Page 14 of Cinder
They all pause and look at each other, just for a second.
“No,” one of them says, breathless. “Just… devastated.”
I press my lips together, not quite managing to hide the edge of a smile as I glance at Beck.
Colt exhales slowly beside me, trying not to laugh.
Ghost moves past us, already checking over the closest woman out of habit.
“Any slips? Falls?”
“No, dear, just heartbreak.”
Fletch nods solemnly. “Understandable.”
Beck shoots him a look. Fletcher shuts up.
One of the ladies catches my sleeve lightly as I move forward.
“You’ll save what you can, won’t you?” She gestures toward the baking trays with sincerity. “The school lets us use their kitchens every year before the Lake Bake Sale, and this shortbread won last year. It’s practically a town treasure!”
I follow her line of vision to the soggy, blackened mess floating in the baking trays.
They’re absolutely fucked.
“…We’ll, uhh, see what we can do,” I reply.
She nods, like I’ve just made a binding promise, and I tug my sleeve free to move past Beck, stepping carefully through the water toward the ovens, scanning for heat, source, and spread. There’s nothing active but faint smoke and a sprinkler system that did exactly what it was meant to do.
“Smoke set the system off,” I say, glancing back toward Beck as I check the panel. “No active fire.”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Let’s get it shut down.”
Behind us, the doors swing open again, and I catch the familiar blue of a Maplewood Police Department uniform stepping inside.
“Everything under control?” Officer Tucker asks.
“Little late to the party, Tuck,” Fletcher mutters under his breath.
“Thought you guys would have it handled,” he shoots back.
One of the women perks up immediately. “Oh, good, more men in uniform! This just keeps getting better.”
Tucker pauses mid-step as he’s surrounded by the ladies, talking a mile a minute.
I leave him to it as I make my way to the controls to kill the system. But I drag a hand over the back of my neck while I try—and fail—to not let the corner of my mouth lift.
***
The station’s warmer than outside, but it still takes a second for the cold to leave my hands as I shrug out of my jacket and hang it back up.
Gear goes where it belongs without much thought. At this stage, it’s muscle memory more than anything. Boots thud onto concrete, and lockers clang as the place settles back into itself.
These are the kind of callouts that don’t leave us sitting in a daze. We’ve all seen some bad shit in our time, and compartmentalizing is a part of first-responder life. So when callouts lean more into the absurd or amusing, it’s relieving.
Fletch grabs a towel and drags it over his hair. “I’m still saying we could’ve saved those cookies.”
“They were literally floating,” Colt replies, toeing his boots off.
