Page 4 of At First Spark
“Okay,” I say.
“And for the record,” she adds, her voice brightening with suspicious speed, “if Beckett tries to name the engine again, I will come down there myself.”
I laugh. “He already did.”
“Of course, he did.”
“He wants to call it Bertha.”
A pause. “Absolutely not.”
“I’ll handle him.”
“I know you will.” I can hear her smiling now. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I end the call, climb into the truck, and start the engine, contemplating how the next couple of hours of my life are going to go.
The drive into town is short enough to be familiar and long enough to let my mind work. The road from Otter Creek cuts through pasture and old fencing before easing toward the water. Storefront lights flick on one by one as morning catches up with the town. The marina sits low and still in the distance. A gull cuts across the sky over the bay. Coral Bell Cove always looks softer this early. Less crowded by expectation. Less full of people wanting things.
I pull into the station lot and sit for one second with my hands on the wheel. Then I kill the engine and get out. The building looks different in full morning light. The bay doors are already open. The flag near the sign moves in the breeze. There are still things we need—equipment, funding, more staffing, better storage—but none of that changes what the place is. Ours. Real.
Voices carry from inside before I even reach the bay.
“—I’m just saying,” Beckett says, “if we’re going to be a department, we need a mascot.”
Ray answers without hurry. “We have a mascot.”
“We do not.”
“The patch.”
“That’s branding.”
I step into the bay and get hit with the smell first—coffee, rubber, metal, the faint trace of old smoke that never really leaves gear, no matter how carefully it’s cleaned. Beckett looks up immediately.
There is no easing into any room he occupies. He sits in the center of energy like it owes him something. Today, he’s leaning against the engine with coffee in one hand and a protein bar in the other, hair still damp, uniform neat, one sock gray and one black because apparently matching is a system he rejects on principle.
“Well, look at that,” he says. “Holt Wright made it.”
Ray looks up from the workbench next. Calm. Collected. Already halfway through equipment checks with the kind of focus that makes everyone around him sharper by proximity.
“You’re early,” he says.
“I’m on time.”
“That’s early for you,” Beckett adds.
I drop my bag near the lockers and start pulling on the rest of my gear. “How long does it take you to come up with that?”
“Less time than it took you to fight the sheets in your bedroom.”
My head snaps up. “How do you know about that?”
Beckett grins. “Your face.”
Ray closes a compartment and looks at me with infuriating calm. “You have a line on your cheek from your pillow.”
