without.

I’d Googled Captain Murphy already, of course, because I’d Googled them all, and I knew him by sight. Midfifties, stocky, ruddy from a life spent outside—and sporting a spectacular walrus mustache that made him look more like a cartoon of a fireman than a real one.

Captain Murphy did not seem to be expecting me. “Yes?”

“I’m Cassie Hanwell,” I said, and when I didn’t see any recognition, I added, “Here for C-shift.”

Then came the nod. “Got it,” he said. “The rookie beat you. And he brought doughnuts.”

Had it been a race? “I’m fifteen minutes early,” I said.

“Our battalion chief always says if you’re fifteen minutes early, you’re half an hour late.”

I frowned. But I said, “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t be late again.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

He tilted his head back and angled his coffee mug above his mouth so that the dregs ran out in a trickle. Then he clapped the mug back on the desk, scooted his chair back with a honk, and said, “Follow me.”

I followed him—out the door and down the hallway into another office. He grabbed the PA system mic and flipped it on. “Attention, please. There’s a stripper at the kitchen table. Repeat: Stripper at the kitchen table.”

He gave me a little wink and headed back into the hallway.

“You do know I’m not a stripper, right?” I asked, following him.

He kept walking. “Of course I do.” Then he pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. “That’s just how we call all our meetings.”

The guys from C-shift were gathering at the table. Some were already reading the sports page or checking their phones, and some were arriving from other parts of the station. I hung back near the kitchen work area.

Captain Murphy stood at the head of the table and started talking before everybody was settled. “It’s just another C-shift today, boys, but it’s not just another C-shift. Today, while the Patterson brothers are sunning their flabby Irish asses on a Florida beach, we welcome not one but two new members to the finest crew on the finest shift in all the departments of the great state of Massachusetts.”

The guys cheered.

I’d studied them all, the same way I’d studied the territory. I’d learned all their names beforehand: Jerry Murphy, Joe Sullivan, Drew Beniretto, Tom McElroy, Anthony DeStasio. Add me and the rookie, and that was the whole crew, though we were too new to be up on the website. I scanned the group and matched the photos I’d seen with their real-life faces. Quite the contrast from my shift back home, which had been almost universally young, fit, clean-cut, calendar guys. There were seven of us on this shift, and, with maybe two exceptions, nobody fit that description. Even the guys who weren’t middle-aged kind of looked middle-aged. All scrawny and grizzled, with a gray, northeastern paleness to them. Down in Texas, everybody had been robust and tan. Here, they looked like ashtrays. And one, McElroy, was fat. Much fatter than in his photo. Genuinely fat. Heart-attack fat.

Nobody in the room looked anything like a rookie.

Captain Murphy went on. “Some of you might be wishing we didn’t have to break in two newbies at once, but I’m here to tell you it’ll be worth it. These are impressive new recruits, and that’s no lie. The first one rose through the ranks of the Austin FD down in Texas like some kind of a comet before moving to our neck of the woods for family reasons. But we’ll save the best for last. First, I want you to meet our new rookie, a fourth-generation Massachusetts firefighter. Some of you may know his father, Big Robby Callaghan out of Ladder 12 in Boston. This kid’s fresh out of the academy, and now it’s our job to make him a man.”

Captain Murphy paused a second to look around the room. He frowned a little.

“Guys, where’s the rookie?”

The guy I recognized as Beniretto cleared his throat. “He might be duct-taped to the basketball pole, Captain.”

“Already?” The captain shook his head. “Sullivan! DeStasio! Go cut him loose. He’s missing his own introduction.”

Two guys stood and headed for the bay doors. I recognized Sullivan from his picture, but he was much bigger—at least six-four—than you could tell from the website. The other, DeStasio, was much smaller.

The captain watched them a second. “Look at that,” he said to the group, like it was a profound life lesson. “The Irish and the Italians working together. Who says we can’t overcome our differences in this country?”

Again: I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

But I didn’t have long to wonder, because a second later, the bay doors burst back open and the two came jogging back in—this time, carrying a sideways body.

The rookie.

He was sopping wet—clearly, they’d turned the hose on him—and his ankles and wrists were duct-taped together, hands behind his back. Sullivan and DeStasio smiled as they laid him facedown on the dining table.

“Not sanitary,” one of the guys called out, as the rest broke into applause.

DeStasio pulled out a utility knife and approached the rookie.

I should mention that when firefighters work, they work hard—and when they play, they play just as hard. Firehouses are full of guys with too much energy who are stressed-out adrenaline junkies haunted by plenty of tragedy. Goofing around is nothing short of a survival skill.

Everyone in the room knew that the soaking-wet rookie was just the fun new firehouse toy—but I had a very strange half a second when I caught sight of DeStasio’s face as he moved toward the rookie with that knife, and I realized he wasn’t laughing. He was the only person in the room who wasn’t. Even I—not yet technically in on the prank—was smiling a little.

But not this guy DeStasio.

I felt a flash of alarm as he leaned in toward the rookie with that knife, like he might have some kind of psychotic break and just gut him like a fish in front of all of us.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, DeStasio cut the duct tape at the rookie’s boots to free his legs, then cut the tape at his wrists. The rookie flipped himself around to sit up on the table.

And then something truly, unspeakably horrible happened—far worse than anything DeStasio could have done with that knife.

The rookie lifted his head.

He shook out his wet hair like a dog after a bath, and then he gave the rest of the guys a big, goofy grin, just as I froze in place at the sight of his face.

His stunning, heartbreakingly appealing face.

Oh, no, I thought. No, no, no.

Because the second I saw him—laughing, breathing hard, muscles still tense under his wet shirt—and saw his affable, all-American, Norman Rockwell–esque smile, I had all the symptoms of a heart attack.

I stood there, in a room full of EMTs, silently diagnosing myself with a possible myocardial infarction. It was comforting, in a way, to know that I was standing in a whole room of guys who could save my life if need be.