CHAPTER ONE

      “IT’S not your call, Corbett. You took in a lungful of smoke, so you go to the hospital to get checked out. Not my idea, not my rule either, but you do it, or you take a suspension.” Captain Steve Halstrom folded his arms across his chest, looking properly stern in his edict. “You don’t have a choice in the matter.”

      Jess didn’t need to go, though. He didn’t have a damn thing wrong with him. Wasn’t coughing. Okay, so he’d broken enough rules for the day. He got it, this was the punishment. Meaning he’d have to leave his buddies behind at the scene, feel guilty as hell walking away from them while they were still fighting the worst of the blaze, just so he could pay the so-called piper. If his years as an army surgeon had taught him one thing, it was the value of working as a team. Today, against his better judgment, that team ethic would prevail, and he’d be sidelined. Do the deed, do the time. He’d done the deed, couldn’t argue the point … much. “Even though I’m a doctor, and I know—”

      “What you know is that it’s policy. You take in smoke, you take a ride to the hospital.”

      Jess looked up at the building—a three-story apartment, fully engaged. Everybody had got out, and that was the good news. The bad news was the wind, and the old building sitting so close to the one on fire that its demise was likely.

      “Damn, this is lousy timing,” Jess muttered, shrugging out of his turnouts—personal protective gear that was turned inside out when not in use so that the firefighter could quickly step into them and pull them on. A hundred pounds of heavy was what they called it, and it was a far sight different from the surgical scrubs and occasional lab coat he had worn when he’d been a surgeon. But that was just part of the career trade-off. He was okay with it most days.

      Today, when he’d pulled that child out of the burning apartment and carried him down the stairs, letting him breathe his air, he’d been very okay with it. The child had been hiding in the back of an old closet. Couldn’t be seen from a normal vantage point. Parents nowhere to be found. But one elderly lady had mentioned there might be a child up there, and that’s all it had taken to raise the hair on the back of his neck. Granted, he hadn’t known if the kid was still in there, but that hadn’t stopped him. Not when there had been a possibility. “If I check out okay, I’m coming back,” he told Steve.

      “If you check out okay, you get three days off. This was a close one, Jess, and you brought it on yourself. So, you’re on leave, not suspension, and if you argue with me, it’ll be a week. Got it?”

      “After what the lady told me, I should have just left the kid in there?” Jess snapped at his supervisor, instantly regretting it.

      “You know what? Doesn’t matter how you check out medically, take the whole week so you’ll have plenty of time to think. Oh, and in case you’ve forgotten protocol, let me remind you that you are required to let someone know where you go. It’s not an option. We don’t do this job alone.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to have to hang you up like this, Corbett, but it’s all I can do. This time you’re off the hook easy. Next time I’ll do something official.”

      Steve was right about this. Jess knew it. Didn’t have to like it, but he did know it. So now he had a whole empty week ahead of him. That, if