Page 78 of Second Alarm
"Forty doesn't cover the research."
"Forty-five."
"Ma'am. You insult me."
"Seventy."
"Seventy." He pockets the hypothetical seventy, sets the chicken down, and walks away with the whiteboard. Her face has done nothing during the entire exchange. The crew is baying. Derek bows on his way out. I, standing next to the grill, haven't managed a single facial expression, and I'm fairly certain Rodriguez has noticed.
Rodriguez has definitely noticed.
Rodriguez catches me at the ice chest.
"Brennan."
"Chief."
"Good crowd."
"Yes, sir."
"Station's running good."
"Yes, sir."
"You're eating."
"Yes, sir."
"Brennan." She leans against the cooler. "I've been at this a long time. Thirty-one years. I've seen a lot of shifts." She pauses. "And I've seen this shift specifically, in the last few weeks, going through a — " she gestures with her hot dog " — a period. An adjustment."
"Yes, sir."
"You getting enough sleep?"
"Yes, sir."
"You'd tell me if something at my station was going to interfere with the job?"
I pause — not because I don't know the answer, but becausethe jobis the phrase she used, and it sends a cold bolt down my back.
"Yes, sir."
"You would?"
"I would, Chief."
"Good." She pats my shoulder and walks away.
Chief Rodriguez knows. She's known the way chiefs know these types of things, because chiefs know everything. She hasn't asked me to say it. She's asked me to know that she knows. The conversation, in chief-language, is over. I'm on notice — unofficially that she has my back if I do the right things and will need to formalize things if I don't. The right thing is to sort it out before she has to.
I drink my water and look around the parking lot. The number of people here who know something Cal doesn't is no longer a comfortable number.
The near-miss comes around two.
I wipe barbecue sauce off Hanna's wrist.
That's it. That's the whole thing. She's eating a rib, she gets sauce on the inside of her wrist, and I — without thinking,because I've been next to her for forty-five minutes and the instinct I've been suppressing all day is the instinct that reaches for her — take a paper napkin off the stack and touch her wrist with it.
