Then he headed for the driveway.
Halfway to his truck, he called over his shoulder,
“Love you.”
I called it back without thinking.
“Love you too.”
At the time, it was nothing unusual.
Just something married people said every day.
A few hours later, those two words would be the only thing I could hear in my head.
At nearly four that afternoon, I parked beside the station.
My plan was simple.
Walk in.
Get his crew involved.
Force Cole to wear the stupid birthday trophy around his neck.
Take photographs.
Humiliate him just enough that he would complain for six months while secretly enjoying every second of it.
I had done something similar three years earlier.
His crew had taped a homemade birthday sign across the engine, put a glitter-covered helmet on Cole’s head, and made him blow out candles while someone played a terrible version of “Happy Birthday” through a phone speaker.
Cole claimed it had been humiliating.
The picture was still saved as the wallpaper on his old tablet.
So I walked toward the open apparatus bay smiling, one hand around the cake box and the other holding the balloon ribbons.
Then I crossed the doorway.
And stopped.
Something was wrong.
Not obviously wrong.
Not sirens-blaring wrong.
Worse.
Quiet wrong.
A fire station was almost never silent.
There was usually a television playing somewhere.
Someone arguing about sports.
Coffee brewing.
A radio crackling.
Boots hitting concrete.
Laughter.
That afternoon, all I heard was the low hum of fluorescent lights.
Three firefighters stood beside one of the engines.
The second they saw me, their conversation died.
One of them, Marcus Bell, looked straight at the balloons.
Then at the cake.
Then at my face.
His expression changed so quickly that my smile disappeared.
“Hey,” I said slowly. “Where’s the birthday boy?”
Nobody answered.
Marcus rubbed the back of his neck.
Another firefighter suddenly found something very interesting on the floor.
My pulse began to climb.
“Guys?”
A door opened near the captain’s office.
Captain Luis Ortega walked out.
I had known Ortega almost as long as I had known Cole.
At barbecues, department picnics, and Christmas parties, he was usually the loudest person in the room.
He once convinced half the station to fill our front yard with plastic flamingos after Cole lost a bet.
But there was no joke on his face now.
He walked toward me slowly.
His eyes dropped to the bakery box.
Then to the balloons floating above my shoulder.
“Megan…”
The way he said my name made my fingers go cold.
“What?”
His brows pulled together.
“Why are you here?”
I gave a nervous laugh.
“It’s Cole’s birthday.”
